Llir

Hi everyone!

I am happy to announce the results of the LotC's Biggest Clown Contest that we hosted within Staff Discord the past two weeks. Every member of the community was able to be nominated, and then the staff voted on who is the Biggest Clown of LotC.

The result has been posted at http://lotc.co/clown

Make sure to check it out! Congrats to the winner!

- Llir and the Admins

It is one of our highest priorities as Administration to prevent grooming on our server. As part of our work on our new Safety Policy and Procedures, we identified a gap in our Roleplay rules which permits for a type of Roleplay which is, at the very least creepy, and at worst dangerous. From this moment forward, we will not be allowing what we consider 'grooming RP' to exist on the server. The effect of this change is the following addition to Roleplay Rules:

Addition: 

Roleplay Rules #7:

Brothels, prostitution, rape, beastiality, pedophilia, grooming, and necrophilia are prohibited and may not even be mentioned in roleplay or backstories.

• 'Grooming' is defined as: Romance-based roleplay, relationships, engagements, marriages, etc. involving characters under 18 years of age, unless all characters involved are within two years of age.

Rationale:

We believe this is necessary in order to help make our server a safer place, and a step in the right direction. We realize this addition may limit certain types of storytelling, though let me be transparent: an outright prohibition was considered on relationships involving underage characters, however we determined this would be too limiting, so an exception was written for characters close in age. We hope that this is acceptable.

To Affected Players:

If one of your characters is currently in a relationship outlined above you have three options:

1. Void the relationship in its entirely (this can be done automatically without staff approval).
2. Age-up the younger character to within two years of the older character.
3. Encounter lengthy bans for all parties involved.

If this is part of your character's history or backstory:

• Amend the character history or backstory to conform with the changes.

And as a gentle reminder, the following rule still remains in effect, and is unaffected by this addition (Roleplay Rules #6):

• Sexually explicit or graphic roleplay is forbidden. You must ‘fade-to-black’. Characters under the age of 18 may not fade-to-black

If you have any questions or concerns about this rule change, please do not hesitate to message me personally on Discord, Llir#5410.

Thanks for your understanding,

Llir, on behalf of LotC Administration

Hey all,

Just wanted to give a quick technical retrospective on the fight today, and clarify the mechanics.

What happened?

• The server performed less than ideally, though sustained no hard-crashes which is promising.
• TPS hit a floor of around 4.00 when both sides hit each the center, this means the game was running around 1/5 speed.
  • There were roughly 320 players in a very small area at this time.
    • This is far beyond what Minecraft is designed to handle.
  • This causes slower hit registry, slower registry of eating/healing, and chunk loading delays
  • Players being condensed together in one spot causes lag which is very difficult to mitigate, this is why the Siege performed better - people were spread out.
  • When the server is overloaded to this degree, it can "soft-crash", dropping a large amount of players at random.
    • The war plugin has a feature to prevent PVP logging - when you log or crash a 2.5 minute timer is started. If you do not relog by the end of it you are marked as dead. This explains why some people could not rejoin, though this would have fairly affected both sides.
  • Sever performance recovered at around 200 players online, and the combat was smooth after that.
    • This is much better than past skirmishes, that were almost unplayable until less than 100 players were online.
• No networking issues were detected - the proxy and packet sending performed excellently, despite TPS lag, there were not latency issues.
• At the very start of the battle (~5 minutes) there was an issues where horses were invincible due to a setting, though due to the lag this had very little effect, and will be resolved from the start in the future.
• The capture point plugin was not enabled, some people saw scoreboards at the spawnpoint, this was due to the fact scoreboards are saved alongside the world data, though this had no impact on performance.

Why not restart capped?

• Nation leaders were asked during the lag, and wanted to keep the fight going.

What will be done moving forward?

• Although we will keep looking into tweaks, we have done nearly every optimization available to us for the war server - this is the best performance we can get with these conditions.
• We will look into future wars being capped with either multiple rounds or reinforcements - this will be discussed further with staff and the community.
• The relog timer will remain the same - it was only an issue due to lag.

When I became an Admin two years ago, we had just established our Safety Policy. Since then, I’ve tried my best to uphold this system, and I care about it greatly. I truly think we have made our server a safer place, though sometimes reports are not easy to handle. Each situation is different and although we’ve had a Safety Policy, and we take all reports seriously, there has been no formal Safety Procedure. We’re no experts or professionals, we try to look into these situations the best we can and get down to the facts before we make a decision. Giving someone the labels that come with a Safety ban on our server is no light call to make, before that happens we want to make sure that we do our due diligence and a proper investigation is conducted. While I’m proud of the work that we’ve done to make this community safer, we can do better. I’m not particularly proud of the few cases missed or overlooked that have led to posts like this.

We've had approximately 90 Safety Reports since we started this system, with over 90% of them leading to bans that have made our community a safer place. I want to make something abundantly clear, at no point has the fact that something happened ‘so long ago’, or ‘under another administration’, been used as a justification to not take action on a report. We look at the evidence surrounding the report, and I want to highlight what we consider valid evidence in these cases. Yes, screenshots and logs are always the best form of evidence, though there are numerous bans where all we have to go off is victim testimony, and for me that is just as valid as any ‘hard evidence’. It takes a lot of courage to come forward and give that kind of personal account of a disturbing situation that happened to you, I believe people when they come forward.

I think with this situation, the main issue is that nobody at the time spoke directly with the victim. When all we have to act on is a conversation between two adults, and speculation on what else could have happened five years earlier, it’s difficult to make a decision. However, when we talk to the people involved, the people our policy is here to protect, the decision is often clear. At the time of this report the evidence at hand was reviewed and determined to not be enough on it’s own. I wish I spoke with the victim then, as I did last night. As a result of that conversation, the accused player is now banned. Why didn’t we a year ago? I don’t know, to be honest. I wasn’t involved much with the investigation that occurred, and the next time it was brought up it was shrugged off as ‘already handled’, but that doesn’t excuse the inaction. That should not have happened, and as one of the more senior members of this Admin team, I should have realized that at the time and pushed for a more thorough investigation. I want to apologize to the community for the inaction on this situation. We can’t allow something like this to happen again.

This community has come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go. As I mentioned we’ve had no Safety Procedure, and that is something we’re changing. Although each report is unique, there are a few basic things we should assure are done with all of them, and talking directly with the victim will be at the top of that list. A report should never have to come forward to be re-investigated a year later, because it will be handled right the first time.

I truly do believe in our Safety system and think it has made a real difference, though situations like this erode trust in that system, and unfortunately that may cause some cases to never come forward. Trust will have to be rebuilt, and that starts now. This situation was a real eye opener for me, that we need to be more diligent, as even if we’ve banned over 80 people, the few that weren’t banned (but probably should have been) can compromise our whole Safety system on this server. We can not allow any more cases like this to slip through the cracks, the safety of our community is far too important. Last night the Admins and I went back through all the old Safety reports, to make sure nothing else was missed. This led to one additional ban aside from situation yesterday, and two indefinite bans being elevated to permanent. I want to assure anybody out there who is thinking of coming forward that you will be heard, and action will be taken. You have my word.

If anyone wants to talk about safety on our server, my DMs are always open on Discord: Llir#5410, or if you know about a situation that concerns safety on our server, please come forward to me, any other Admin, or submit an email to [email protected].

We’re not perfect, we’re a bunch of young adults trying our best to keep this community safe. This isn’t something we can do alone. This thread will remain unlocked to keep the conversation going.

I hope that these are good first steps.

— Llir

Hello,

As of one week from today signs will no longer be lockable. This includes lift signs, gates, etc. Old locked signs will be automatically unlocked. Please assure you make any needed changes to your builds to accommodate this.

This will take effect next Friday, Oct 8, after the restart at 11:59 PM EST.

An alternative solution is being coded for Story team approval signs, and eviction signs, when ready this post will be updated. If not ready by Monday the effective date will be pushed a week.

Cheers,

Staff

Hello, the server is now officially on Minecraft 1.16.5. With this brings the removal of Vortex, as well as the introduction of the many building blocks available with this update.

Patchnotes

Vortex

[-] Removed Vortex, with all items being converted to either Vanilla, SurgePVP items, or Terra botany resources. Various crafting restrictions have been removed with this.

Terra/Hubs

[+] Added Terra, an improved node management plugin.

[+] Fast travel hubs have been entirely redesigned, nation mines have been improved.

[+] Vanilla resource nodes can be gathered with vanilla tools, which are craftable in the Crafting Table.

[+] Nation mines feature various vanilla resources such as iron, coal, redstone, gold, lapis, and obsidan.

[+] Hubs feature most building blocks, including many new ones added in 1.16. Some of these nodes drop multiple resource blocks.

[+] Alchemist Shears and the Hammer and Chisel can be crafted at the Crating Table, to gather botany resources and 'Lore Materials' (such as lightstone) respectively.

[!] The World Team is still working on setting up the nodes at the hubs, they will be populated over the rest of the week.

SurgePVP

[+] Added SurgeCrafting, an easy to use crafting plugin for SurgePVP gear, accessible with any Smithing Table.

[+] Shields are now craftable.

[+] Pikes (as tridents) have been added.

[+] Non-combat swords for item-editing can now be made using vanilla recipes in the Crafting Table (search up 'Training Sword').

[~] Various gear stats have been adjusted.

[~] For the moment, SurgePVP gear can not be edited with /edit, though vanilla tools and swords are craftable (see above).

[-] All armor tiers except ferrum platemail, ferrum chainmail, and leather gambeson have been removed.

[-] All weapon tiers except ferrum and aurum have been removed.

Notes

[+] Notes is a basic plugin that allows everyone to write in paper. 
[+] Up to 6 personas may write on the same piece of paper with different handwritings for each one.
[+] One or more personas may also sign the paper, this will not stop someone else from writing under the signature. The signatures do not have to come from writers, anyone can sign a note, there are no limits.
[+] If the note isn't signed (or only signed by you), it can also be copied to other papers. Remember you can't copy someone else's handwriting, it will have your own.
[+] Bedrock VIPs and higher have access to colored writing.

[+] Type /notes help to get started.

Other

[+] Yong Ping's new capital and two settlements have had their builds pasted in with 1.16 building blocks, make sure to check them out!

[-] The Snow Elf mechanical race has been removed.

[!] Curios and Nations are both almost ready to launch, though the techs working on them want a little more polish, so they will not be included in this update. These plugins should be seen on the server in the next few weeks!

Tech Team Update

Thank you to everyone for your patience with this update. These kind of large updates are challenging on their own to coordinate, but this one posed special challenges. The removal of Vortex, mainly the conversion of defunct items to Vanilla was not an easy task, and took far longer than expected. In total, 22,747 personas, 132,280 storage containers, and 115,153 entities in the world had to be scanned for Vortex items and properly updated. A grand total of 192,388 item-stacks were converted. This was accomplished using the Noteworthy Equipment Xtreme Updated and Scanner (N.E.X.U.S.). We had tested much of this code beforehand on Beta Server, though converting the main server showed some issues with the code that could not have been tested on the beta server. All in all, the rest of the code-base for this update (everything unrelated to the conversion) worked very well on the first try.

The other major issues with this update, is that the team has very few people who have the knowledge on how to do such a large transition, and the expertise of LotC's setup. Basically it's just myself and Telanir who have ever done this before, and it's not something that can be easily trained either. It is a very manual task requiring several hours of one person's time, and not everything can be properly tested on beta with our current setup, and of course is prone to human error. I don't intend to ever do this again. I'm looking into various automation tools that would allow most of this work to be done and tested in a parallel environment beforehand, and am hoping our 1.18 update will be much easier the day-of. As previously mentioned, we will not be transitioning to 1.17, but instead going right to 1.18 when it is available and stable.

Shoutouts

Thank you to @The60th @CommissarVoop @Telanir @Jistuma and @aiden0023 for their contributions to this update.

Thank you to @6xdestroyer @Laeonathan @Minth_11 @Disheartened @Witchlore @WestCarolina @BathRugMan @Lionbileti @AgentOfChaos@FloralHedgehog and @lawnmowerman for their work on the hub rebuilds.

Thanks to @SquakHawk @Heero @HogoBojo @Space and @FloralHedgehog for help with Terra node setup.

Hello all!

Today I am happy to announce that after many months of hard work from Tech Team, we are now ready to transition to Minecraft 1.16.5. We have scheduled a maintenance window for:

Tuesday, August 17th, 8:00 am EST - 6:00 pm EST

During this time the main server will be unavailable, though lobbies, the museum server, and our beta server will be accessible. There may be brief windows of time where the server network is entirely inaccessible as we apply updates to our proxy as well. After the window is closed, our server will be fully on 1.16.5, which will be the minimum required version to connect. We currently support connections from 1.16.5 client, so I recommend you update now if you have not already.

This update brings along many building blocks, as well as the sunsetting of Vortex, and the introduction of Surge PVP and Terra. Full information about these changes can be found on the original 1.16.5 Information Thread. A full changelog will be released alongside the update, though it will look much like what was outlined in the previous post. However, we will not be seeing the change to ItemEdit and the reintroduction of hookahs yet, though those are still active projects. A couple of new plugins will be introduced, including a Nations information system, Curios, and some updates to Lockpicking mechanics. The World and Story team will also be introducing some changes to the Hubs and Nodes, using the new features in Terra. More information about the new features will follow the update.

Thanks to @The60th @aiden0023 @CommissarVoop and @Telanir for their work on this update.

After we are on 1.16.5, we will remain there until a stable version of 1.18 is available. Due to a variety of factors including reported stability issues, we have no present plans to update to 1.17. We will instead be focusing on other projects to better the roleplay experience.

Cheers,

Llir | Technical Administrator

Hello everyone!

I hope you are enjoying all of the events of our ten year anniversary celebration so far! For a full list of events, check the schedule here. For this post, the Tech Team and World Team are really exited to announce the release of two related initiatives we have been working on:

Map Archive

All of our major maps (including for the first time a full version of Arcas) are now available for download at archives.lordofthecraft.net, where we plan to host them indefinitely! All of these maps have been loaded on 1.16.5, it is recommended you use this version to browse them. Thank you to crazyeights11 for providing a majority of these downloads for us to share with all of you. Note: Some of these maps are only partial, so if you see missing chunks that is why.

Museum Server

To showcase our collection of past maps, a special server has been setup to host the maps at museum.lotc.co (1.16.5+ needed to connect), or directly accessed through typing /museum on the main server. This server features a custom plugin for navigation between the worlds, and a wonderful hub world to showcase the 'exhibits'. To get started, just right click with the soul lantern on login to navigate between worlds, or type /help for a list of commands such as spectator, nightvision, and client-side time and weather.

Huge shoutouts for putting the Museum Server together:

- @aiden0023 for setting up the server, coding the custom plugin, and importing the worlds. Without him this project would not have been possible. #InvestInAidenCoin!

- @Heero leading the project, organizing and designing, and helping Aiden get things up and running.

- @Gamma, @BathRugMan, and @6xdestroyer for building the hub world.

- @CommissarVoop for helping polish off the plugin.

Enjoy the nostalgia,

Llir

Hello all! I'm excited to announce the official event schedule for our 10 year anniversary.

We have a great set of events lined up, we're all looking forward to it!

More details will be announced about certain events over the weekend, each will have it's own post.

Happy 10 years!

- Administration

Thanks to @Chronics for help with the graphic.

There are a couple events we may add before the weekend, and times are subject to change. Check back here here for updates.

Links to events/posts (will be updated as posts are made):

Kickoff - Message from Tythus and Crowns Sale details

Exclusive Interview - Shiftnative by Zarsies

Surprise Video: What Ten Years of MCRP Looks Like by Treshure

Official Map Archive and Tech Team Surprise: Museum Server

Zac Clay Interviews Tythus on Twitch

The One Contest to Rule Them All

Raw text version in spoiler below: