/r/mcpublic full q&a

What is /r/mcpublic?

/r/mcpublic is the subreddit dedicated to the Reddit Minecraft Servers, originally located over in /r/minecraft. Most people are familiar with what Minecraft is and how it got started but, to many, the multiplayer aspect is still something unknown. For context, Minecraft was a game released early in it's alpha stages by Markus "Notch" Persson, the game's creator and main programmer. The concept was simple, here is a sandbox game that has not been completed, but you can buy at half-price with the promise that it will one day be a complete game. It is actually this process that attracted (and still attracts) so many people. Minecaft has experienced a variety of extreme changes over the course of the 3 years we've been able to play it, what started as simple "tree punching" has turned into a massive creative experience that continues to change and evolve.
As of February 2012, the reddit Servers host 3 flavors: Creative, Survival, and PvE.

The Acronyms:
SSP: "Survival Single Player"
SMP: "Survival Multi-Player"

Creative
Creative Mode was the first style of gameplay ever introduced in Minecraft multiplayer. In "classic," this meant full access to the available block library, instant block break, and the ability to fly around. Once the game started to take shape, classic mode disappeared in favor of "survival" mode, i.e. health. We compensated by using a variety of community made plugins that allowed users to give themselves any blocks they needed as well as ones used to prevent players from causing too much destruction by accident. Recently, the classic style "creative mode" was re-introduced to the game, allowing users to once again have full access to the block library, instantly break blocks, and spend their time building instead of mining. Creative's greatest strength is its ability to really show the full potential of what the game is. Players have constructed massive builds replicating metropolises, showing off unique architecture, huge domes, and even full-on rail-based transportation systems. It is the essence of Minecraft, take a basic sandbox and start building. Creative has been the hub of the majority of server activity for a very long time, and where most of the most well-known builds - including the giant domes, Star Trek replicas, etc - originate from. Builds like these are worked on by hundreds of different players from around the globe at all hours of the day, it is the beauty of multiplayer.

Survival
The Survival server started in November of 2010 with the introduction of a health bar to Minecraft. The game had switched to a "crafting" mode well before this, but the infrastructure for a true survival experience, i.e. enemies (called Mobs or Monsters), wasn't established until this point. Survival attempts to re-create a "vanilla" experience, but with some structure to prevent all out chaos. On Survival, players are not only trying to survive the environment, but are also trying to survive each other. PVP is allowed and encouraged here, and thus the point of this gameplay style is usually to establish a base in order to gain resources and materials necessary to participate in combat. We do not use any plugins to officiate factoring or clans, every alliance is done only through trust, each player is essentially on their own, at all times. Long, trusting, relationships have led to huge clans of people waging war against one another, but also means that one must always watch their back, since sabotaging your clan is as easy as killing them while they are unarmored. With that, there are no rules mandating players fight one another, however, and many players use the threat of getting killed by their peers as a way to make the game more challenging, such as one player who has established himself as the map's "trader," with a "shop" near spawn. This trader has remained neutral amongst all the clans, and as such is rarely sought out as a PVP target. In that vein, there are players who try to survive as long as possible without interacting with anyone else, and there are even players who attempt massive, Creative style builds using the hostile environment as a way to challenge themselves to get it done (and impress everyone else).

PvE
Player versus Environment, one can think of PvE as the middle ground between Creative and Survival. Like Survival, there is no ability to give yourself items, and you must survive the challenges the base game provides. Unlike Survival, players are unable to kill each-other. Like Creative, the goal of most PvE players is to build amazing structures, but they must do so by collecting the actual resources required, and playing the game as it was intended in order to get the correct materials they need. PvE has become very well known for its accepting and laid back community of players, and it's dedication to aesthetically pleasing creations that mesh with their surroundings. PvE has also become a hotspot for experimentation with one of Minecraft's unique features: Redstone. Redstone, and it's supporting elements, can be thought of as basic circuitry. Players on PvE have gotten very good as making basic computers in game, particularly for use in the user-built rail system as a destination selector.

Chaos
Chaos is a server that we try to run whenever there are spare hardware resources, it's uptime is reliably terrible. The Chaos server, when it's running, is strict vanilla gameplay. There are no plugins (other than to keep it stable) and there are no rules (except those governing hate speech and unfair client modifications). It has the potential to simultaneously show the best and worst parts of the game and it's community. Players have established very successful cooperative projects, but players have also taken the no-rules environment to try and ruin as much of the landscape, and player bases, as they could. As of February 2012, chaos is non-operational  due to lack of resources.

The Philosophy of MCPublic
Reddit's Minecraft server has a somewhat unique way of governing the game. We pride ourselves on being open, honest and equal for all. The servers are open to all players, no whitelist, no registration, no hassle, simply log on and play. There are no "ranks" or "player classes," players can not level up for benefits, there are no special colors in game chat, and there is nothing one player can do to gain an advantage over another that the other could not gain themselves by playing the game. We do not give users better or more powerful items in exchange for a donation, and server staff appear exactly the same as every other player, with server moderators and admins receiving no special treatment, distinction or accolade. All of our rules and policy are up for debate by the public, and rule changes must always be discussed on the subreddit. At heart, we attempt to be as "reddit-like" as possible, we try to be a place that is fair, open and honest, that appeals to all.



How did the Reddit Minecraft Server nerd.nu begin?

In June of 2009, during one of the game's regular updates, multiplayer was added to the "Classic" version of Minecraft. Within days the reddit community, being the bleeding edge people they are, playing an unfinished game and what not, established a small multiplayer server. This initial setup was extremely buggy, laggy and could not support more than 10 or so players at a time. The hardware was sitting in the bedroom of AlLnAtuRalX, the server's founder, uptime was shoddy, and yet, people still showed up to play every night. Over the next 2 years, both the game and the reddit server would experience tremendous growth. Not long after the server started, it was determined a subreddit would be needed to facilitate the greater reddit community's new interest in both the game and the server, and thus /r/minecraft was born. Skipping ahead, by January of 2011 the server had grown to support 3 separate gameplay styles, hundreds of players at a time, tens-of-thousands of unique visitors a month, and the need to spin off from /r/minecraft into its own subreddit. /r/mcpublic now serves as the location for strict server activity, and supports nearly 3,000 subscribers. "Reddit Public" (aka "nerd.nu") is still the main server of /r/minecraft, and the greater reddit community, with the purpose of /r/mcpublic is to keep the more local information off the front page of users who don't always play multiplayer.

Currently, the entire server is supported by donations from community members. We do not keep an active pay-pal link, but will occasionally hold a donation drive coupled with a server event to raise some funds. Occasionally, when we can swing it, we use our donation drive periods to raise money for charity, instead, with our last drive in January raising money for the Child’s Play charity.

The server is maintained by a group of Technical Administrators who volunteer their time and expertise to keeping everything running, and running smoothly. Their tasks include basic server maintenance, as well as plugin coding, adapting and verification. The tech admin team has provided the community with several in-game improvements - Minecraft servers mostly all run on a community supported coding project called CraftBukkit - and a specially tuned piece of base software called NerdBukkit, that has been developed for our needs based on the larger Bukkit project. The tech admins work in conduction with a group of 5 others, called "Head Admins." Head admins are responsible for managing players and policy on the server, leaving the tech admins to deal strictly with the server and not be subject to controversy that may arise from player conflict or disagreements of policy.




What are some of the main differences (positive or negative) in playing online vs the regular game?

Offline gameplay is an extremely solitary endeavor, and that is one of the big draws of Minecraft. There is something really interesting about being alone in a sandbox with nothing, and trying to turn that into something. Multiplayer is a different flavor of the same experience. In Creative, it’s the drive to make, in Survival and PvE it’s sharing that experience of turning a black slate into something with friends and strangers, making something that might never have been possible when you were alone. One is not inherently better than the other, but multiplayer has a way of keeping the game interesting and new, even when the mechanics get familiar. An additional benefit of playing online comes from being able to learn the game through the experiences of others. One is able to walk around, study and observe how other, possibly more experienced, players play the game, get more efficient, make high yielding farms, and get a better feel for the intricacies of Minecraft.




What is a moderators job? How does one become a moderator?

As with any online endeavor, there is the need to moderate the experience such that everyone follows the rules laid out by the community so that the experience is not ruined by those who are ignorant of their surroundings, or those who derive pleasure from kicking over sandcastles. To that end, we have a few members of the community designated as server moderators. Their duties are pretty standard as far as enforcing rules goes, and they are given the ability to remove rule breakers by kicking them or banning them from the server. Moderators also are given the ability to place a few of the in-game items that we’ve disallowed due to their potential as havoc wreckers, such as fire and lava. Moderators have access to these items in case players need them in their projects, mods can respond to requests for these items and use their judgement to determine if placing said item in the requested location will cause harm. With that in mind, our tech admin team is always working to allow as many items as possible by changing a few core game behaviors (such as disallowing water and lava from flowing when placed by a user), so that moderators’ responsibilities eventually become limited to keeping the peace.

Even thought moderators are on the same level as every other player, there is an inherent difference due simply to the tools provided for accomplishing the task. With that in mind, there is no moderator application process, instead, existing mods and admins nominate players who they think have the right attitude and composure to deal with being one of the game’s janitors. Players who display a good attitude, helpfulness, patience, a relaxed temperament and who have a solid knowledge of how the game is played are the ones most often nominated, voted on and accepted, though the server admins have final say on who does and does not get moderated. Moreover, the server looks for players who don’t express interesting moderating, we look for players who are already helpful and tend to be turned off by players who continually mentioned they’d be good with the responsibility.





What is greifing? What happens to griefers?

“Grief” is a term that might be familiar to those who play other online games, it is usually a malicious act where a user attempts to make life difficult for those trying to play the game within the bounds of the rules. In practice, this translates to situations where users place or destroy game blocks in areas they don’t “own,” or in order to spam, annoy or taunt other users. The most common form of this occurs when an offending user tears down part of another user’s build, intentionally leaving it to look dilapidated or broken. Thankfully, we have a few tools at our disposal to deal with situations like this. The first is a plugin known as “WorldGuard.” WorldGuard allows mods and admins to designate certain areas of the map as editable only by specific users, completely removing the ability to modify said area to anyone who does not have permission, commonly known as “protection.” Protections are granted to users with a reasonable claim to an area of the map, and provided it does not overlap with existing structures that they do not own or other protected areas. Mods will designate protected areas with an “owner,” and the region owner is able to use commands to add others to their protections. Protections are granted only Creative and PvE, and provided enough of the land has been modified to justify protecting it from other users, this is to prevent large swaths of land from becoming unavailable.

Additionally, moderators have access to a tool known as “LogBlock,” which keeps track of all edits made by all users, map wide, and gives us the ability to revert any of those edits. Should a moderator come across a grief’d structure, they can determine who was responsible, and can easily undo the done damage. All of the respective server’s rules are posted at spawn, and users who break those rules are warned, or banned for a length of time determined based on how egregious the offense was and if there are past bans or warnings. All users can always appeal their bans through our appeals website, with appeals readable by all users and conducted 100% in view of the public.




Ok, I have Minecraft and want to play online with other redditors, how do I connect to the reddit servers?

Playing with us is easy! You can visit http://nerd.nu for general information, /r/mcpublic for our subreddit, and can read out wiki at http://www.redditpublic.com . Users can connect to us directly by opening Minecraft, clicking on “Multiplayer,” and add us to their server list or connect directly using the following server IPs:

Creative	- c.nerd.nu
Survival	- s.nerd.nu
PvE		- p.nerd.nu
Chaos*	- x.nerd.nu

*Chaos currently offline