Discovering Minecraft

Tuesday, September 7th 2010, I logged onto my favorite website, YouTube. Looking at the popular videos of the day, and a Let’s Play for a game called Minecraft. After watching, I knew I needed to check this game out. This was something new, something different.

$15 later I was playing Minecraft Alpha 1.0.17. This was a very different Minecraft than what we know today. Simplistic and buggy, but with the charm of an indie game of that time. When my friend purchased the game later that evening, I started my first server.

In 2025, it is hard to convey how different the gameplay experience of Minecraft really was. It felt like there were no limitations, anything you could imagine could be built. This was not far off the mark, whole computers have been created within Minecraft using red stone material.

Many hours were put into those early alpha versions of the game and it wouldn’t be long before I decided to rent my first virtual private server and host a public Minecraft server.

1st Generation (2010)

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In November of 2010, I rented a Windows 2003 Server VPS and launched my first public server. It was not a good experience. The overhead of Windows Server coupled with Minecraft’s Alpha bugs led to many issues and much work for the server administration. Against all odds, we built a small community of players (some who would stay with us until the end). These inital months taught us the basics of hosting and moderating a server.

Note: In 2010, there were no pre-configured Minecraft servers to be rented. You had to rent a whole server of some type and build your own Minecraft server from the ground up.

2nd and 3rd Generation (2010 - 2011)

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I rebuilt the server with a fresh world in October 2010 and rented a Linux VPS. This was both a better experience and a great learning opportunity. Up to that point, I hadn’t administered a server by CLI (command line interface). Minecraft was being updated at a rapid pace. New features were being added quickly and there were advantages to starting a new map. Each update sparked a debate of whether to continue with the current world or make the jump to a new one. Existing chunks would never have the new biomes and blocks that were being added. There were a lot of considerations and I enjoyed discussing the path forward. The complications of upgrading would only increase as additional plugins were made part of our server.

Funding

I worked part-time at a minimum wage job during the summer at this time. Finding funding to keep the server going was always a challenge. My co-admin and I covered most of the costs. We did get occasional donations which was always a welcome surprise and they really did help.

Bukkit and the Plugins

Heading into 2011, I began to extend the features of our Minecraft Server. We utilized the Bukkit project and the plugins that it made available. Some amazing plugins were created at this time.

Bukkit Permissions

Bukkit Permissions was the built-in permissions extension. The configuration files were in YAML. This was a good opportunity to learn the syntax.

WorldEdit and WorldGuard

Developed by me4502, these two plugins did the majority of the heavy lifting for our server administration. In the early days, Minecraft maps had a habit of developing corrupt chunks and other oddities. WorldEdit, was a useful way to delete or replace areas of the map that had become problematic. Additionally, we would trim undeveloped areas as we moved to newer versions of Minecraft. This would allow new chunks to be generated with updated content. WorldGuard allowed you to protect areas within the map and allow only certain players to modify them. We would protect player’s areas and creations to reduce griefing.

Note: A chunk is a 16x16 block of… blocks in Minecraft that extends from the bedrock to the sky.

Missing Chunk

MyHome and MyWarp

MyHome was a great /home plugin that extended beyond the Bukkit Essentials plugin. This plugin also appears to be abandoned.

MyWarp allowed you to share custom warps with players on the server. This was very helpful as our world began to grow in size. It appears MyWarp has continued to be developed over the years.

iChat

iChat was a fun plugin that allowed you to add color to your chat. It appears that it has been abandoned at this time, but it was useful to us back in the day.

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[2011 November 2]
Updated Server and Plugins Bukkit 1337
Added Restart Plugin

[2011 November 6]
Added MCmyAdmin

[2011 November 20]
Updated Minecraft
Updated Bukkit
Updated World Seed
Trimmed World For New Seed
Fixed Chunk issues

[2011 November 24]
Updated Minecraft

[2011 November 25]
Dynmap Added
Dynmap Worldguard Added
Bukkit Updated

Final Generation (2012 - 2013)

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Going into 2012, our server’s rules and objectives started to come into focus. We ran a Survival server with an interest in building quality structures. There were many servers at this time where donating gave you special abilities, and this is something we specifically decided to avoid to ensure a level playing field. We also refrained from spawning items to ensure all activity on the server was 100% authentic. This ensured we built trust among our regulars.

2012 was our peak popularity and spawned the best parts of our community. During this time we amassed 15 regular players and 500 unique players.

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Dynmap and Hawkeye Reloaded

Community plugins continued to mature. The two biggest additions were Hawkeye Reloaded and Dynmap.

Hawkeye Reloaded was a powerful tool that saved us more than once. It had the ability to log every change on the server. You could roll back the changes a player had made over a specific time period. You could also see the complete history of a block. Hawkeye Reloaded used a SQL database to store all this information.

Dynmap used a web server to serve a web portal where you could view an overhead view of the Minecraft world. It even had the ability to show WorldGuard areas, portals, and players positions.

Not many games had as much technology that could be implemented as part of plugins. To me, configuring and maintaining the servers was the most engaging part of Minecraft. My Co-admin enjoyed building and planning within the server. This created a good balance between the two of us as admins.

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[2012 February 4]
Updated Plugins
removed SheepFeed
Updated Bukkit

[2012 April 1]
Updated to 1.2.4
Updated The Following Plugins
World Edit
World Guard
Command Book
Mchat
Dynmap

Still Waiting for The Following Plugins
Falsebook
MultiVerse
Other Misc

Moving on

In early March 2013, I decided to cease hosting a public Minecraft server. The $40/mo cost was a lot at the time and our popularity had started to dwindle. There were now servers being hosted by incredible teams and the landscape was changing. The quaint type of Minecraft server that we ran was losing its relevance. I was changing as well. I was making an effort to improve my physical health and meet my newly created 5-year and 10-year goals. This required me to shift the majority of my time away from gaming. Running a Minecraft server during these years had given me technical knowledge that would help me in my career. I had also met many friends along the way. We developed inside jokes and server lore.

In recent years, my friends and I have played on private servers here and there, but to me Minecraft of today isn’t my Minecraft. Somewhere between feature updates and acquisitions, what was Minecraft was lost. The blocks and mechanics are still there, but, it doesn’t feel like Minecraft. As I write this, I have C418’s Minecraft, Volume Alpha album spinning on my record player. This is iconic music that instantly takes me back. C418’s music has become less common in current versions of the game. While it still exists in the game, new music has taken precedence. Things continue to change, and we can’t go back even if we wanted to.

2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] CONSOLE: Stopping the server..
2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] Stopping server
2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] [Dynmap-WorldGuard] Disabling Dynmap-WorldGuard v0.30
2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] [dynmap] Disabling dynmap v1.3-1468
2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] [dynmap] Unloaded 11 components.
2013-03-04 08:30:00 [INFO] [dynmap] Stopping map renderer...
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [dynmap] Disabled
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [WorldGuard] Disabling WorldGuard v5.7
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [mChatSuite] Disabling mChatSuite v1.3.2-b287jnks-R1.0
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [mChatSuite] mChatSuite v1.3.2-b287jnks-R1.0 is disabled! [0ms]
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [PermissionsBukkit] Disabling PermissionsBukkit v2.0
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [CommandBook] Disabling CommandBook v2.2
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [HawkEye] Disabling HawkEye v1.1.0
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [HawkEye] Version 1.1.0 disabled!
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [WorldEdit] Disabling WorldEdit v5.5.1
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] [EasyEnchant] Disabling EasyEnchant v1.2.2c
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Saving players
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Saving worlds
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [WARNING] DSCT: Socket closed
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Saving chunks for level 'world'/Overworld
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Closing listening thread
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Saving chunks for level 'world_nether'/Nether
2013-03-04 08:30:01 [INFO] Saving chunks for level 'world_the_end'/The End