When I went on the 3.0 map
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 6:06 pm
I didn't expect to get so emotional going on the 3.0 map, but I guess it's to be expected. I spent so much time on MineRealm playing with friends and it's sad what's happened to it. Even with people on, it just isn't the same. Maybe it's me. But oh, those were the days. Sadly, they're gone, and we can never have them back. But I've got memories. Memories in my brain, and now on my hard drive. When I went onto the world and I was on top of the roof and saw the "drop down" sign...maybe it's because you can never go back there except the first time you join the server (and I know a lot of you never saw that because you joined later/earlier). Well, it was possible to get up there through some weird method (block glitching? I don't remember) but I only did that once or twice. And anyway, spawn hasn't been like that in ages. So the impact of that sign, seeing the waterfall, and the place where I did my first trade, and the Annoying Contraption in the memory of Foxtopia, and Shamp's diner...along with, coincidentally, an old and beautiful track of Minecraft's music that, I think, existed when I first played on the server. It was just...wow. A bit too much, actually. Especially because I knew I was all alone.
Am I getting too distraught over a map on a game? Maybe. But it's the map where I had fun with friends for years, something that's now stopped. It almost feels like growing up, though it's entirely coincidental that MineRealm dying down happened to coincide with me starting to take full-time classes, and now go to college. But I guess it's not entirely like the good times of childhood. And I'm still really a kid in a lot of ways—I'm only 18!—so I can't understand it in the way that some of you can, I'm sure, but it really feels like those good times when you're young (you know, less than 10) and you can just play with your friends and play in your imaginary world and just be happy. And for me, MineRealm was often an escape from the world, like after my family moved or when people were arguing or when I was depressed. I know it has been for a lot of the rest of you, too—a place you can go that truly is your imagination, where you can do wonderful things with it, like build, and make friends, and really make a little life for yourself to complement your real one, maybe to take its place for a few hours every now and again.
I remember thinking at one point "would I really say MineRealm is part of what made me who I am as a person, for good or ill?" Well of course, because everything is. But MineRealm is especially so, not just because of the game, but because of the community. Minecraft is a blank slate, a tabula rasa as the Latin goes, and MineRealm is what we wrote on it. So when I go back and I see a draft of what we wrote, arguing and laughing and talking and playing and thinking and cataloging and sometimes just reveling in what we'd done and what we were doing, I just wish we could keep going, and write some more. But people grow up, and that's really what it feels like happened to MineRealm. There's no real reason that we left but that we finished. MineRealm became all it could be, and with that done, what reason was there to play? Only for friends and for satisfaction in what we had made together. But there's only so long you can reread an essay and extend and correct it, and as friends leave what's the point in staying? Sure, there's the Wiki, to make sure we can really remember everything that we've done, and there are a few new things to add, like my wonderful flying machine, but as much as I would love to keep on going, it can't happen. I go on MineRealm and I get bored. Nothing more to build, to mine, to say. I would be just ecstatic to be proven wrong, to be able to go on MineRealm again and continue where we left off, to make a 2nd edition of that book (as it were), and it could happen, but I don't think it will. So with all of MineRealm that I've known coming to its final end, some friends rarely here and many gone entirely, with MineRealm v5 being prepared to take all the history and love and friendship and that amazing society we built in MineRealm before our real lives called us away, ready to begin when the gears finally grind to a stop, I just have one more thing to say:
I can't wait for the sequel.
Am I getting too distraught over a map on a game? Maybe. But it's the map where I had fun with friends for years, something that's now stopped. It almost feels like growing up, though it's entirely coincidental that MineRealm dying down happened to coincide with me starting to take full-time classes, and now go to college. But I guess it's not entirely like the good times of childhood. And I'm still really a kid in a lot of ways—I'm only 18!—so I can't understand it in the way that some of you can, I'm sure, but it really feels like those good times when you're young (you know, less than 10) and you can just play with your friends and play in your imaginary world and just be happy. And for me, MineRealm was often an escape from the world, like after my family moved or when people were arguing or when I was depressed. I know it has been for a lot of the rest of you, too—a place you can go that truly is your imagination, where you can do wonderful things with it, like build, and make friends, and really make a little life for yourself to complement your real one, maybe to take its place for a few hours every now and again.
I remember thinking at one point "would I really say MineRealm is part of what made me who I am as a person, for good or ill?" Well of course, because everything is. But MineRealm is especially so, not just because of the game, but because of the community. Minecraft is a blank slate, a tabula rasa as the Latin goes, and MineRealm is what we wrote on it. So when I go back and I see a draft of what we wrote, arguing and laughing and talking and playing and thinking and cataloging and sometimes just reveling in what we'd done and what we were doing, I just wish we could keep going, and write some more. But people grow up, and that's really what it feels like happened to MineRealm. There's no real reason that we left but that we finished. MineRealm became all it could be, and with that done, what reason was there to play? Only for friends and for satisfaction in what we had made together. But there's only so long you can reread an essay and extend and correct it, and as friends leave what's the point in staying? Sure, there's the Wiki, to make sure we can really remember everything that we've done, and there are a few new things to add, like my wonderful flying machine, but as much as I would love to keep on going, it can't happen. I go on MineRealm and I get bored. Nothing more to build, to mine, to say. I would be just ecstatic to be proven wrong, to be able to go on MineRealm again and continue where we left off, to make a 2nd edition of that book (as it were), and it could happen, but I don't think it will. So with all of MineRealm that I've known coming to its final end, some friends rarely here and many gone entirely, with MineRealm v5 being prepared to take all the history and love and friendship and that amazing society we built in MineRealm before our real lives called us away, ready to begin when the gears finally grind to a stop, I just have one more thing to say:
I can't wait for the sequel.