Exactly ten years ago today, on the 7th of June 2012, I logged in to VillageCraft for the first time. I had no idea at the time what to expect.
I remember the day well. The server I occasionally played on before had shut down unexpectedly, and with the summer holidays coming up me and my good friend ChaosMushrooms were looking for somewhere new to play. I was sitting on my sofa, scrolling through the Minecraft forums looking at the huge list of servers, and for some reason VC caught my eye. I don't know why, but for some reason reading that post, I was drawn in. I sent a link to Chaos, and we agreed we'd give it a go. The server was still new then, barely six months old, yet already there was a strong community, who welcomed us with open arms, helped us find some land, and got us going. I'm happy to see that same welcoming spirit shown towards new players to this day.
In my first year, Chaos and I worked away to build Eldrin - a small-to-medium village just west of where Tirinuvik is now. Things were quite different back then: there were far fewer blocks to pick from, Qualia's market was much smaller, plugins were very different in what they could do, but despite all that, it was the same VC as it is today. The same chat, the same drama, but the same friendly community behind it all. It was around this one year mark Ako sent me and Chaos a message asking us to join staff, which for quiet little Luis was a bit of a shock to be noticed and considered for a something like that. But despite my worries, the team helped me find me feet, and I got a shiny red M before my name. Over the next few months that was joined by an S, as I got more confident with what I was doing.
For those of you not around nine years ago, there was a bit of drama involved with the guy who was doing a lot of the backend stuff when I first joined. Long story short, he did some stuff, got banned, and left Ako, Air, and a guy called Runek to clean up the mess. That worked fine, but Runek got busy with work and drifted away from VC, and after a while Air asked me to take over a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. Looking back at that now, I was way too young, still in school, with nowhere near enough experience, but I still said yes, because I wanted to help the community I'd been part of for the past 15 months. Over the next year or so, that SM tag I had morphed into an SA (thanks Catty), until the S was dropped, which is how I've been for 7-8 years or so now. Now honestly, I couldn't really care less about the tag, but it did please me greatly that at least now it was consistent with the rest of the staff team and I wasn't the odd one out anymore.
Being part of VillageCraft has changed my life in ways I could never have expected ten years ago. It's helped me meet new people, and make close friends who I trust to share some of my closest secrets with. It's helped me keep coding, which led me to find new hobbies I love. It's helped me come up with new ideas, trying things I wouldn't normally. Just last month, in an interview I talked about some of the technical skills I'd learnt through my VC, which helped me get the position. VillageCraft has helped me discover what I enjoy, what I want to do, who I am - in short, VC turned me into Luis. I'm at the point where I can no longer remember a time in my life before VillageCraft. This server, and its community, has always been there. There to talk about my life, there to share success, there to escape to when life gets tough, there to go when everything else seems to be going wrong. On the very darkest of days, VillageCraft was somewhere I could turn to, knowing its friendly community would be there to help me forget about everything else. VillageCraft was, and continues to be, a place I call home.
Managing this server has become a big part of my life. I know it doesn't always look like I'm around, and I spend far less time than I'd like in-game, but I spend more time than I dare count working on VC. I'm constantly checking Discord, browsing the forums, looking at the console, making sure everything's running okay. It's one of the first things I do when I wake up, and one of the last things I do when I go to bed. I've checked the server before jumping off a mountain in Turkey, from plazas in France, from lakes in Switzerland, and from beaches in Greece. I've changed configs from a palace in Italy, and even rebooted it from the Vatican. Very few things in my life have been as persistent as VillageCraft - at some point or another, most things have changed or moved on, but VC has been the one constant for this past decade. I treat it as a part time job, unpaid, but with the same effort I would with any other job. I do what I do because VC has an important place in my heart. It's always been there for me, and if all my efforts over the past ten years has helped make one person's day better, even just once, then it's all been worthwhile. I do what I do to make sure VillageCraft and its community will always be there for anyone who needs it, just like it was there for me when I needed it.
Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm an introvert. I hate being noticed, I hate having people talk about me, and I hate being the centre of attention. It's why I rarely talk about what I do, because it's not about me. I don't care about credit, or praise, or thanks. I'm simply doing my job, and hopefully making your experience here a bit more enjoyable. It gives me something fun to do with my free time, and even though a lot of my ideas hit a brick wall somewhere along the development cycle, those that make it to the server make me happy. I enjoy seeing what you all create on VC, what you've built, the stories you tell, the lives you all lead. I enjoy being part of this huge family, and the weird and wonderful things it brings.
VillageCraft is all about the community. The friendships we make, the people we meet, the stories we share. Without this community, the server wouldn't be so friendly to anyone who comes across it. Without the donations over all these years, we wouldn't have been able to keep VC running. It's because of all of you, that we've been able to create this wonderful place, and keep it going for over a decade.
So, thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of this community. Thank you for welcoming me all those years ago. Thank you for making me feel at home. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for putting up with my flaws. But most importantly, thank you for always being there.
These ten years have been amazing, and sitting there on my sofa all those years ago, I could never have imagined what it would lead to. It has been a privilege to be part of this, something I will remember as long as I live, and I wouldn't give it up for the world. I hope in another ten years time, I'll still be here typing another post about what you all mean to me. Assuming you put up with me for that long
Thank you <3
#vc4lyfe---
Here's my song of the day, the lyrics are a surprisingly good match for the mood of this post.
