[dlgn]

Jokes aside, here it is.

So when I first started playing Minecraft, I was playing on SSP using a friend's account. I got Minecraft for my birthday, and the first thing I did was join MineRealm, which I'd seen some of my friends playing previously. That was at the beginning of August 2011. Yes, I made a forum account before I joined. Don't ask me why, I don't remember.

Anyway, I joined and looked around, it seemed pretty nice. This was waterfall spawn, mind you, in the beginning of 3.0, so MineRealm was super-busy and spawn was full of people running around like ants, with advertisements galore and guild recruiting at its peak. I went to trade and ended up getting the better part of a drop party from a player who was leaving. I wandered around Spawn City a bit, taking in the sights (and killing a few pigs, and running from creepers) before I found a public realm near the edge of spawn city by the ocean. I built myself a place to hide from monsters, then, when day came ,a little dirt house there (I was terrified of darkness—back in SSP, I was too afraid of zombies to punch through the wall in the back of my house in case it lead to a cave) and put some of my stuff down in a chest (keeping the most valuable stuff in my inventory) and logged off. When I came back, I found to my dismay that someone had bought the realm, taken my stuff, replaced one of the walls with furnaces, and sealed me in. I TPed to spawn and went back, but I didn't find anything. This time, I was determined to prevent anyone from taking my stuff, so I went a realm or two over and built a house under the ocean and started mining. It was a rather nice mining shaft, all things considering, and it worked out quite well for me for quite a while. I did some strip mining and some underground quarry mining and cave mining, getting used to how it worked, until part of the mine was bought. This was around the time that panthers17nfl left—it was all anyone talked about, and I still remember it today even though I had no idea who the guy was. I tried to contact the realm owner (don't remember the name other than it was very violent—not exactly uncommon), but I never managed to. I kept mining in the part that I had access to to try to get the credits I needed to buy the realm myself. At some point, a castle got built above the entrance, so the only way I could get in was /home.

One day while I was mining, one of the Darths (Lynch or Regnier, I don't recall which) invited new players who needed housing to come live at Korriban. I decided to check it out and ended up buying a small but nice plot in the residential district that had access to a basement and the old mine. I kept going back to my old mine, though, until eventually I gave up and set my /home at Korriban. I mined there quite a bit, and helped out a bit with community stuff, built my first real house with a bunch of farms and stuff atop and beneath it and got my first diamonds (some of which were stolen; I suspected my neighbor bobanator, who I knew as a rather selfish fellow because he took out my back wall because it blocked his view, but he denied it). Then the Nether Wars erupted, and I took part in those. I joined a guild with Darth_Lynch and Darth_Regnier and helped them out with the fight against Korriban's worst enemy Cannibin0l, as well as trying to avoid him most of the time so I could access my netherwart farm.

At some point, I decided to start my own mine since the one beneath Korriban was getting more than a bit sparse. I traveled a few hundred blocks away from Korriban until I found the perfect place and started making a quarry mine with a cave-house in the side of it, which is where I still live today. I started spending more time there and less at Korriban, so I was unaware that Cannibin0l was becoming a greater and greater problem. Eventually, the Darths both left the server out of anger that he was out of control, leaving their realms to disband. I didn't find this out until a few days after the disbanding, when my old house got griefed and looted. I asked agentred to roll it back but he couldn't, so I took the rest of my stuff to my quarry mine and made that my new home.

I had found a bunch of iron and other materials a few months previously in an open chest in a public realm in between my house and Korriban. After a few months had gone by, I was told by a number of MOI that it was acceptable for me to take the stuff. (Don't worry, guys. I've talked to VV about this since and I'm not due for a ban any time soon.) I shared some of it with my brother artraf, who had come to live with me above my house at this point, but took all of the iron for myself. I started an iron selling business (and a rather fun rivalry with JackDeCkEr) that I continued once the iron had run out by mining a great deal. I also started enchanting stuff at the .com Quadruple Spider grinder. I think it was owned by Metro back then, and later Imperial. Anyway, I also became friends with OneManWo1fPac during that time, and he invited me to Vortex as a joke (and, according to cubeguy, because of my skills in mathematics and business). I accepted the invitation, and that's how I came to be in Vortex. I met a great many of my friends there, and started doing most of my grinding at the Triple Skelly Grinder.

A bunch of stuff has happened since then. Noob apocalpyses, great purges, obsessions with PVP and Meepers20, a few bans, the Deel©orp Enchanting Business, randomness threads (and multiple lockings), my acquisition of Korriban, fanfictions written about me and maddiepix that border on disturbing, and so on. But I still live at that quarry, and I'm still in Vortex, so that's a pretty good summary of how I got to be where I am today. Also, I can't remember the rest of it.

~dlgn

[Valendr0s]

It's long. But oh well.

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I've been here a few years - Intelli told me my start date once, and I wrote it down but it's not accessible right now... I don't remember where I saw the server. But I saw it was relatively protected from griefing, so I liked that. I had originally wanted to play with a few buddies or something on a server that would be somewhat permanent, but they never joined >_<

I started off in this little island.

http://game.minerealm.com:12500/?worldn ... 9999999998

That's where it is now. It was really nice. It had these hills all around it and a bit of an ocean to one side. Just a nice fjord or something. I dug down and prayed nobody would find my stuff before I got enough credits to buy it. But after a day or two I had some cash and bought it. I made a little island under water base. I liked it a lot. I dug down and made a little wheat farm and branching mine.

After a few weeks I went searching for a new base and found one in a snow biome. I made a little snow lodge. And eventually moved my whole chest contents to there.

After a few weeks I found another game and forgot about it.

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I come back after a couple months to find my stuff public again, but untouched. I was pretty lucky. I re-bought my realms and set back to doing nifty stuff. It was right around the time when Jungle trees and enchanting were coming out, so I braved the wilds to get myself a couple saplings.

I also found a couple close spawners and made a couple spawner xp farms.

The map generation had changed, so they updated all non-claimed realms. So now my little island was sort of surrounded by an ocean. And my snow lodge was smack dab in the middle of a swamp.

Did a few more things, got my wife interested a bit, but it fizzled after a while and I quit again.

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Came back after a few months - right before the realm/plot change a few months ago... all my realms were sold again. And this time were pretty heavily griefed. I went searching for my snow lodge and found it to have been reset.

Whatever, I wasn't too upset about it. I waited for the map update and took some supplies and ample supply of credits and set off in search of somewhere new.

I settled on this nifty little sand village in the middle of the ocean. This was great because I'd never had villagers before. I built up their village and made a little area underneath for growing and farming. I started digging more and more.

In the last few months I've since destroyed the village (kept the villagers), and moved into some new digs.

http://game.minerealm.com:12500/?worldn ... 9999999995

http://game.minerealm.com:12500/?worldn ... 8265181728

I'm very happy with it. I'm always thinking of ways to expand. It took a lot of work and I learned a lot about Minecraft. I now have several XP farms including a skeleton/zombie farm, a 864 block wheat farm. Each of those 10x10 offshoots contain chickens, pigs, cows, sheep of each color, reeds, pumpkins, watermellon, cocoa, cactus, and netherwart.

I did a lot of work on my mine, which I like a lot. I just recently found a little natural mineshaft area with a double cave spider spawner. I haven't quite figured out how to make an efficient farm out of that yet. I have a slime 'farm' but it doesn't work very well. I have great gear and a decent amount of materials. Nowhere close to the amount of cobble I had before I was griefed, but oh well.

I have probably 34ish realms right now... All connecting to that underwater area you see. I have a nice storage area, a perfect wheat villager, a perfect paper villager, a silk touch 1 book villager, and am working on getting a perfect glowstone villager when I have extra emeralds.

I was trying to get one of each horse type but I'm stuck at like 1/3rd, and my next expansion will probably be an underwater stables north of my torus. I also would like a donkey but I need to go exploring. I'd like to turn the inside of the torus into an arboretum or something once I move my horses. I'd also probably benefit from having some sort of way of getting them back out from the ocean. Right now there's no good way to USE my horses >_<

I'd also like to make an underground gold/xp farm using nether portals. (It'll be far enough away from my base that it won't be active 24/7)... hmm...

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I have a general philosophy to not touch the natural surface of the world. It's a strange habit, but it works. There are very few changes to that island I've done (I had to get my horses in somehow, but I think it's pretty much back the way it was). Really the only permanent change is the skylight that goes down into my mineshaft.

So I tend to stay underground and leave the surface changing to farming sand (usually in areas nobody cares about) and people who are better at it than I am.

I could probably post a picture or two once I get off work.

Yeah. That's about it. I love my base, and I really like the server setup (not too controlling, not too free. Though I think a way to have shops would be nice) and the people are all great! See you out there.

[Grelman]

Not sure if I've posted about my history before but it feels like I have. Here are the details anyway.

I got Minecraft in Feb 2011 after playing it for some months and after I felt I had done most of all what I had set out to do for my first learning experience of Minecraft world. I felt I had only scratched the surface of the minecraft experience. I knew I needed to start up with a strong community based server. I'm fairly sure I was on planetminecraft one day looking for texture packs and there was a section advertising servers so I literally started with the first one and went down the list. Each one was just about as disappointing as the last. I always spawned in different dimensions, hub rooms. Separated in a world from everyone else just because I was new. I hated it, I wanted to join a server that was straight up just a MC map with a few rules to keep people in line and hopefully land protection that was achievable for someone who wasnt a donor or admin.

Then I came to MR around late November 2011 and had a good sense right off the bat, people were running around at the little hut at spawn the rules were behind me on the wall and everyone was talking like they were actual human beings and not just 10 year olds on the internet for the first time. It literally felt like I had just stumbled into a townsquare in some city and the locals went on about their business as I stared glossy eyed at the magnificent structures I was assured had been built entirely by hand. Spending about a day wandering around the city streets exploring, I dont even remember how I scrounged up food to keep myself going. I eventually went out west of spawn to find my destiny, as soon as I came to some public land I dug a hole in the sand near a river and started humbly in the traditional minecraft way. (My first home is a hovel that eventually got bought by roo, who didnt wipe his realms so I suppose it is still there.)

However when turves started to move in closer to me I knew I needed to move to a more secluded place where I could sprawl out comfortably. I packed up what little valuables I actually had at the time and went as far west as I could go and decided to settle down in a quiet snowy forest near the west border. In a horrible snow storm I set up a wood/cobble hut for the night. I slowly expanded my noob house, it looked very linear and square for nearly a year.

I was pretty much a hermit. I never talked and if I did it was probably to ask a question but for the most part I tried to learn through observation so as to avoid ridicule. Thats why it wasnt until about 2 months in that I found out that I could protect my land by buying a realm very easily. I found out in the strangest way as well. One day I was working in the mines under my house and came up to the ground level to see two people looking through my chests. I thought oh great they're taking everything, but they luckily enough taught me right then and there how to buy the realm. It was hippoface and some friend if I recall correctly. and they told me about credits and it turned out I had tens of thousands so I bought up my land shortly after that and basically never looked back.

All the months following I explored the areas around me and underneath me and trying to expand my wealth. I was a fairly casual player in my first year but in my second year you could say I became increasingly obsessed with accumulating "stuff" and so I did. I bought my beacons, leveled up tools at my meager double zombie grinder and continued learning and making massive farms, taking advantage of villagers. Most of my operations went on underground and so the big house I built above ground was for the most part empty. I carried on pretty much doing nothing besides amassing materials for the longest time. Then when the wipe was announced I got excited about change in my area. As I felt the urge to build great things with all the materials I had spent so much time collecting I knew I wanted to wipe as much of my land as possible and eagerly awaited being placed in a biome where it wasnt going to snow over everything I built. I spent days moving hundreds of chests of crap into a larger storage area underneath my supersize sugar farm I had built months before.

Once the wipe came I found I was placed in a large expanse of desert. It wouldnt have been my first choice but I had savanna covering me on pretty much all sides so it wasnt too barren. I had a pyramid generate on the edge of my land that had nothing in it, darn wipe ghosts. But with the wipe I had also bought tons of new desirable land, knowing that with all of the new land that had been generated I didnt just want to stay in this barren desert area. So I bought up quite a few plots in a nice extreme foothills range and decided that that was to be for me a second home. Even if it was on the other side of the map. (its interesting how with 1.7 terrain the biomes are spread out drastically. So with our current map its basically desert/savanna/mesa in the west, and most snow biomes are on the east side of the map with 3 of the 4 ice spike biomes generated along with mega taiga.)I knew I could never fully move all my belongings from my west border home to there seeing as how I had just built a massive gold farm there, and had nearly 1000 chests worth of other miscellaneous items. So decided to make the west border home an industrial district of sorts. I built a huge factory type building next to my gold farm to house all my operations and sort out my valuables that had been jumbled together during the wipe. And for my second home I would build a nice big house for me to live in while enjoying other more humble activities of minecraft. Horseback riding, fishing, small scale gardening. Sort of like a vacation house. Progress on it has been slow for me because theres only so long I can work on it before becoming bored out of my mind. But I vow to finish it someday.

As for the future, who knows. I, like many others on MR, have a reached a point where I'm bored with doing MC on my own and I do wish there was a nice active guild to get behind or just some group of people to help do a collective project. Its a bit of a shame that our community doesnt really work together in game too much anymore. Most have become very exclusive, maybe its because theres a lack of trust maybe regulars just dont play as often to have such activities occur. We still are a great community on the forums but day to day in the actual game most regulars want to stay in their own area. The only people you usually see at spawn are flying, advertising nubs. Still a great experience MR is, but just feels lacking recently. and while I may complain about community, and having barely anything to do these days I'll always keep coming back to MR as long as likable regulars and the minecraft charm remain.

Edit: scaled down wall o' texts. Hopefully looks a little less formidable now.