“The die is cast.”

From the day Civcraft started, it was already too big. The core tenets behind Civcraft are so far-reaching and ambitious that anything less than a bespoke platform developed with those pillars in constant focus would do the idea, the thing that draws so many of us to this particular flame, a severe injustice. Since the very beginning we’ve been fighting with limits and deconstructions, trying to wrestle an engine designed for other purposes into a mould that fits our all-reaching, never-faulting idea… an idea that has engaged thousands of people over the past 4 years, touching lives, creating stories, and exploring sociological territory barely before graced by the medium of gaming. So we asked ourselves: “What could that idea do if it was unshackled, and delivered to the end users via a bespoke engine entirely developed for the purposes of the deployment of this singular experience? And how can we best monetize it prior to the inevitable $2.5b Microsoft buyout?”

Announcing Praxis, a standalone society-building experience from our newly formed studio [Redacted] Games.

WHAT IS PRAXIS?
Praxis is a large-scale online multiplayer society-building experience, being developed by a small team of contributors from the Civcraft community and beyond. Praxis is what has been referred to in the past as the “Civcraft Successor”, “Standalone Civcraft”, the “Rubicon Project”, “[REDACTED]”, and “That time-sink that nobody can legally talk about”. Imagine if you stripped down Civcraft to the core ideas that drive all these awesome socially-emergent experiences, and then designed an entire engine and game around them. That’s Praxis. It’s an open world in which we provide you the tools to build the society you want.

Work on the project officially started over 500 days ago, although recently we’ve been formalising things and slowly moving towards something playable and marketable.

WHERE IS IT SET? ARE THERE WEARABLE HATS? WHAT ABOUT ADMIN CRIMES? DEAR GOD I NEED TO KNOW MORE!
We’re being extremely careful about what we say right now as Praxis is an in-development project and a lot of features and aspects are entirely subject to change. We can tell you the following:

Praxis is set in a wide-spanning universe, ripe for exploration The worlds of Praxis are constructed from voxels, similar to Minecraft but with a few unique twists Praxis features user-created vehicles for transportation You will wake up in an unfamiliar place

More information will be revealed as the project continues and things are cemented more firmly in place. You can keep up with the latest news:

Via our Mailing List
On the /r/Praxis subreddit On Twitter
On Facebook
By building an Ancap shrine and meditating daily (unconfirmed)

HOW FAR ALONG DEVELOPMENT ARE YOU?
We’re far enough along that we feel comfortable soft-launching Praxis within the Civcraft community, but not far enough along that we want to start showing you screenshots and video footage. There are still hurdles in the engine that need vaulting over, but progress is good and every week brings a fresh new set of tasks and challenges. We’re excited about involving you in development more and more as we move forward. Subscribe to the /r/Praxis subreddit for all current developments.

WHAT’S THE PLAN? WHEN CAN I PLAY?
This subreddit announcement is the first step in a plan that aims to end with a successful crowdfunding campaign, in which we cover the costs of the next few years of development. We don’t have a specific timeframe right now as everything depends on the state of the engine, which is in a constant but variable state of growth. We wish we could be more specific but setting any firm public dates right now would inevitably lead to disappointment.

The Civcraft community will however be the first guys and girls to help us try out and test our earliest playable builds, providing valuable feedback and driving the direction of Praxis moving forward. More info on that will be released when we’re ready to start accepting signups.

WHO ARE [REDACTED] GAMES?

[Redacted] Games LLC is a Limited Liability Company incorporated in Florida. [Redacted] Games is the development studio behind Praxis, a necessity for legal purposes that also allows us a bit more structure during development.

Follow [Redacted] Games on Twitter. Like the [Redacted] Games Facebook page.

HOW CAN I HELP?
We’re always looking for contributors. Right now we’re specifically looking for an in-house artist, someone who is experienced in working with vectors and low-poly style art to produce various artwork in and around the game.

If you think you could be a contributing team member, send TTK a message listing your key skills, areas of interest, and relevant experience.

Praxis is something that we’re all very passionate about, and we hope that shows in our cautious and curated approach. As the core of what Praxis is solidifies, development will open up a lot more, with the end goal being the vast inclusion of user-influenced direction and user-driven content. For now we’re still putting those structures into place, and we’re genuinely excited to show you more of what we’ve been working on once it’s ready.

The [Redacted] Games Team

A MESSAGE FROM TTK

It all started with a server in my kitchen and the dream of a game where people could play out a reality.

When I first started AnCapMinecraft I expected a few interested parties and maybe a couple of months of interest before things died down. I never once dreamed that people would come to share my passion for the idea so quickly. When we started Civcraft I sincerely thought that we might have something that would see a little public interest, a “oh that’s neat” factor that would wear off quickly. What I never expected was the level of support and enthusiasm and that I have received over the past couple of years from this community; what started as my personal dream has become our shared one.

I am excited to finally announce the next step, for nearly two years now we have been developing a game engine with the goal of pushing ourselves to the limits of what is possible within a ‘game’. What if we could have ten thousand people online? What if the game ‘universe’ was truly that; a universe, with planets and stars and features from a warm savannah to the cold depths of space?

Its a moonshoot, without a doubt we are trying to do something that is hard, maybe even something that noone has ever tried before. But this community is no stranger to reaching for the impossible, believing that we can do whatever we collectively set our minds to.

So everyone... its time to dream big again.

A few days ago, we noticed a post on the subreddit which we found difficult to react to: a post that led us to discuss the grey areas between the goals of the server, common decency, and law. In this post, players showed how they had demanded virtual sex from a pearled player as payment for her release.

We have years of experience in dealing with people who go out of their way to be as insulting and vulgar as possible. We thought it would be hard to faze us, but the actions of these players did.

We discussed the issue in depth as a group of administrators. We discussed good administration, morality, precedent, practicality, and legal liability. In the end, we all agreed that we had to ban the perpetrators.

We'd like to explain our reasoning:

Moral dilemmas, precedent, and practicality

Our goal is to have a political simulation as much as possible within Minecraft. Historically, we have tried to avoid interference in in-game actions on the server, with the exception of cheating. This particular report forced us to re-evaluate our policy, as it totally crossed the line of what constitutes reasonable in-game behavior.

We agreed that these actions existed solely in an attempt to sexually harass and degrade the real-world individual and made no contribution in the context of a political experiment.

For the subreddit post itself, the subreddit rules about harassment applied. However, we felt that allowing coercive sexual harassment of this level to knowingly continue in-game might imply the approval, if not complicity, of the administration.

We chose to look at precedent from earlier similar decisions, to assist in making a decision. Much like real courts, Civcraft administration relies on both codified rules and precedent to make decisions, but a tricky case may pop its head up every once in a while, forcing us to create new precedent. This is one of those cases.

Do we allow depraved cruelty (or at least attempts at it) that does not contribute to the experiment in any way only on the premise of non-interference? What impact does our action or inaction have on the server and its future? Does it make a difference if the victim is underage?

Legal Considerations

This is an issue real-world implications. We won’t and can't allow what can be considered a real-world crime like this to occur on the server.

Also, Civcraft is open to all ages, the legal implications across the server's and players' jurisdictions create a real hazard to the community.

Our server is based in Montreal and subject to the Canadian Criminal Code. Therefore, as well as bans in cases of extreme coercive sexual harassment like this, we might also take additional steps to protect the server, the community and the administration legally. This will particularly be the case when minors are involved.

What this ultimately means for the future of the server is that we have to carve out a set of rules to govern a very small area of depraved and intentionally degrading actions that do not contribute to the experiment as not allowed. This needs to be done not only to avoid legal liability, which we can not bear, but also to avoid the moral liability of being party in any fashion to these actions.

--The Administration

After the DDOS one of our top priories was setting up offsite backups, ensuring that we could never again be strung up for so long without help. As always we put out a call for charity an unused machine or connection somewhere and as there has been in every step of our journey here people stepped up and helped us out. We had new hosts for CivTest and CivPVP provided and operated for us. I took advantage of one more offer by /u/LordSaehrimnir an unused server rented for the term of a year, it has fast bandwidth and small but decent sized disk. I decided to use it as our new remote backup server in conjunction with another location.

Its not often we have the luxury of checking over those who offer us help, but here I will admit I did, but all did with that luxury was squander it, I checked the reddit account in a cursory manner and it seemed to check out. The machine was setup properly and nicely.

I can never deny being perfectly cognisant of the risks being taken, but the alternative was using a machine to which backups took 2-3 times as long and due to its upload speed restoring them would take 13+ hours.

So that was that, our new remote backup server.

It does not take any sort of genius to guess why this post is being made. Hamster238 was the owner of this server, I had no excuse for not knowing that, they have a copy of the backups and everything that entails down to uncensored server logs.

This represents a complete and total failure on my part as an administrator, its also characteristic of my character flaw, I am far too trusting and hopeful that things can and will turn out for the best. When the choice was presented to me to backup remotely or risk having the server be down indefinitely again the choice seemed to be pretty simple.

They malicious players in this instance have restricted themselves to ridiculing me, which means revealing some facts about the administration team which could be interpreted poorly and placing up an alternate server with a copy of the map without any sort of protections to prevent it from being abused.

This is better than I deserve right now.

For more than a year now Civcraft has been my life, its the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before I go to sleep, it is a challenge that has nearly crushed me time and time again and somehow I have always found the strength to rise to that challenge and every time I wondered if there would come a day when I would throw myself at the next challenge and finally be crushed. Surely there was some limit to how much I could take?

The irony of that limit being my own stupidity, my own positive attitude, my own tendency to trust freely and move forward despite doubts. I am not sure if I am crying or laughing, maybe I am doing both at once and that is what this feeling is.

I have put every ounce of my life into this game, I long ago decided I would go on despite any personal cost, in the face of any challenge I would either surmount it or die trying. It is this attitude that brought me this far and this attitude that caused this situation. I held no malice for anyone I have ever banned or allowed to be banned, I always did what I thought was best, I made the hard choices when no one else could and it tore my apart mind and body. Sleepless nights constant, , nervousness, lost time with friends and family. These costs are as much mine as any major player's. Every time I asked if it was worth it I dared to dream one more time that this could be everything I thought it could.

But its not about me here, this was always my greatest fear, betraying my players. All of your work, everything you have confided in the server, has been given away. I will never forgive myself for this and I will fully understand if you never forgive me for it and refuse to use any service I run ever again.

As always I could man up and move forward, we can generate a new map, start fresh I guess. I had always planned on releasing the full map someday when it was all over. Hell we could even keep the one we have now, not that I think that would end too well.

Regardless this is ttk2 signing off, I have a class to go to that I never told anyone about for fear of the server being attacked when I could not help, but I guess that does not really matter too much now.

I should make it clear, if there is one thing I have learned from what I have done its that you can only lose when you let yourself lose, Civcraft can live, but that is up to you to forgive me, I will be here.

To the attackers, congratulations, you win. You have destroyed what you could never create. You have taken other people and torn them down, I will not remove your posts about me, I can take it, but doxxing is not tolerable this is between me and you, no one else need be hurt by this. I don't hate you, I am not sure I have enough emotion left to feel hate for anyone at this point, but I am disappointed, here you have all the tools to try yourself, a server the plugins, but instead of building you prefer to destroy. I hope you are happy, life marches on.

If this gets more than 200 votes, the admins should make civcraft a skyblock map, that resets every day/2 days/ week. That way, we can get to civcraft version 200 in no-time.

I've been running Civcraft, in one form or another, for more than 5 years now. From high school, all the way through college, during that time I've learned a lot of things, met a few worthwhile people, and continued to strive for my goal. That pie in the sky dream that I wanted to see out of Civcraft.

I wanted to see a game where players actions really mattered, where they created and shaped the societies and worlds they played in, a game that truly had no script. This was always an uphill battle, in 1.0 people thought that the very concept of PrisonPearl was doomed to fail, that there was no way for players to self police griefing and form a worthwhile server.

In 2.0 we fought an uphill battle with the economy, players ran the game world yes, but it was only achieved by allowing players to isolate themselves from the effects of other players actions. If you didn't want to participate in the game world you can just run away. Long story short with very few exceptions players did what they wanted. Society and people where optional, the greatest challenges of the game where scripted by the players own roleplay as opposed to sincere actions.

3.0 is the result of trying to address those issues and truly create an in game economy where politics occurred as a emergent outcome of the game and balance, instead of as a side effect of a few mechanics and roleplay to fill in the gaps. It's here that I find the limit for what players are willing to tolerate in the name of an experiment.

3.0 is hardly dead, the general form of the solution is easy to see, with careful application of additional mechanics and skill up, and a measured reduction in costs such that the tech tree makes an exponential cost curve for linear gains both in combat effectiveness and resource gathering you just might be able to get this all to work perfectly.

But in doing so I will be fighting an uphill battle with a values dissonance between the players and myself that has only grown larger with each iteration. I'm here to run an experiment, to push the bounds of what we can do and figure out what's possible. I try and make a fun game as a secondary goal that I feel I owe to the players assisting me with my experiment.

But now we have found the end of the line, if everything where to go perfectly it would take perhaps another year of concentrated, constant effort, constant grind, on my part and the parts of many others to shape 3.0 into its final form. Then we would be left with the problem of recruiting enough players to make it a workable reality, /r/Minecraft has 500 viewers at any given time, with 100% retention and perfect recruiting (and you all know how crazy it is to assume prefect retention), we still need to find double that somewhere else to really push the dream as far as I would like to go. Minecraft as a development and game community is past its apex, it still has an enormous install base, but to push for enormous expansion a year from now would be folly.

In my mind the experiment is complete, I have learned all that I will and I have seen it through not quite to the end but until I saw the top of the last hill in enough detail to satisfy me.

It's therefore time for me to focus my efforts somewhere else, on another project and another idea. I'm willing to provide technical support to Civcraft, or anyone else willing to try sharding or our plugins, but I'm not willing to invest the time to be head admin any longer. I have no vision for the server beyond this point, no care for its direction, and frankly no interest in ever answering another modmail or moderating another balance discussion ever again.

So the question is now where do you go from here? I've put off retiring for a long time because I couldn't answer that question, it's taken me this long to realize that an answer will never be forthcoming, there will always be another reason to continue until the last player is gone and as much as I feel I owe the players the quality of my administration has suffered and will suffer if I force myself into something that no longer holds my interest. Where things go from here on out is up to the community, I'll help you on your way and then fade into the background, like many of the other experts and developers on Civcraft that you probably don't even know exist much less maintain essential components of the system. Our current primary server lease expires 5 days from now and I have no plans to renew it, moving our existing structure to a smaller server is a pretty minor task, but investing in hosting for a rudderless server seems like a waste of funds.

As for the remaining funds, charity or whatever server people may migrate to after Civcraft are both options, I have turned off auto withdraw on the Paetron so you do not have to be concerned about being charged. There is a chance of finding someone sufficiently skilled and sufficiently motivated to run Civcraft in my stead, but it seems no one left in the administration will touch that with a 10 foot pole.

So, I guess this is it guys, I'm going to miss a lot of you and I can't thank you enough for helping me push this crazy idea I had to its limit, to really see what you could do with this sort of game design. [Redacted] is still in the business of making games and we're in the planning stages of a much smaller, not at all Civcraft related, game. I've got another idea I want to focus on and hopefully you will be hearing more about that in a year or two.

I guess, I don't really know what to say, except

Thank you for your time.

• ttk2

Thus, the end came. All the cities started crumbling, every enderpearl shattered simultaneously, the Nether started to fall apart and flood with lava. Some Portals started spreading a Nether Infection onto the land, causing the terrifying fiery dimension to form landmasses in our world. Earthquakes fractured the land, oceans became deserts, mountains fell all around, uncountable cataclysms destroyed the world as we knew it. Everywhere, people were screaming and crying, some in physical pain and agony, some for their enormous empires and treasures that the land was claiming back while they watched, impotent against the sheer violent power of nature.

But somehow... Somehow we all survived. No one knows how much time has passed, or what happened since the cataclysm.

And if there is something no disaster will ever take, it is the willpower of humanity. We fall and get right back up again. Resilient creatures, always eager to reshape the world and make it serve them. What is at first a disaster quickly turns into an opportunity, we will rebuild even better with the knowledge of the past and the lessons history brings us.

One by one

We wake up in an unfamiliar place...

I was walking home one evening and came upon a clearly depressed man standing at the edge of a bridge, looking like he was about to jump. I called out to him to wait, and ran over to see what was the matter.

"It's this country," he lamented. "It's falling into ruin and there's nothing I can do about it. The election was the last straw. I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

"Well cheer up," I said. "We're all in this together. Say, are you a conservative, or a libertarian?"

"A libertarian," he said.

"That's great!" I said. "See, you're not alone. Are you a free-market libertarian or a libertarian socialist?"

"Free-market libertarian," he said.

"Me too!" I said. "Paleo-libertarian or neo-libertarian?"

"Paleo-libertarian," he said.

"Hey, so am I!" I said. "Chicago or Austrian school of economics?"

"Austrian," he said.

"Me too," I said. "Hayek or Rothbardian strand?"

"Rothbardian," he said.

"Same here," I said. "Are you a consequentialist or deontological libertarian?"

"Consequentialist," he said.

So I said, "Die, statist scum!" and pushed him off the bridge.

http://www.reddit.com/user/bracomadar/

A lot of the new players may not know me, or may not remember Braco. I'm Cricket, I have been a member of the community for a almost three years now, long before "CivCraft" was "CivCraft".

Bracomadar was also one of the original members of the original server, back when it was just a small group of AnCap's messing around.

I have probably spent hundreds of hours playing with Braco, and talking to him in the Mumble, we bonded over both being photographers, and would share photos and talk shop about cameras often. We eventually got close enough that we added one another on Facebook and became friends outside of the game.

Braco has been playing less in the last year, but he was always in the Mumble to talk, and always had something funny to add.

Today his Sister announced on his Facebook that he has passed away.

I would very much like to put together something for his family, and will be asking his sister for a place to mail things, that I will be handing out to members here that were also friends with him.

I would love for everyone who was friends with Braco to please share any memories, or photos, or moments you have, and just to post good memories of him.

Thank you so much.

Stay a while and listen.

Recently, Supposed of the HCF made a post saying, among other things, that:

1. HCF is multiple groups. But he can't tell you what the groups are or who's in what group.

2. He's no longer pearling innocents. But he can't tell you who he thinks is innocent and still wants to PvP with people who may or may not want to PvP.

3. Plz stahp h8ing dem. No real reason, they're not changing much. They just have a different play style and we need to accept them for that.

Alright, let's hash this out.

HCF/WuTang/Neo-Hitlers:

I argued against the bans. I even argued for you guys to be able to play your style and accomplish your goals of "pearling the ancaps/world police". I thought the drama would be entertaining, and for a while it was. This doesn't mean I supported your actions, I just wasn't opposed to them, per se.

Let me give you an analogy of what you guys are doing. Imagine this was a card game. Everyone here is playing Texas Hold 'Em. You guys come in and start throwing the cards all over the place saying "we just want to play 52 pick up. Don't be mad dude, we just have a different play style."

If you guys want to play pick up, that's fine, but expect people to hate you. If you want people to like you, play Hold 'Em with us. Those are your two options and there is no middle ground.

So what does this look like in CivCraft?

1. Stop fighting/pearling everyone unless they attack or harm you.

2. Pay reparations to those you have harmed.

3. Quit bitching about people hating you and actually build your reputation by being helpful.

You are responsible for your own reputation here and that of your group. If you act like assholes, you will be treated like assholes.

If you guys want to keep "playing your style", that's fine. Just expect everyone to denounce you and expect me to resist you in any way I can. People here want to build cities, trade, mine and discuss politics. We accept that self defense is a part of this. People aren't here for another 2b2t.net or HCF server. That is the reality and why you are hated.

I'm not asking you to change or to continue what you're doing. That is up to you. I'm just giving you the reality of the situation.

Hell, you could still get your PvP kicks in while playing by our rules. Build arenas and hold tournaments for PvP. Designate specific areas under your control as PvP zones (with the rule that no pearling is allowed). I don't know, get creative (I know I'm asking a lot here).

And Supposed, you complained about my "magical unicorn" response to your thread. It was humor. Sarcasm. Is your sense of humor really so narrow that the only thing you find funny is ruining other people's game and laughing at their butthurt?

Hey guys, I heard there was going to be free ice cream outside of your houses. So you should probably jump on that opportunity while you still can. Not every day you get free ice cream.

Oh, and you should probably be safe and log your accounts out while you get the free ice cream. Never know what kind of trouble you can get into while afk! So just, you know, hit Esc and then click on that little Disconnect button, and go get your free ice cream. I promise nothing will happen to your server spot.

Plus. Free ice cream, eh?

Y_ankees is accused of using an aimbot PVP hack in order to hit players in a way that would not be possible using the vanilla client. The specific mechanic at issue is the ability to hit players without looking at them and without aiming manually. The evidence put forth by kingr8 and others against Y_ankees was quite convincing. In this video, Y_ankees can clearly be seen to be using some sort of aimbot to hit kingr8 (discussion below). The evidence provided in that thread alone is enough for a ban. Y_ankees, however, in a completely unrelated incident managed to blatantly x-ray snitches while ttk was standing next to him, invisible (which ttk will confirm below in the comments). This is also, by itself, evidence enough for a ban.

kingr8’s video is the primary piece of evidence considered. Y_ankees claims that what is seen on kingr8’s video is just lag, and that when he is seen attacking kingr8 without looking at him (something reported by several other commenters), he is merely looking where kingr8 was, and kingr8’s client is just catching up with that information. While that narrative is admittedly plausible, a careful examination of the video reveals that in multiple cases, Y_ankees neither looks at kingr8 nor looks at anywhere kingr8 has been, and manages to hit him quite a few times, thus discounting lag as a factor.. Y_ankees also hits him while changing direction, and hits him while turning to face other opponents. This behavior is also not seen in the other characters caught by kingr8’s video, as would be expected if this were a lag problem.

As corroborating evidence, Y_ankees was banned for hacking on HCSMP. While this alone proves nothing, taken with the other evidence it does seem to suggest that hacking is likely. Additionally, several witnesses noted the same behavior from Y_ankees’ avatar. Woundedgod even notes in one video that Y_ankees hits him even when Y_ankees is running in the other direction. The fact that this statement was made during the heat of battle suggests that it is reliable, as he presumably did not have time to manufacture such a story.

The x-ray violation (which, again, will be confirmed by ttk2 below) is cut-and-dry. Description of what exact behavior gave away the fact that Y_ankees was x-raying will not be disclosed, as it would possibly hamper future investigations. It is also worth noting that Y_ankees was accused of x-raying before by both Foofed and smmdz, and while the evidence was ruled to be inconclusive, there was a strong suggestion of foul play in that case.

The crimes are x-ray and aimbot hacking. The sentence is a ban.

Note on compensation policy: Anyone pearled by Y_ankees since Jan. 24th may form an orderly line and send their evidence to modmail. If you don’t have evidence but are 100% sure that he’s the one who pearled you, message modmail and we may be able to grep the logs to confirm.

The backup restore is taking a predictably long time for a connection with such a slow upload speed, while the no holds barred testing method allowed us to identify an otherwise inscrutable glitch it seems to have cost us some time.

As you can see from the timestamp on my first post about this issue I have now been working on fixing these bugs and getting the server back online for a solid 12 hours straight with no break longer than 10 minutes to eat a meal.

No one else knows their way around the setup well enough to put all the pieces back into place except me, some other admin can try if they are willing and able, but to be frank when it comes to operations Civcraft is a one man job and I have to check out for today, I don't feel comfortable leaving the server without anyone to monitor it overnight only minutes after coming back up from this sort of situation and this much finagling with the configuration to track down the bugs.

I will see you and you will see Civcraft, in the morning.

seriously stop spamming the sub with this question. The mod is called dynacap, it allows us to change the player cap dynamically. The server is full when it says server full, and there is no reason why ttk wouldn't just raise the server cap if he could, but he can't. get over it

Hello. Some of you may remember me from the ancapminecraft server, where I lived with StraightFoolish in his town. Somewhat recently I have started playing on the new server, pretty much tending to my own things. Recently I have become involved in some drama involving Laurelai and a few others, so I'm going to lay out my side of the story here and what I'd like to happen.

It started a few days ago when I was moving through the overworld trying to get to my base. I had on my inventory 2 stacks of white wool, 60 or so black wool blocks, 1 stack of yellow wool, 2 stacks of red wool, 31 diamonds, iron armor, and a few miscellaneous supplies which I don't remember nor care about that much.

Anyway, I came across what seemed to be a town, so I entered in search of its nether portal. Laurelai approached me telling me that this was her "empire" and that I was trespassing, so I asked her if I could use her portal. Instead, she started chasing me down into her mine/storage facilities with her sword drawn, so I fled (luckily the server restarting spared me). I admit that in my flight I definitely did remove some blocks, but nothing more than stone from the cave walls to aid in my escape. Eventually, however, she caught up to me and killed me (but did not pearl me). Yes, I was trespassing, and yes, her property is sacred, but I think the aversion to dialogue and the propensity to disproportionate violence is troubling (estoppel, anyone?). Wandering into her land and asking if I can use her portal does not warrant murder and the theft of 31 diamonds, in my view.

After being unable to reach her for a day or so, she finally told me that my stuff was in a chest near where I died. I showed up at her town and asked her if I could use her nether portal after I got my stuff, and then I saw her character toggle to a pearl, switch to a diamond sword, and run at me. She attacked first, so I killed her with a pearl in my hotbar. My plan was to bring her pearl to a secure vault in the nether and then discuss with her where my items were. AFlatCap, a friend of Laurelai, offered to mediate and agreed to ascertain the location of my items from Laurelai while I held her pearl. Laurelai claims she has snitch logs of me griefing and stealing, but has not provided any evidence.

However, it was then that Matticus_Rex's alt, PrincessBelle09 (or maybe PrincessBelle07, I don't recall) started chasing after Laurelai's pearl. He tracked it to the location of the vault but he fell into lava and died trying to enderpearl his way out. tbeau1 then showed up, and in a panic, I struck him with a sword. Neither of us did any serious damage and we came to the understanding that tbeau1 was only there to retrieve Matticus' items. Fine. I talked with Matticus in-game more about the situation and he seemed receptive to what was going on and towards a possible diplomatic solution.

Then Foofed, Tutterise, and Exultant started tracking me and presumably radared my location and pearled me even after I explained to Foofed that I was dealing with things both with Laurelai directly (via AFlatCap, who was now searching for the alleged chest after getting coords from Laurelai) and Matticus (who had taken it upon himself to exact some kind of justice from me). Foofed claimed that he only chose to intervene when he learned that I had attacked tbeau1, which doesn't really make sense to me given that I already apologized to tbeau1 (and I think, given the circumstances, it was not unreasonable for me to attack him). Presumably Foofed and friends don't like it when other people encroach upon their monopoly on the use of force/pearling, because no one hired them to pursue me nor did they fully understand the context of my pearling of Laurelai.

Once I was pearled, Foofed, Matticus, Tutterise, etc. all left the area and Laurelai's friends broke her pearl out of my vault, leaving me trapped in the End alone. AFlatCap subsequently told me that he and Laurelai could not locate the alleged chest with my items and that it was gone for good. Laurelai continued to make threats that the "Fempire" would have me imprisoned indefinitely.

So, that leaves me to where I am now, trapped in the End by Foofed while Laurelai roams free. I am out several stacks of wool, a set of iron armor, 31 diamonds (these things all taken by Laurelai), a set of Prot I diamond armor (minus the boots, which were not enchanted), a diamond sword with Knockback II Sharpness IV Looting II, one potion of splash damage, one golden apple, one iron pickaxe, 30 or so iron ingots, around 50 cooked steak, and possibly other small items which I do not recall (these things taken by Foofed/Tutterise/Exultant when they pearled me).

tl;dr I came across Laurelai's town, she killed me and took my items. She later said she had them in a chest for me, but when I showed up she attempted to pearl me, so I pearled her after she attacked me. I was working towards a diplomatic solution via AFlatCap when Matticus_Rex, under the alias PrincessBelle07, started pursuing me in the nether. We had a brief discussion and AFlatCap seemed to be making progress when I was pearled and my items taken from me by Foofed, Tutterise, and Exultant, who seem to have been acting under the auspices of some "server justice." AFlatCap has told me that Laurelai said "my items are gone". Laurelai got her friends to break her out of the End and she's now free while I'm stuck in the end.

Basically, I want my wool, diamonds, iron armor, iron, diamond armor, diamond weapons, potions, and whatever else either Laurelai or Foofed/Tutterise/Exultant have taken from me and I want to be released from the End. I would also like another 32 diamonds provided by any combination of Laurelai/Foofed/Tutterise/Exultant for the trouble, drama, and nonsense this has caused and for time lost while in the End. Failing that, I will seek arbitration through a neutral third party.

Ten months is a long time, I have been running Civcraft for longer than that. And for every single moment of it that burden has rested solely on my shoulders. Every single moment its in the back of my mind, what needs to be done, what needs to be said, and the worry that I may have those things wrong. For the past ten months I have been staring at the server terminal during nearly every waking hour, checking modmail and the subreddit every couple of minutes. Losing sleep, time with family, and time to myself in the name of trying to puzzle out the best course of action. There has not been a single moment in which I have been able to truly relax, to know any issues where handled. I have put more blood sweat and tears into the creation of this server than most of you will ever know, and my perfectionism seems to have achieved something.

But I have my limits, and I realized that I reached them yesterday. When I saw that I had stopped really caring if the players where cheating or not, I had stopped really caring about anything so long as I could just avoid more drama, avoid responding to even just one more comment.

I poured everything I have into every single decision I made for Civcraft and the result was always the same. Criticism and outright hatred for my person for failing to make the 'right' decision. I thought if I could just have made a better choice, found a better middle ground. I lost count how many nights I could not sleep trying to find a better way out, a door number three in a controversial decision, or if there was even a right door at all.

What do I do about the breaking of the vault? Its funny, the one thing CItadel was designed to do no one has ever really done, its too hard, too much difficulty that every single edge case is found and exploited before anyone even tries to use the game mechanic I designed so long ago. Minecraft is kludges all the way down, I am Mojang's Sisyphus, the minute one problem is solved another shows up and the load never lightens. Always a new way to break Citadel, always another way to defeat the game mechanic and thus the point of Civcraft.

This is the part where you expect me to reach my conclusion, finish another long post and do something because I am the guy that does everything here without break and without fail. You expect me to make a choice, make it happen, and then defend it here, of course you don't see the day I spend distracted and jumpy as I try and make counter arguments I am not sure of, or the habitual checking of my phone so that even while out I can not escape the consequences of whatever thing I decided is right.

Well let me tell you somthing I DONT FUCKING KNOW, you heard me. I have no clue what the right course of action here is. I realized 8 months ago that I no longer knew which course was right or wrong, I realized yesterday that I had reached the limits of my ability to care about what was right or wrong for the server. I would no longer even argue with my fellow admins about what the right course of action was.

I decided to take a vacation, leaving the server in the hands of the other admins, try to spend Christmas with friends and family, I knew I would probably come back to something more closely resembling a heap of slag than a server but I had hoped it would take more than one night.

I present you with an ultimatum, I can come back, do what you expect of me, I can make your impossible decisions and manage this server. But for that to happen there need to be a lot of changes around here. Do you know why I keep Exultant around? Because he is the only one who can get anything server related done without me, he lets me go to sleep when something comes up the night before my chemistry final and I am about to snap. I need more help, more competent help in running this server, I need to be able to go to sleep knowing a situation will be handled, that someone is watching the server terminal for the next crash, that I can if for only few hours not be responsible for anything and everything. I want a night where I can not jump awake at every sound from my phone worried that something has gone wrong with the server. Those are the conditions of my continued employment here.

No one, in their right mind wants to be a Civcraft admin, no one who really understands what the job is wants to do it because they don't hate themselves that much. Although apparently I do, because I came back.

So here is your question, can you help me out here? Can you help me make this a job I can do without destroying myself? You know I used to ask everyone to stop calling me god, it bothered me because I did not want that responsibility, it only took a few days of Civcraft for me to understand that I would need to become one if I wanted to make this work. But I can not carry your burden alone any longer, it seems one can only play god for so long before he comes crashing back to earth.

I leave the decision about Civcraft's fate up to you, because for today I am going to read my book, play some TF2, hang out with friends, and live my life.

I wanted to create a community about forming societies, about solving problems between people, well I guess this is your test, I can't solve this problem but I can't go on with it being fixed. Its in your hands now, if you fail I guess there is always Rubicon.