Expansion and Growth

So, while I may be extremely busy with school and studies and not being able to pop on as much as I’d like, I believe the server is stable enough and we’ve handled the few new players joining pretty well. With the recent upgrade to the server, we’ve got a lot more power to bring players in, and it’s a perfect time to start bringing in some new people.

So I’m asking you guys to maybe invite a friend or two to come play here, we’ve got plenty of room. Maybe organize a few events among yourselves, you don’t need me on to do these.

I’ll be making a few recruitment posts here and there, but anyone else can post one up to get our name out. If you feel like making one, just highlight some of our features like a very solid uptime, grief protection, friendly community.

I’ll try to set aside some time to host another event or two throughout the week, but by no means do you need to wait for me.

Survival Island 2 In One Hour (4:30 CST)

Due to last night being too late for anyone to get in on Survival Island, we’ll be doing it in one hour from the time of this post. See you there!

Late Night Survival Island: Round 2 Tonight at 3:30ish AM

We’ll be doing another round of survival island tonight! About 3:30AM CST technically March 11, perhaps earlier (depending when i’m off work, so BE EARLY if you want to join) we’ll be running round two. If you’ve never played it before, it’s basically a survivalfest. Everyone will start off the same with 0 xp, items, or food. We’ll be dumped into a set of islands (by my choice) where you’ll have to struggle and battle the elements to survive. There will be just enough animals to mate and make babies, as well as wheat to grow a farm. Last person alive wins, if you die, you simply respawn at your bed and continue playing regular non island survival minecraft.

The rules are:

- No killing for the first 5 minutes. This will prevent excessive punching as we deploy, and ruining someones fun before we even start.

- Cannot leave the small set of islands. You are allowed to dig underground, build above, and all that, but you cannot travel excessively far or sail away from the islands.

- Points for: Most impressive structure, Longest Survival, and Whatever Else I Can Come Up With.

This can either last for 20 minutes (like last time lol) or hours. If you get tired of it, you just kill yourself or sail away (forfeiting). 

Questions? Talk to me ingame, or email me.

Acceptance Email/Tweet

If you’ve received an email from treesquid3, or a tweet from treesquid3 linking you here, or with the same text in the email, it means you’ve been accepted.

Here’s the contents of the email, and what the tweet would cover if it wasn’t limited to 140 characters:

You’ve been accepted! You can follow us on twitter: @treesquid3, more indepth updates on our tumblr, or our facebook, whichever is easier for more info. Feel free to log in at your leisure, making sure to read the /rules and /motd. To protect your blocks, you’ll need a gold shovel which you can use to designate a cuboid for protection. Everyone starts out with a set amount of protection points, which grows at a rate of about 100 blocks for every hour you are logged in. You can find more information reading the /rules in game or visiting our website. 

When you log in, feel free to ask questions. Any player with a light blue name is a guide and will help out to the best of their ability. Not knowing the rules is not a valid excuse for breaking them, so make sure you brush up on them. If you have further questions, shoot an email my way and I’ll try to help you out.
If for some reason you’re not whitelisted after this email, please reply to me so I can fix it, may have been a small typo.
The IP is squid.allgamer.net, see you online!
If you have applied and haven’t yet received an email or tweet, it’s either because you have too many bans, didn’t complete the app in full, or I’ve made a mistake. Shoot me an email and we’ll talk!

Interested in Being a Guide? (possible advancement to mod)

Then shoot me an email at treesquid3@gmail.com with a short app. Just tell me your prior experience, a bit about yourself, and the hours you’d most commonly be online for. 

Note, this is not a cushy job. You’ll be answering repetitive questions more often than not, and it can be rather thankless. But it makes it easier on the new guys, and I don’t have to mod as much. These positions may lead to moderating positions (mute,kick,jail, etc) as well as demand for said position increases.

There may even be some rewards for this position, like a few more block protection points, a cool color, or something along those lines.

Important Server Announcement:

Please read this start to finish, as there are important details.

We’ve upgraded to 1.2.3, and are back on Bukkit, and this means that soon we will be  whitelisting all of the people that were accepted but not yet whitelisted while we waited for a stable bukkit version and land protection. This means that if you have something important to protect, I suggest you read this page for information on how to safe keep your valuables. The onus is on the player to understand and have anything valuable protected. I have also updated the rules section, so type /rules in game or click here for information on that.

If you do not have enough protection blocks to save a larger work, please email me (treesquid3@gmail.com) and include the location (coordinates) of your work and how many blocks you will need (If it’s 10 blocks long, and 5 blocks wide, 10x5=50, so you’d need 50 blocks. If you want some surrounding area protected as well, take that into consideration when doing your estimate). 

If I catch people zoning other player’s works on purpose to use as a form of griefing, or just being a douchebag, you’ll be jailed or banned.

I’m aiming to start a gradual trickle of new players starting this weekend, maybe Sunday, so it would be best  if you had marked off and protected your lands by then.

I will also be posting an update soon about new staff members. My current plan is to offer several players the opportunity to be “guides”. They’ll be given a different colored name, and tasked with helping out new players with general inquiries and things like protection help. There will be a non-game-breaking reward associated with this, as well as potential to move up to moderator (kick, jail, teleport and chat related commands), and potentially further. This is because as much as I’d like to kick around and help all you lovely people, I’m very busy with school and work at the moment.

Last but most certainly not least, with the new influx of players, and not having conducted a solid stress test, we may experience some lag due to heavy server usage and such. I’ll do my best to find a sweet spot number of how many players can be logged in at a time though, so not to worry. To help reduce this server stress, and increase the amount of players we can have online and the overall power of the server, please consider donating. I run this server on my money; being a University Student with only a part time job during non-summer months means I do not have a lot of money to spend on things like this. Sending a few dollars this way is an easy and cheap way to support the server so we can continue to run and provide you with days of entertainment. I will also introduce a VIP system if we are often at player cap, giving players who donate to keep the server running (and get it upgrades) a reserved slot on the server. YOU WILL NEVER BE KICKED to make room for one of these VIP players, however. 

More updates to follow over the next week or two.

So with that, I’d like to thank all of the new players (and the old) for playing here, and making it a great little community. It’s your guys’ easy going nature and good looks that makes running this show so easy for me, so cheers to you!

-Treesquid

Server had an Accident

So the server somehow has two nethers. When we’re on bukkit, it’s an old Nether, and when we’re on the official Minecraft one, it’s the one we’re all used to with the tram system and grinders. This, combined with bukkit being a resource pig, means we’ll definitely need to upgrade to hold up to 20 players on at a time. I’ll be talking to others about this soon and we’ll work out a plan.

-Treesquid

1.2.3 Update!

Still waiting on bukkit, but we’ve upgraded to 1.2.3.

1.2.2

So a minor patch came, and we’ve also upgraded to 1.2.2. Open up minecraft and let it autopatch, and you should be good. We’ll also be sticking with the standard updates from here on out, just waiting for bukkit to catch up now. More info to come later.

Server Updated to 1.2

With the release of the official 1.2 today, we are upgraded. Throughout the next week or so as soon as Bukkit has a stable build, we will be switching to that. During this time, I’ll be discussing a few changes with the players and team of moderators. We will also be rolling out a form of land based protection too, so anyone that want’s to protect their land, I suggest you pop in and do so. I’ll try to post a tutorial walk through or  video to aid with this. After about a week or so of 1.2 on bukkit and everything’s been protected, we’ll be rolling out invites to the people accepted but not yet whitelisted. 

Here’s hoping for a smooth launch!

See you guys online. 

-Treesquid

Here’s a link to the 1.2 Client from Mojang.