mcMMO is back!

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We’ve brought back mcMMO for 1.9 to the survival server, with one small change: To activate any mcMMO ability, you will now need to sneak and right-click (whereas previously, you would have only right-clicked). You don’t need to sneak while you use the ability, just to activate it.

This was changed so as not to interfere with new 1.9 right-click abilities, and will also mean less chat spam for accidental right-clicks. For more information about mcMMO, visit their wiki page here.

Banner sourced from https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/mcmmo.2445/

The End is Near! [1.9 release]

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We’ve all been hard at work getting the server ready for 1.9, and it’s finally here!

You will be able to enjoy all the two-handed fist-waggling and methodical sword-swinging your heart desires this Saturday Night (9/4/16) at 7PM GMT+10, when we update the server to Minecraft 1.9.2!

As you may have heard, we will not be resetting the Overworld, but we will be resetting the End to take advantage of all the new 1.9 features – and, to celebrate, we’ll be slaying the Ender Dragon as a group!

We’ll need to briefly shut down the server to set everything up first (you can hang out with us on IRC while it’s down); this should only take a few minutes.

So this Saturday night, craft yourself a shield, head to /warp dragonFight, and let’s slay some Ender Dragon! With both hands!

We did a thing! It was awesome!

Last weekend, I spent 48 hours rebuilding and moving all the backend infrastructure around.  All that happened was a very short outage while we finished moving everything around between instances, but what this MEANS is that now things are faster, better, and more reliable!

If you’re not a nerd, feel free to ignore the rest of this post. However, for the nerds, this is what we’ve done:

  • We now have a multi-master database cluster, with a load balancer and floating IP address to ensure that we have zero database downtime
  • We’ve split out all our worlds into separate instances. This means if a server needs a reboot, we can reboot the entire instance that the world is on, without having any effect on any other worlds!
  • Dedicated t2.medium instance that runs map rendering.  This means we can start rendering the OTHER worlds on maps.mcau.org
  • The ability to easily and automatically create and destroy servers and worlds on demand.
  • Other cool nerdy things (ansible! redis! memcache!)

What this means for you is that things will be faster, better, and more reliable. What this means for US is that we’ll be able to do cooler things, easier, and faster!

Acebuild is back!

If you haven’t already heard, the triumphant return of the [ACE] building competition is upon us! The theme for this month is Pirates & Boats, so grab all your saltiest, most seaworthy blocks and get building! We’ll be accepting submissions of builds in-game at /warp ace until October 1st. Submissions can be made by yourself or a group of up to three players.

The winners will receive:

  • [ACE] next to your name for a month
  • Your build given a permanent /warp
  • Golden Winner’s Pickaxe
  • A special hidden prize!

Players will vote on the winning build at the end of the month. For more info, check out mcau.org/ace-builder/. Good luck!

Donations are fixed, again

I shut down Donations earlier this year, because we were having some problems with Paypal, and updates not being received correctly from them, and people randomly losing their D privileges.

This is now fixed! Once and for all!

Everything is now done automatically, and paypal tells us what to do. This doesn’t mean PAYPAL is going to be correct, but at least I know who to point the finger at when things mess up in the future!

So, if you want those sweet, sweet, D perks, you can go and click on Donate now and get your promotion immediately!