[Brad]

Originally Posted by turtle Guys, I hate to say it... but I think it is time for the party to be over.

🥲👏🫡

Originally Posted by turtle It is hard to believe I have been hosting the Minecraft server for more than 12 years now.

That's… impossible! We left Bridgeport just, uhh, a couple years ago, right? Stop making me feel old.

Originally Posted by turtle …

Thank you for the history lesson and trip down memory lane, and double plus thank you for diligently hosting our games for all these years!! This was an incredibly kind and generous gift, and I hope you know that your efforts are recognized and very well appreciated! Seriously, you're a champ, and these years of your generous support won't soon be forgotten.

Originally Posted by turtle Of course, if Brad wants to move the game to the applenova.com server that would be awesome for 709, who is the one consistent player who will be impacted the most.

Unfortunately, I doubt* I will keep the server running in perpetuity on my applenova VM, but I would like to host some short-lived special events from time to time, if people are interested. I really enjoyed those new-world survival expeditions we used to do after major updates, and I loved that one survival game we did years ago with the gradually shrinking world barrier. I would totally be down to host some more events like that if we could get folks interested and committed to a calendar date from time to time.

* I haven't tried setting up MC again recently on the AN server. I do plan to try soon, but no promises.

Originally Posted by turtle I'm avoiding giving a drop dead date for when I'm going to shutdown the VM. I think it would be worth it for those who are interested to be able to log in again to be able to do so before I shut it down. I'm also very open to making the world files available for download. Then you all can visit the old worlds all you want on your local machines.

I downloaded a world backup tarball a couple weeks ago when you mentioned your network troubles. When you're ready to stop the game for good, please let me/us know, and I'll jump back in to retrieve a few more backups, after which you're welcome to torch my SSH user. I can't say it enough, but thank you for sharing this hardware and trusting me to SSH into your network to manage bits and pieces of the game. It's a huge gamble to grant access to some rando on the internet that you've never actually met in person, and I'm still honored and flattered that you put that trust in me.

I know you have various other older backups on your network, too, which I plan to comb through before calling everything done, and I also have kept backups of each of our main worlds over the years. That includes Bridgeport, Sedona, Loch Green, TerraNova, Cactuar, two unnamed worlds, Tekkit, FTB, and of course the current Cashout Cove. The older backups need to be converted (maybe going through multiple steps) and need some minor tweaks to their "level.dat" files to make them fully playable in single-player mode. I won't try to convert the Tekkit and FTB backups since they require a pile of mods that may or may not even be available now. Once we shut down, I plan to process the last known backup for each of these worlds and put them all up in shared storage for anyone to download.

It's been an amazing ride, guys. Hopefully this isn't the very end, but in case we can't align calendars for future Minecraft meetups, I want to say thank you all again for the countless fun adventures and discoveries and creative monuments and memories! 💜