We’re 5 days into August and I have just realised it isn’t August at all! It’s Blaugust!
My head has been elsewhere: I’ve been going through a lengthy hyperfocus phase with Minecraft.
I recently joined a whitelisted server that is full of lovely, mature humans, and have since lost any steam or want to play on the previous server I was on, Faeries SMP. I still log on every now and then to restock my dirt shop, but for the most part, I feel like foreigner and unmotivated to build anything or talk to anyone there.
My new server is called TogetherCraft, which is run by 2 people: Rockit and Fenris. They tirelessly maintain a community events schedule, and run the server in, honestly, a really professional manner. There are fewer players than on Faeries, but the age range is higher due to the minimum accepted age on applications is 18. Quality over quantity.
Unlike the currency of Faeries of ingame $, TogetherCraft’s server currency is diamonds. This creates a fairer economy, if you can’t sell stuff, you can just go mine it. It’s also exciting to have a physical (virtual) object, a diamond, that is essentially a coin.
The server economy and claimblocks are mostly done on trust. There is no golden shovel to stop anyone from placing blocks on your land. You place a fence, and say it’s yours. You ask for 5 diamonds in exchange for your item, and get 5 diamonds. The only mod-based claiming that you can do is add a sign to openable things like chests and doors with a [Private] sign so noone else can interact — but really, the community is so tight-knit, noone even uses that.
There is no teleporting, no /spawn, no /home. At first, this was tough — I was so used to zipping around with /rtp (random teleport) or one of my 20 /home teleports that going back to having to walk everywhere felt limiting — but after a bit, I got used to it and now I actually prefer. Not being able to just teleport around connects me with the world in a far better way. I know which direction to go to get back to the main hub (The Capitol); I have to intentionally go on a trip to go shopping or go mining in the resource world. It provides more meaning to the space I take up and lets me discover more community builds or players.
There is a world map, so you won’t ever get completely lost either.
The amount of care and attention put into this server is evident from the rich world building and genuinely top notch (iykyk) community, the only negative feedback I have is get the public library finished rockit!!
