Some of you are active Minecraft players on our server, some are not. No matter in which group you are, I think you should read through this post and look at the pretty screenshots, as some things happened... and some went horribly wrong! As usual with those things, click on any images to view a bigger version.
The server's two busiest cities are obviously Central, as the players' starting point, and Port Townshend. What I did is use MCEdit to make a simple map modification: keep Central in position, flip Townshend and suspend it RIGHT ABOVE, and encase the whole area in an ominous bedrock wall to make sure that no one could escape. The players started with no inventory, leaving them confused as to why they were appearing in Central instead of their previous location.
To ensure that the area below wouldn't be drowned, I replaced all of the above water with ice and all lava with obsidian. The ice was set to be impossible to melt, thus avoiding some nasty issues. However, I forgot about gravity's effect on sand... I felt pretty silly when a single block update triggered the fall of most of Townshend's desert, making Central's southern district look like it went through a massive sandstorm!
Every 30 minutes, the following cryptic message would be displayed in the server:
PANIC! THE SKY IS ABOUT TO FALL ON OUR HEADS!!
END OF THE WORLD IN 1290!
The idea was to bring people to look up. Townshend was actually farther up than I had imagined, and could be missed by people with low display settings. The number, which changed at each notification, was the number of minutes left until the moment that the server would return to normal. I wanted to leave a clue to some people that this wasn't the new, permanent state of the server...
Past midnight, after an initial period of confusion, it took two hours until mormonmoo helped by referred realized that this was an April's Fools Day prank. 13 minutes later, lachlan figured out that the strange buildings on top of the world were actually a reversed Townshend.
I eventually went to sleep, and woke up to find that few people tried to login. That gave me a chance to observe what happened as more people discovered the state of the server.
Early in the afternoon, Wind decided to act as a God and create a sun for this dark world. Unfortunately, things don't always go the way we want them too... Lava as a light source was a good idea, but maybe encasing it in a glass sphere would have worked better!
Player came and went, many expressing their concerns "the server has been hacked!!!" while others decided to go "trololol" on others, encouraged by the fact that PvP (Player vs Player) had been temporarily enabled server-wide. Some instead decided to spread false rumors ( "Doc drowned in a house fire!" ). Others did everything at once!
By the end of the day, the server map was mostly ruined. Someone decided they didn't like my home, so it ended up stuck in the sky and it's previous location partly replaced by a lava tower. Parts of Townshend were exploded, thrown below or lit on fire. Central was ransacked, the bridge to go out of town (the oldest server construction still standing) removed from existence. Fireworks were launched because 'MUHRICA.
I came online at midnight, when the countdown struck 0 (or -0, as it turned out), spawned a whole bunch of dragons to end the world, while Anon and Wind were spawning more lava and TNT. A quick server restart later, everything was back to normal, as if the last 24 hours never happened...
My apologies to those who were frustrated, shocked or saddened by what you believe had happened. I hope you'll be able to look back on this situation and laugh with the others!
Edited by Dr. Cossack on April 3, 2013 at 13:27:29
The admin formerly known as Dr. Cossack.
I post musings, images and nonsense on Tumblr! I play games on Steam! Add me on either/both, and don't hesitate to ask if you want to play something with me!
"There are only three things certain in life: Death, taxes, and Teej's obsessions." ~ RisingDragon (still true in 2019!)