Block by block
I've always felt that, although my life has had it's ups and downs, my life has been on an upward trend. So I typically don't reminisce on parts of my past, those memories dripping with nostalgia can only taint the enjoyment I have of today. However, even with that said, there is one thing I wish I could experience all over again: Minecraft.
It was a sunny spring day in Colorado, we were there because of my Dad was attending yet another science conference. Often I would find myself infront of my dads laptop, watching minecraft videos. It was some new, and yet familiar world for me. It had been in a time where both I had just tasted games for the first time with a Wii, playing Wii Fit +, Harry potter games, Wii Ski, and whatever other games I could rent from our library. But even then, they where just ways to change up my usual routine of Legos and books. However, this was new. A place, where everything is made of blocks. Where the limit was my imagination. Where I could go wherever I wanted to go. From tallest mountains, to deepest caves. Build anything I wanted, not limited to the same handme down lego box which we got from my parents friends, whose children where too bored of them. Day or night, rain or shine, I would sit, imagining what I would build as I watched a letsplay of a dudes giants tree house base, with minecart transportation systems. At the time it cost 20 dollars, a sum my 8 year old brain found huge at the time. Monumental even. I tried exploring how maybe I could coax this money out of my parents, at the time I had settled on trying to learn how to hypnotize my dad. It worked, kind of.
The day I had got it was one of my Dad's rare off days. We had joined our Danish friends on a trip through the mountains. I remember the book I was reading at the time was a collection of Darwin awards, and although I didn't understand everything, it was still an amusing book to read. And any rest stop we took would be time I spent trying to hypnotize my dad into buying me minecraft. I couldn't even get him to blink. But on the way back, it had began to rain, our Danish friends son came down with mountain sickness. Knowing that, at that time, it was not the time to complain about my sore feet, and trembling legs, so instead I decided to run down and around shouting some incoherent stuff about the trail just so we could get down as fast as possible. And I guess, in a way, my countless attempts to try to coax 20 bucks out of my dad, and my patients at the end of our day long hike, technically did hypnotize my dad, and that would be the first, and last purchase he had made for me.
Those first nights in Minecraft, as the light slowly turned to black, I had made my first house as I tunneled into a cliff side. I would turn to servers.I remember the first server I joined there where diamond blocks selling for 60$ and I would call over my dad asking if this was real money and if I should spend it. It was a type of server popular at the time: plot servers. Where people showed of their building skills or lack thereof. PvP arenas, economies, it was a server based around community. Something I didn't have at the time. I would end up joining the sister server to that server:
game.fucraft.net, and how I would never say the IP because it sounded like the f word. I had plenty of escapades on that server. I single handedly ruined the economy as in my countless hours running around looking at peoples houses, I had came to empty plots, but that didn't deter me. I would keep walking thousand of blocks, taking guilty pleasure in reading the chat, something my dad tried to forbid me from doing so, until I found it: the server owners plot. And on that plot existed a sign which would execute a command to give the player free money. I sat there and filled my pockets full, and yet spent almost none of it. I remember another time when I had teleported to someone else, they promised me free items. It had turned out to be a trap, I was stuck inside of a nether portal, and at the time it was impossible to type, to press escape, and I had no idea about alt-f4 at the time. However, he had forgot to place a block above my head. Slowly I would jump, open chat and press one letter, and send in the chat. I would keep typing out
"S
O
S"
in the chat, because my dad had told me it was what sailors used to signal distress. And eventually, a mod would teleport to me, ban the player, and set me free. I was a force to be trifled with. And most of all I remember my first Christmas, as I logged onto the server, and all the chests looked like presents. All I remember is a warm happy feeling, as I went opening chests pretending they where presents. Risking it all that one Christmas eve going into the PvP arena... I died, but it was fun to run around trying to escape the clutches of others. Drop parties every day during summer, this rave type event where somebody would drop blocks into a crowd of people.After that, I would explore minigame servers. You name me a major game at the time and I would probably had searched, and found a server trying to "replicate" the experience. GTA and COD just to name a few.
However, with times now different, my patience for the mediocre declining, and many of my favorite servers dead, I can never experience those same warm feelings I did as an 8 year old logging into a server for the first time.
It was a sunny spring day in Colorado, we were there because of my Dad was attending yet another science conference. Often I would find myself infront of my dads laptop, watching minecraft videos. It was some new, and yet familiar world for me. It had been in a time where both I had just tasted games for the first time with a Wii, playing Wii Fit +, Harry potter games, Wii Ski, and whatever other games I could rent from our library. But even then, they where just ways to change up my usual routine of Legos and books. However, this was new. A place, where everything is made of blocks. Where the limit was my imagination. Where I could go wherever I wanted to go. From tallest mountains, to deepest caves. Build anything I wanted, not limited to the same handme down lego box which we got from my parents friends, whose children where too bored of them. Day or night, rain or shine, I would sit, imagining what I would build as I watched a letsplay of a dudes giants tree house base, with minecart transportation systems. At the time it cost 20 dollars, a sum my 8 year old brain found huge at the time. Monumental even. I tried exploring how maybe I could coax this money out of my parents, at the time I had settled on trying to learn how to hypnotize my dad. It worked, kind of.
The day I had got it was one of my Dad's rare off days. We had joined our Danish friends on a trip through the mountains. I remember the book I was reading at the time was a collection of Darwin awards, and although I didn't understand everything, it was still an amusing book to read. And any rest stop we took would be time I spent trying to hypnotize my dad into buying me minecraft. I couldn't even get him to blink. But on the way back, it had began to rain, our Danish friends son came down with mountain sickness. Knowing that, at that time, it was not the time to complain about my sore feet, and trembling legs, so instead I decided to run down and around shouting some incoherent stuff about the trail just so we could get down as fast as possible. And I guess, in a way, my countless attempts to try to coax 20 bucks out of my dad, and my patients at the end of our day long hike, technically did hypnotize my dad, and that would be the first, and last purchase he had made for me.
Those first nights in Minecraft, as the light slowly turned to black, I had made my first house as I tunneled into a cliff side. I would turn to servers.I remember the first server I joined there where diamond blocks selling for 60$ and I would call over my dad asking if this was real money and if I should spend it. It was a type of server popular at the time: plot servers. Where people showed of their building skills or lack thereof. PvP arenas, economies, it was a server based around community. Something I didn't have at the time. I would end up joining the sister server to that server:
game.fucraft.net, and how I would never say the IP because it sounded like the f word. I had plenty of escapades on that server. I single handedly ruined the economy as in my countless hours running around looking at peoples houses, I had came to empty plots, but that didn't deter me. I would keep walking thousand of blocks, taking guilty pleasure in reading the chat, something my dad tried to forbid me from doing so, until I found it: the server owners plot. And on that plot existed a sign which would execute a command to give the player free money. I sat there and filled my pockets full, and yet spent almost none of it. I remember another time when I had teleported to someone else, they promised me free items. It had turned out to be a trap, I was stuck inside of a nether portal, and at the time it was impossible to type, to press escape, and I had no idea about alt-f4 at the time. However, he had forgot to place a block above my head. Slowly I would jump, open chat and press one letter, and send in the chat. I would keep typing out
"S
O
S"
in the chat, because my dad had told me it was what sailors used to signal distress. And eventually, a mod would teleport to me, ban the player, and set me free. I was a force to be trifled with. And most of all I remember my first Christmas, as I logged onto the server, and all the chests looked like presents. All I remember is a warm happy feeling, as I went opening chests pretending they where presents. Risking it all that one Christmas eve going into the PvP arena... I died, but it was fun to run around trying to escape the clutches of others. Drop parties every day during summer, this rave type event where somebody would drop blocks into a crowd of people.After that, I would explore minigame servers. You name me a major game at the time and I would probably had searched, and found a server trying to "replicate" the experience. GTA and COD just to name a few.
However, with times now different, my patience for the mediocre declining, and many of my favorite servers dead, I can never experience those same warm feelings I did as an 8 year old logging into a server for the first time.
I love your description of your first experience of Minecraft. I found it very relatable and enriching for me (especially your experience with online servers). To this day, I still play Minecraft whether it be alone or with friends.
ReplyDeleteDang, you description of minecraft gives me hella nostalgia. I feel like minecraft have gotten more and more modern like most things. It doesn't feel like an antique game that it used to be anymore. Everyone was trying to figure out what to do with the game... there was limitless possibility. It feels like people started to give up now a days and minecraft server becomes stale. Your story makes me remember all the shenanigans that happened when we had our own minecraft server....
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