For three weeks now, a giant ball of flame has hurtled its way towards the peaceful village of Haven, Serenity. Ever since its first sighting, teams of Serenity Scientists have been working hard to find out just what kind of  a threat the meteor presents, and what can be done about it. They built an observatory atop the Portal Tower to study the fiery rock as close as safely possible, and have finally concluded…

… That there is no hope.

For Serenity, at least!

The ‘official’ report from the guys in white coats are that the world has some four weeks left before the meteor impacts, at which point it will render not just Haven, but a huge area surrounding Haven, a flaming inferno of hellish doom, highly unsuitable for living conditions. The presence of fiendish monsters lately leads them to believe that as the meteor draws closer, these occurrences will increase in frequency and intensity, making Haven and Serenity an even more dangerous place to call home.

Fear not, though – the Haven residents, recalling old fairytales of a powerful mystic, demanded that the Haven council send out explorers to track down The Wizard. After weeks of scouring the lands, the wizened man was eventually found, and promised to help. In short order he prepared a spell that would open a portal to another dimension…

The Glorious Details

At some point this weekend, a bridge will appear in or close to Haven that will connect to another, new, world. This world is a replacement world for Serenity, which will be obliterated when the meteor strikes. The  new world is called Triumph, and the spawn village is called Greenleaf (kudos to anyone who gets the continued reference!).

Over the next four weeks, the meteor will move progressively closer until it finally impacts. Over this time, more and more nether monsters will appear and the world will darken. When the meteor impacts, Serenity will be effectively ‘blitzed’ and turned into a fiery mess. When this happens, Serenity will stay open in its hellish state for another four weeks until we wave it goodbye and remove it permanently from the server.

The Serenity world was saved today in its current state and will be available to download for those of you who have projects you wish to keep. If you’re going to continue with your projects over the next four weeks, be aware that it’s possible your build will suffer fallout from the meteor from next weekend onwards – you have been warned, don’t complain at us if it happens.

Why are we doing this?

Because there comes a point in every Minecraft world where the current version of the game far outweighs the current server map version in terms of features. There’s no jungle in Serenity now, for example – and that’s something I know you’d love to have. There will always, of course, be a gap between server map version and latest MC version, and it’s very implausible to roll a map for every new update, so we try to space them out until the current world becomes saturated with builds and starts filling up with too many abandoned projects – that’s when we know it’s a good time for a new world.

Unlike our previous map resets, this time you have a whole four weeks to move your belongings over to the new world. The portal will stay open and you’ll have a shared inventory. We hope this will minimise the inconvenience.

For those of you who are terribly unhappy about the world reset because of all the hard work you’ve put in to your projects – we’ve done this before. Every time we make a new world there are complaints and every single time, once the new world is up, the people who were complaining change their tune to ‘I forgot how great it was to start fresh!’. Consider where fun in Minecraft is – if you have fun building, we’re taking nothing away from you. If you want to finish your project, you’ve got four weeks and can download the world besides.

Some new rules

There are a couple of changes we’re making to try to make the server a more enjoyable place.

1) Every player is encouraged to place a sign on their house/build with their name on it, so that we know who owns what and can easier find building owners if we need to.

2) Players wanting to make towns will HAVE to make a forum post first to recruit members, and you will HAVE to have five replies from people willing to be active town members before you can make your town. If nobody wants to live in the town, you don’t get to make it. Why? Because we’re on a space-limited map and it’s pointless making town after town after town that nobody lives in – the current world is full of abandoned towns that new players have to run past to find their own space. If you like making towns, you can make them to your hearts’ content on the exploration world as long as you don’t mind them vanishing every month –  or go play on Chunk Error, where you can have up to three worlds to do whatever you want with, including making empty towns

3) In order to encourage networking and connectivity, admins will be providing materials for basic road/path-building from your finished builds, and will help build the road/path if you ask them nicely and they have time. Please remember the rule about asking for hand-outs however – keep in mind that the admins are busy, and will help you if they have the time and are willing. Don’t pester for materials – they’ll get to you in time.

Got questions? Post ‘em here. We want to make this transition as easy and fun as possible (hence the 12-week meteor event!!). Oh yeah, and there’s one more surprise… But you won’t know what that is until you get to the new world