The Memory Remains - A PowerKrew/Insomniac Story!

[jwirth]

I wish we could have maps that are so could there is apsalutly no place to put down another build thats what I liked about the old maps they showed us how much people we had on but now when we make a new map the old map still has lots of room to build on.

[bren4q]

PowerKrew & Minecraft
PowerKrew started hosting Minecraft in August 2010, which was before my time. Up to that point it was mainly a Gmod gaming group but by the end of 2010 the Gmod players had mostly gone their separate ways.

I first heard of Minecraft in October 2010 on this video on Escapist Network where they described it as "digital crack and Lego" so I had to check it out. I browsed the server list on minecraft.net and picked a server which sounded easy to remember and more sane than some of the others, "PK Minecraft Classic".

The map was a complete mess - full of towers and holes and the lower half was all flooded with water. But it didn't stop me trying it out and building a treehouse, which I had to repair every hour cos of people damaging it. I figured this was all part of the whole Minecraft experience. Unbeknownst to me, I was on PK Server 2, which was a chaos server at the time - just vanilla software, no commands, no admins, no ranks - anything goes.

PK Classic 1
The next day I went looking for the PK server again but this time it was PK1 I found. This was clean and nice and had people that were actually talking to me (jimmy12 and sweetz). I starting building some pixel art and was made a builder. They taught me the whole conecpt of entering commands for cuboids and stuff, and I realised there was more to Minecraft than just placing and deleting blocks.

I continued to hang out on PK1. I almost got banned in the first week because I wrote "norad is a fag" beside a build that this idiot NORAD1 was making. He had previously accused me of building a dick (I was merely starting to build a sphere) and tried to get me banned. When the other players and ops found what I made they slapped me around and jailed me for a while. They asked if I made it and I said I did. They called PowerHouse on and I explained what happened between Norad and I. Norad said something to PowerHouse that got him banned, and I got promoted to AdvBuilder!

Back then the only ranks were Guest, Builder, AdvBuilder, Op, SuperOp. There were a total of 7 maps in all, compared to the 500+ that exist today. WOM wasn't allowed for anyone below Op and /fly didnt work for me (lag caused by living thousands of miles from the server) so it was hard to build good stuff, but I got by.  Grief would often be on maps for days at a time before being repaired. Often, it would be too old to use /undo, so stuff had to be repaired by hand.

In December 2010 I applied for Op and got it. I was online for a few hours every day fixing stuff and helping people. My mentors were Peroxide, MarcusBoay and Alaskankiller. PowerHouse was usually available on MSN. I could only undo 90 minutes and was constantly having to ask for SuperOps to come online to undo older grief that was done while I wasn't online. The only SuperOps were PowerHouse and jimmy12, with around 5 other active Ops. PowerHouse created the TrustedAdmin rank with a larger undo limit and gave it to me.

PK Classic 3
In January 2011 PowerHouse asked if anyone could donate servers for using to host PowerKrew games. I offered mine and PK Classic 3 was born. I got SuperOp at the same time. It was also some time around then that PK2 stopped being a chaos server and was set up as a proper server, but it never got much traffic. Beta 2 was also running on my host machine but other than the first couple of months it was pretty much dead because it didnt have any plugins or commands.

PK3 grew steadily, helped by having a pretty good position in the server listing on minecraft.net (this was before it was changed to being based on how long the server was running). A good position on minecraft.net meant lots of guests. Lots of guests means lots of builders but even more griefers. We kept repairing and banning and ranking up all the players that helped build. This griefer filtration process is a necessary evil in order to find all the good guys, of which there were plenty, many of whom are still around today I'm glad to say.

For me this was a golden era on the PK Minecraft servers. We had to make a new guest map every single day because they would fill up in 24 hours. We had "Guest-Free Fridays" where we completely blocked all guests from joining and yet we still had 15 players online who were Builder rank or higher. People could hang out, build and chat without worrying about having to watch guests.

In June 2011 I wanted to reduce my time spent doing Minecraft stuff. If I was hosting PK3 I knew I wouldn't be able to resist constantly checking it (it had to be restarted a lot back then) and chatting with people. I also wanted to power down the host machine a few hours each day instead of running it 24/7. Iwas going to merge PK3 with PK1. By this stage Skitty had established himself as an efficient admin and a techie with PC hardware in abundance. He offered to take over PK3 instead of merging with PK1. So PK3 moved from Ireland to US of A and has been there ever since.

Insomniac Servers
At the end of October 2011 PowerHouse retired and the PowerKrew name was no more. We lost the Beta 1 world but managed to keep PK Classic 1 and 3. In November we adopted the name "Incomniac Servers" and merged the 2 classic servers into 1. Myself and ThorSummoner started up new Beta servers, one Survival and one Creative. Which is where we are today.

Today
These days the classic server is mostly quiet ever since minecraft.net changed how it lists servers (it now sorts in order of how long they have been running since last restart). Its a lot more difficult to get to the top of the list and to get new players. Home internet connections are less reliable than the kind you get with rented data centre servers so if the connection is gone for even 1 minute, the server will drop to the bottom of the list. If minecraft.net sorted servers by the TOTAL online time, Insomniac would be right up there where it belongs.

Its a pity we don't get many new players. All of the ops and admins on Insomniac put most other servers to shame. I sometimes browse other servers and even in the popular ones you get ignored when you /review and maps are not properly cleaned up. The other ranked players at Insomniac have been around for a long time. Even when they are gone for a while its always great to see them return. Aside from a few scuffles that any gathering of people will have, there are hardly any major arguments or ragequits. Its only when you look around at other communities that you realise just how good this group of people really is.

[Juwayyid]

Wow Bren, I had no clue you weren't the first one!  I mean, I know other came before you, but some of those guys who are around today don't even seem close to the prestigious level of which I view of you.  I too first entered mine craft on a server if towers, floods, and holes, where anything went, no rules.

Then I found PK 3, and It's all thanks to you isn't Bren?  And what do ya know, MY first build was a tree house as well!

I never knew sweetz was one of the first.  I had last seen him on Thor's survival server, on the map previous to the one he hosts now.  I don't think he has returned since then.

It's true that the best days of the community was when we had good ol' PK3, and the beta servers, and we had new friends and members daily.  Those days are of the past now though.

[Saracalia]

Noku's Story of the Server Life!

It all started on the 4-3-2011, when I first came to PK3. I didn't know much about Minecraft, since I have never played it before. I decided to have a go at playing it. I knew it was a building game, and PK3 was my first server that I have ever came on. I have started with a build of a Stadium Stand for a Baseball Field which came onto a Football Stadium. By the way, somebody built a air balloon over the top. Anyways, lets continue on the story. I soon continued building things, and stunned a SuperOP or somthing, because I skipped a rank and ended up a probuilder. Anyways, my build was a train station, which I did take a bit of time building onto it. This was all within 5 days of playing on the server. Soon, I continued building more stuff, especially a small town in map67 I think it was. Anyways, and somewhere down that road, I made it to AdvBuilder, which was kinda hard to get, but it felt easy. Mainly because my builds were still shit. Soon, I looked through the PowerKrew Forums, and thought about Applying for OP, but when I had a read of the whole thing and though, wow, that would be hard for me, especially when I don't know Minecraft that well myself. So, I tried applying for EliteBuilder, which my builds were even still shitty, especially when I tried putting a McDonald's in the candidates.

Anyways, I tried continuing for the goal, and had a go at building more things, even going to the extremes. Soon, I ended up being an Admin for a Minecraft Beta Server, and ended up leaving the servers for a while, but the Beta Server that I was helping with, I ended up owning it. But like always, it soon came to an end. So then I ended up coming back onto PK3. For about a couple of months, I ended up working hard due to the rising bills, and left the server for a while. Then soon I got the hunch about PK ending, and signed up for the new forums. Then within a couple of days, Skitty messaged me on Facebook asking me if I have signed up for the new forums. And I didn't, so then I did. Oh yeah, thanks skitty for letting me know So I signed up for the new forums, and came back onto the servers. With in a month later, I applied for OP, and became one, and ever since, I have been helping the server out with all sorts of stuff an OP has to do. Oh, apart from the time when my computer fucked up and I couldn't come onto the server for 3 weeks. And yeah. This is my story!

[Krawkyz]

Not too big here; of all the people who posted, I believe (I think?) I've been on Insomniac/PK the least, since September 5th, I believe (6 months? A little less, more likely.)

I first started on PK with PK1, where I was invited to come there with some of my buddies on a music-making website called <WEBSITE OMITTED>. (Yes I omitted it; wanna fight about it?) Anyways, it was pretty simple back then, and there was a lot more guest traffic than there is today, even though PK1 was less popular than PK3. I can't remember much from guest-->probuilder, but I knew blackhawk1441 liked to stalk me. I built this castle...um...with bridges...and a flag on top with a skull....and I got epicbuilder for that. The person who promoted me was <NAME OMITTED>. I'm not sure if there was a very set build number back then, but I don't think there was. I then applied for AdvBuilder, where bren said I needed one more build. Retard Spider to the Rescue!

Then I really started being helpful, in my mind. I tempbanned/kicked griefers and/or rulebreakers, in the sights of I think jwirth. Skitty, I barely knew him. I then applied for operator, where I was accepted. From there on out, I tried to contribute my loads of time to PK, more often PK1 than PK3. (I think the FIRST time I went on PK3 was when I was advbuilder.)

Then, later, the site went down. I had no information at all. Hence the phrase:

I sit here
unknowing

I can't remember how I found the site (Google is a search engine. Who knew.) and I found the site.

Later, I had some scuffles with <NAME OMITTED> and some argumentative trouble was with it. Yah, I don't even know if we like each other today. I think most people know who I'm talking about. (He's a nice guy. Don't hate.)

And now, currently, I am waiting for WoM to start working again so I can get back on insomniac.

I sit here
unknowing
of the world
and its showings

^^^
Fail Poem.

[bren4q]

** off-topic comments removed **

[Blitzkin]

I have the feeling that i already told my story, but anyway:

my friend introduced me to minecraft, knowing that i'm a huge fan of Legos and Garry's Mod, He said to me "its like real life but with squares!"

we then tried a random classic server, on the first hour we basically ran around, adding silly stuff to other ppl builds, then a flying guy came and told us what we were doing wrong and how the server worked, we then built a house and a giant horse ("giant" because we couldnt fly, it was around 30 blocks high haha).

my friend lost interest on the game, and me, as usual, kept playing alone on random servers, wich i never saved names so i could come back latter.

one day, browsing the server list i saw a "PK3 classic server" and thought "oh cool! PVP on minecraft, that might be something". Well, there was no PVP, but the players seemed very receptive
as i started building my "diagonal house" back at map27, Pookey ranked me to builder, at the halfway of the build i got ranked to probuilder by skittlez, his words are still fresh in my head "Wow, you gave me hope on guests again, all  we see today is grief..." well, not that fresh, but it was something around that haha

the next day i got ranked to epicbuilder, and within the week i applied for advbuilder. i agree with bren, those were the golden days of PK3 server, lots of guests, lots of builds, and very interesting debates about random subjects.