Hello everyone!
I wanted to take a few minutes to give you a community update. TL;DR: don't panic, the server ain't going anywhere!
We're into February now and activity on the Minecraft server has been low. This is expected, I think — people coming out of the holidays, having less time for games, dealing with school, work, and home. There's also an ebb and flow with Minecraft, especially with our niche of survival gameplay.
I want the community to know that even though the server may be quiet right now, that doesn't mean I'm giving up on it, or that it will close down.
When I made this server, one of my core objectives was to have a place that was fun for me and my wife to play, and hopefully bring in some others. I also wanted to do that at little to no additional cost.
How can we do this? Don't servers cost money to run? Normally, yes. However, I've been lucky enough to build hardware into a home server over the last couple of years. It started as a place to store my personal media and files, and over time I added more applications like Home Assistant and, yes, even Minecraft! Because my homelab hobby already covered the core costs, it lets me spin up the Minecraft server at no additional cost — I'd already invested in most of those plugins years ago, and hosting it in my homelab means no cost above and beyond what I already pay (i.e. internet).
This lets me work on the server at my own pace without the stress of constant updates just to get donations and keep users happy enough to give me money. It's also why our model is a zero-monetization one. I do this completely as a passion project, for fun, hoping to bring other players along for the journey.
So what does that mean for the future?
It's no secret that activity has been low the last few weeks for the reasons above. Change in season, players lose interest, players get busy. It happens.
My commitment is this: I plan to keep the server up indefinitely for whoever wants to join us. Whether it's just a few of us or a bustling server with 10–20 online, I want this to be a forever world so players can keep coming back — even if you (yes, you!) decide to take a break too (which is totally ok, btw!).
Honestly, I'm not interested in hosting a mega server (nor can my lil server handle it, haha). I think having a good-quality community is the way to go. So we keep moving forward: I'll keep making updates I think are fun, and run events and activities I think are fun — keeping in mind that these can be completed solo, so they don't rely on a large player base.
So if you were hesitant to play because you weren't sure it was worth your time, or worried the server would shut down, I hope this puts your mind at ease. There's no financial burden, and this server always has been and always will be a passion project for me and the community. Honestly, I hope I can keep building cool stuff, and in 10 years when I have kids (Lord willing), I can bring them onto the server to show how far we've come. I think that'd be pretty neat.
A note on Discord
Today Discord rolled out an announcement about verified ID checking to access some features, channels, and servers. All in all, I don't think this affects us too much, since I've positioned this server as a family-friendly one. However, I can't guarantee it won't affect users in the future if we start losing features and access when people decide not to verify their IDs.
I'm all for promoting child health and safety and making sure the internet is a safe place for kids. However, these age-restriction and ID-verification tools coming from Discord and other companies are concerning, and make me (and I'm sure you) think twice about using them. For now the Discord will stay as-is while the situation evolves, but I'm considering what it means for the future if we need to move to a different platform — like the new TeamSpeak 6, or something other than Discord. Open to feedback on this!
That's all for me, Crafters. See you in game.