Story time with Parz, Infinity and Beyond
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This is the fourth post in the "Story time with Parz" series, to read all posts visit forums.stonebound.net/history.
Minecraft communities take a lot of work. They need to constantly re-launch modpacks or at the very least - reset the world. You have to serve your core players as well as bring in new players to keep the server active and fun. This takes effort, time and most importantly leadership.
A perfect storm of circumstances took place after the first major cycle of Stonebound. Siigari was out and Stonebound didn't have a public pack online. We found ourselves without a head admin - and Stonebound was slowing slipping away. Months passed and our players moved on to different communities.
At the time I was playing a ton of Counter Strike. I'm talking about Aim maps - learning unique smoke throws the whole nine. Twitch (a leadership member of Stonebound) and I would spend hours playing. We had a 'team' and would play with and I was convinced Id go pro someday!
The Minecraft bug bit Twitch again. He was offered an admin position with another community. That prompted us to talk about a Stonebound comeback. What did we like about the first go? What would we change? It wasn't long before Twitch brought Alleluid into the mix. We would run things with a leadership committee.. The group expanded. Everyone having input on the direction and decisions. In the situation we found ourselves in it worked well. Stonebound was back.
Lots of folks joined us during this time - Twitch and Alleluid saved Stonebound and before I move on I want to thank both of them. Thanks fellas!
For a while things were great, the first pack based on Resonant Rise was put together by Alleluid and Twitch looked promising. A lot of the old players returned, but we were struggling to attract new players. The modding community had shifted and there were more servers than ever, running popular packs and people just weren't looking for customized packs
Over time the leadership structure started to hurt our progress. Everyone having equal input on all topics- translates into long never ending conversations. Talking with Twitch today thinking back about this time - he called it "Functional but chaotic". Something had to change.
phit was involved with Stonebound in one way or another from the start. Stonebound 2.0 - he was who we called when we had server issues. He’s the most technical person on the team. I made the decision to offer him the head admin role. He said.. No. Like a lot. I think the only reason he said yes - was so I would stop asking.
He would hold 100% decision making power on everything. We would have advisers or 'cabinet members’ instead of co-leaders.
This meant our conversations would become fruitful. phit was able to make decisions after hearing points of view. It also meant he could move forward on things without getting consensus or having to bring every issue to the group.We hit new highs, running stock FTB packs. First with the then new Infinity and later its expert variants, especially Skyblock giving us more applications and players than ever before.
We take for granted the resources and features we have today. The website, fourms, application process, a donation system. The current version of the Stonebound logo and color scheme. Each modpack is connected from a chat standpoint. We have a world hub that lets you hang out while the server restarts. This isn't to mention the countless back-end optimizations and scripts that are used every day.
Stonebound has been changing from the start. Its morphed into something almost unrecognizable from it’s early days. We don’t have phit - without Twitch and Alleluid. We don’t have Twitch and Alleluid without Siigari.
And without you - we don't have Stonebound
Last post tomorrow,
parz
