MINECON Earth community panel – Hermitcraft Presents: Creating, Maintaining, and Evolving An SMP

Hello and welcome to the Hermitcraft panel coming at you from MINECON 2018 Exciting times! My name is Rendog I’m here with iskall85 stressmonster101, cubfan135, MumboJumbo. I just realized we have a lot of numbers in our names. We all play Minecraft together on the Hermitcraft

Server. We’re in our sixth season on YouTube which is absolutely crazy we are here together to talk a little bit about multiplayer Minecraft and a little bit nervous , aren’t we guys? Yeah, I’m feeling good yeah. I mean normally we just in front of a computer

It’s a bit strange having cameras and lights around us. Very comfortable sofas though, I gotta say I mean this is some professional stuff. We were practising this in Mumbo’s room last night yeah that was slightly less professional, maybe. On the floor

It’s all good. As Hermits on the Hermitcraft server we are very used to playing with other players and you know playing with other people in Minecraft is amazing. It’s one of my favourite things to do in life which is

Why I do it a lot. But what’s it been like for you guys? Iskall – what’s it been like for you on the Hermitcraft server? You play with people from different countries, different languages, different cultures. Yeah playing Minecraft in general in a multiplayer environment it’s just like you take life and you compact

It into this perfect environment where you can do basically anything, right? You can break every block, burn every piece of diorite if you want to and you just get to meet so many new people. For me it’s been a life changing experience – I remember I started out with playing with my brother

And my friend and we built very ugly things back in the days and now I’m playing with all of you guys everyday. And you know, Americans and South Africans and it’s yeah – huge! What about us Brits? He didn’t say anything? He left us out.

I kind of identify with you guys these days. I put the accents on, don’t I? Yeah, you do. Well, Stress, you’re one of the newest members of our server. How has it been for you joining us? I mean we’ve got people from all over the

Place, don’t we? I’m from South Africa, we’ve got a Swede over here, we’ve got an American. I knew you lot before I joined That’s right. So it was quite nice then, playing with friends again Yes, you know, you all left me behind. It’s fine it’s forgotten.

But yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. Yeah it’s been great some of the things that people don’t really realize is there’s a lot of cultural differences between the United States and Britain so basically exploring those cultural differences sometimes Iskall says words I can’t understand.

Oh really? Oh, I knew it! I knew it. I have to say it’s great to have the diverse community that we have, and it’s great to also have this guy over here. Mumbo – the Redstone wizard over here. Well, I try my best.

Speaking of words that I don’t understand and speaking of Iskall actually. Me and this guy have a number of conversations because Iskall seems to know more about English words than I do. And he will tell me things that people from all around the country say in various different accents and things and does

Extremely good impersonations and I have to say does it you actually does a better English accent than I do. Thank you! Thank you so much. I will be using that statement for the future. I mean that is amazing. And trust me – smorgasbord is a thing. I don’t believe it!

I want to believe you, I want to believe you. It’s been a very interesting experience for me because we do have a lot of Hermits from different time zones and you know one of the challenges for us as a group of course

Is to come together in meetings we tried to have a weekly meeting where we all come together and have a chat and of course there’s the language you know people speak English – sometimes in a very strange way and I guess what I’ve

Learned from being in the Hermitcraft series is having patience – right? having a bit of patience to play Minecraft together and at the end well I mean we can see some of the images here that are being… look at what happens

This is what happens when a group comes together you know in Minecraft you can do absolutely magic things so it’s been great. Now there’s about 20 of us playing on the server this season. It’s a lot of videos for the people out there to keep up with but

Not only that, we need a pretty hardcore server to run all the madness I’m looking at you Mumbo The redstone man I’m responsible for a lot of the server… In my defense, a lot of the server issues that I create I also

Suffer from. I shoot myself in the foot daily with the things that I create indeed. But you know it actually does take quite a lot on the hardware and the software side of things to run such a big server

I’m going to throw this one over to you to discuss a little bit about what it kind of takes to run a minecraft server like this from a sort of hardware-software perspective.

Yeah I mean I believe that Minecraft is a game that it’s come a long way because I want to bring this back to when I started playing multiplayer Minecraft back in 2011 and and we would have me and my brothers and and my friends we would start minecraft from my local computer

And had to shut everything else off, you know. And it was running and from that like today you can you can go out on the into into web so you can buy dedicated hardware etc, etc. I think we have probably got very powerful hardware

I don’t think anyone in this room knows because there are other people that fixes this for us – which is great. But there are so many options today and I think that’s your area when it comes to the new multiplayer. Well there’s a there’s tons of options I mean there’s

There’s Realms which I’ve used before for my community we’ve gotten on there just throw up a Realm you know it’s very easy to do you can switch maps without even moving any files basically so I’ve done that and I know a lot of you

Run Patreon and some other types of servers. I know Stress, you have a dedicated…. Yeah, I have no idea what it does though You just got people that take care of it. Yeah, I have gorgeous admins and mods that take care of everything for me.

To get started today just the Realms things it’s pretty easy like back in the days that we had to do. I felt like a hacker like we had to write in in text files and like name and write the IP things that I don’t know

Anything about. But today you can click a button in the game. I remember I had to something that I had to do when I had to enter my IP address into like the search bar and they had to port forward something So that it would allow people to actually join my server publicly

I probably opened up my computer to just everyone to just join in I didn’t know what I was doing What I did the first, this is so silly, I can’t believe I’m sharing this but I did the same thing and at the time I hadn’t

Contacted my brother I hadn’t contacted my friends so I thought if I press this open to LAN thing people may just join. Maybe I should start the shopping district, people will come! It’s quite amazing how far Minecraft has come, isn’t it? I mean most of

Us do you run our own community servers I know that some of us have hundreds of players that play on those servers and and that’s a whole another kettle of fish you know that’s generally we use something called a dedicated server box for that sort of community but these

Days if you know I recently set up a Realm with my family with my brother and my nephew and my niece it was super simple and it’s so nice to know that multiplayer Minecraft is so easy now, right? It’s come along so far

Of course with that, has come what has been come to be known in the Minecraft world as griefing, right? You put people together on a Minecraft server things can happen I mean it’s basically a sandbox in a school playground it’s gonna be a

Bully who throws a cup of sand on your head every now and then right? Yeah You know we on the Hermitcrafts to ever have our own style of griefing which we call pranking but to chat a little bit about sort of resolving conflict on

Servers you know maybe we should have a chat about that as we also run our own communities. I mean I know you’ve got a pretty big community server out there how do you guys deal with conflict on your server.

You know the first thing is that with one it running like a big server like that just having such a good team of people who work like tirelessly and they’re always online and they’re always accessible is invaluable but if you can

Get some people that you can genuinely rely on. Who will look after things while you’re not present then that really is kind of staged right like you there’s something that it’s just a requirement because and then you need to

Communicate with them and also make sure that the players on the server are aware of the difference between something like a prank and just griefing now on the Hermitcraft server you know we kind of tread the line we prank each other

We place things on each other we build certain things. That certain things appear on other people’s bases that they weren’t expecting like giant mustaches happen, often thanks to Iskall over there but that’s all good fun knowing the difference between having a little bit of fun or

Burning someone’s base down – that is not a prank guys – that’s griefing so making sure that your admins and the people that you work with know that and can communicate that to the players so the players know the line

And not just by typing it, not just by saying it but by actually being that person and I what I feel in my community is so important is you get these people that are amazing and shout a big shout out to all the

Administrators and moderators out there. yeah huge shout out to them. but I also want to give some space to the people who aren’t moderators or admins but who are there and they’re just good role models. they’re just good role models and

Those are the people that eventually become moderators and admins and I get that question of how do I become a moderator? Well, just be a good person When you have those people, griefing disappears It’s also important, from the bottom to the top everybody knows the rules and

Understands what’s expected on the servers and those people you mentioned do sort of serve that role although they may not be moderator now those are the people who eventually becomes moderators I mean I think one of the most interesting things about multiplayer

Minecraft in my experience is that you almost create a small little society don’t you? And that society generates its own set of etiquette its own set of rules and I think you guys 100% spot-on with a good solid team behind yes the

Community it’s a beautiful thing so I guess a lot of people out there I know that when I first started looking into playing multiplayer Minecraft I was a bit intimidated by it you know it’s kind of scary getting

Involved with people in Minecraft but I don’t think it’s as hard as people think it is I mean what do you think some of the best ways to get into minecraft multiplayer is these days. i I think projects, should we speak about projects?

Like if you’re playing on a server and you want to or if you want to get to know people I I said this originally today that Minecraft is sort of like you take the world and you put it in a video game. The interactions and everything you

Do in it is very similar to that of a normal friendship so when you – meeting friends and working on projects together it’s a great way to get to know each other I built the Nether hub with a guy once that I didn’t

Know at all when we started on the Friday evening but when we were done a week later like we were best mates so I think that – to approach it if you’re already on a server try to be a mod in some projects and you will become very…

Or big community projects Like the Nether hub for example. I know when I started off iIskall and I – we got to know each other by building a giant Cathedral. Yeah! Man that was amazing that bit. Yeah but I didn’t know

You at all at first. And I mean I was like who’s this Swedish viking that was yeah who I’m talking to online and then by the end we’re basically friends and as we worked on it together we talked with each other and considered a

We’ve had burgers and good times and absolutely Minecraft did that so I think if if you’re a new guy in the Minecraft community today and you want to play multiplayer don’t be intimidated right and just get out there get involved in a project and don’t overcomplicate it like Stress

Said build a Nether hub together, build a cathedral you know there’s always something to build. Or a sauna – you and did together once. I’ll tell the story shall I? Go on! Not many people know this but I got to I meet Ren

Who’s now my best friend and I’m not gonna say one of them which Ren said about me but it’s not my best friend and and it started off by me sitting on an evening and Ren had come onto my server at the time and we and he said

Let’s build a sauna! And I thought it was a terrible idea I really I really didn’t like the idea at the time but I didn’t say anyting I’m a nice guy, like “that sounds great!” and by the end of it I was left

Confused because you said this word in English that I’ve never heard before which was exfoliating. Yeah. And then you have been speaking about a lily pad being an exfoliation towel and I remember thinking I remember going to

Bed thinking – “I’ve just met the weirdest guy” and I couldn’t wait to like you know get to know more but I mean we’ve come a long way since then the sauna turned out great and today I know what exfoliation is so I it didn’t help much

With piping jeebies exterior. He’s still a creeper but yeah I mean like like we’re all saying here I think getting into multiplayer Minecraft is actually easier than it than it seems I think one of the things to remember is that everybody who plays multiplayer Minecraft is there for the same

Reason right they want to play Minecraft with other people so I want to chip in and say be respectful though because many times I see people that may prank someone immediately or maybe just you know take over someone’s build

I mean it it’s like in real life you gotta you got to work yourself in and you got to build a friendship before you before you put a lily pad with the next exfoliation. Yeah. It’s like me and you we go back and forth I take the mickey out

I would never say that to a stranger and you have gotta think that the same way about pranking – I don’t just come in and just build something ridiculous on someone’s build yeah because they might just be like “who is this guy!?”. What’s made it

Little bit easier also is that over time over the last few years or so we’ve gotten much better communication platforms to use, right? It’s really easy I mean I’m looking straight at Mumbo but he’s the worst when it comes to communication. It’s the famous thing that I’m terrible at responding to any form

Of message. But it’s just really – it doesn’t happen very often. But it easier these days to to keep a group of Minecrafters together we use discord to get together as a group we use other you know we use Skype to talk to

Each other also. So it’s become much easier now to keep a group together And I think that’s important like just talking with each other outside the game about the game is is a big thing. Like if you become friends with someone, obviously you will speak about other things but just to

Have a secondary communication channel, if you will. It’s much easier today and I think that’s important if you want to build a successful community Have you guys ever felt intimidated by anybody else on the Hermitcraft server? We didn’t practice this question last night I have to say

I think that’s one of the nicest things about it is – obviously you know there are certain YouTubers and things that you’re fans of and you’re kind of like – “I’m kind of nervous to talk to this person!” But I’ve never felt intimidated I

I know that because the group we’re all very like-minded people well as you said – we’re all here for the same thing. So we all know what we’re getting into. And we start talking to someone we have common ground it’s like

“Hey – we both like building ridiculous Minecraft projects – let’s just get to it!” And then you just have friendship from there – you kind of go back and forth from it and chat to one another from there. It’s mutual respect – we don’t build with Diorite in other people’s..

Things like that. And I think that’s important. I’m kidding. No I’ve never felt intimidated, but like you said though, there has been moments I remember still we saw on the video behind us. It brought me back to the Mesa

To season four. And the first time, it was actually you and me, Ren, we jumped in on a call with one of our big heroes at the time, and still hero – Ethos was a member and we flew around with Elytra for a few minutes and we were starstruck!

You know, that has happened. But no, I’ve never been intimidated. Wel,, we did let people know that we were on the way here to MINECON 2018. And the reddit went a bit crazy they’ve got us some very interesting questions

Well thanks to you most of the questions that we got on our YouTube video announcing this was about fax machines. The younger generations have no idea what a fax machine is. Pretty much all my questions were – “what is a fax machine?” I did have to jump off the boat a couple times

But we do have some very interesting questions from the reddit, so thank you everybody for commenting in the comment section for getting to the reddit and getting involved unfortunately we’re not going to be able to answer everyone’s questions there were many so we’ve sort of picked

And choosed a couple that we thought might be interesting to chat through today so let’s get right into it shall we? Our newest Hermit on the server – Grian, doesn’t have any numbers in his name which is great. He’s joined us for season six. It has been a

Blast having him hasn’t it, guys. It has been really cool. Can I just suggest like – “Grian85”? I think that sounds pretty good Yeah, Grian85. “Hello Grian 85!” Anyway, sorry. Thanks, Grian’s brought something very interesting to the server –

One of the most unique things that we’ve done on our server to date. It’s called tag and it’s pretty much like real-life tag. You tag a mate of yours on the server. But it’s definitely evolved into something much more than just tag.

I was flying around the server the other day and I was just I was kind of flying around the buildss just seeing what other people had done. You know sometimes it’s nice to check up on and what the other Hermits are up to. x

You know sometimes this enormous structure and I was like – “what on earth is this?” I felt something serious And then I was like – “this is the tag headquarters!” I remember I used to play tag at school with my friends we didn’t have anything like that

That’s for sure. So this is like the most insane game of tag ever – it’s been crazy! I’ve heard that the parkour as well, I think that someone got stuck. I think Iskall…. Yeah, my my mission this season with the tag game

Is to get Ren at some point. Solely for the enjoyment of watching a six hour long episode of him trying the first jump in that parkour. I will not be tagged and to say it on camera. It’s not gonna happen. But it has been a very

Interesting game .Do we think that a game like tag is is a good idea for a server? Is the question we got from reddit. We had fun tagging it’s already gotten out of hand, I will say. The stuff we’ve added to the game already with the with

The villager head, the trousers. Man, the shame. I was AFK the other day and then I was just editing some videos and I was logged in, in the background I just heard this crunch from my Minecraft window I opened up Minecraft and Grian, who I think is currently tagged –

He was there and you just see this villager head filling the screen. I almost fell off my chair. It was one o’clock in the morning. I panicked! It’s been a great addition to the Hermitcraft server Such a fantastic idea and speaking about multiplayer Minecraft that we’ve been

Speaking about here for a while. I mean, minigames are what can make a server, so. and sometimes the most simple of things Like, I mean some people spend the whole season trying to build an arena for PvP fighting young people

Some people do that every season. And never finish it. And then someone comes around, whom I may suggest adds 85 to his name tag, and introduces a minigame that is so genius and it doesn’t take any setup so it’s been fantastic. I think it’s also

Worth mentioning like things that bring multiplayer servers together so I’d say this it’s kind of like a few little things and I’d say one of them is definitely shopping I think that shopping is something that it just – – there’s something so nice about it. If you’re struggling for a certain

Resource, just being able to go in and spend diamonds. It can be a problem because you can just splash wat more diamonds than you expect, you’re constantly trying to keep up with with getting the diamonds so you can actually continue buying things but

It’s just it’s amazing and also watching the shopping district expand and seeing shops appear for things that you really wouldn’t expect shops to be there for like for example Grian’s guinea-pig service. Lots of strange things that pop up that you can make use of. I think that definitely helps bring

The community together. I think it’s a great testament to Minecraft as a game. As I said the in the intro, we’re on our sixth season of Hermitcraft. That is thousands of videos that we put out and it’s still we’re

All having fun. In fact I think, this is in my opinion anyway, my favorite season that I’ve seen so far. It just shows you that from nothing so much can be created. I mean the tag game started as punching someone with a name tag

And now, I mean we if we sat here and went through the actual rules of tag in this panel. Then it wouldn’t be the Hermitcraft panel It would be the tag panel. Very much up for debate in the comments section by the way

Is that whenever you tag someone people, the comments are very they’re very persnickety about the rules, let’s just say. They must be followed. They must be followed to the teeth. There’s one thing that I’ve found. There’s nothing in the rule book against putting mending on the trousers. That was totally fine.

Now it’s interesting I think we can all agree we we often get the same questions in our video comment sections the same questions come in all the time one of those questions is a very interesting one that we wanted to answer for you

Guys today – “how much work goes into setting up a new season of Hermitcraft?” I think this is a question that I would love to get my teeth stuck with you guys. Yes, when I used to watch Hermitcraft before I was a Hermit

I literally thought they fired up a new world, everybody joined, and “bam!” – that was the season. How wrong I was! What does it take to set up a new season of Hermitcraft guys? Yeah, there’s quite a lot that goes into it I mean it

Depends on what sort of update Mojang has come out with, what sort of things we’re looking for in the season, you know. Picking certain seeds. We even had, for example, for season five.Tango set up a seed finder for us to find a

Certain seed with quad which huts and everybody else wanted a mushroom island We wanted have like five mushrooms. Precisely, yeah. Quite a lot of work goes into it we’ve done a lot of work for season six to to find the right seed and I know some people wanted certain things we wanted

To have something around an ocean yeah so we can make an aquatic town I think I think it’s very important actually ,more important that I thought when I joined, to actually put a little bit of planning behind starting a new world because these are things that should last for at least a year

Normally. But it’s been easier with with how well the game has been updated lately as well. Like, there were we thought that Hermitcraft six would start sometime in April and it started in June. But I think that the fact that we waited for update aquatic

Was such a good thing. Some people are very planned – last season Personal experience, me and Ren we were planning the plastic fantastic we had been sketching for hours, we were sitting in there. and “this is

Gonna be great”. And this season I actually had zero plans I was like “we’ll see what happens”. Where does the first bumbo appear? It got easy, when certain buildings starting being built It’s very interesting because some Hermits have a huge plan for the season they know

Exactly what they’re doing for the first six months, eight months. Other Hermits it’s just the inspiration comes to them. But the reality is that it does take us a couple months, at the very least, to figure out what we’re gonna play on. I mean I remember being in

A meeting together – we were looking for a seed for season six. We were all on Mineatlas, generating random seeds, trying to spot you know what what we might want it to use in season six. It ended up not using any of that we had a plan

We went back again and then things changed. I do want to say though pick a good seed is important and like have a general idea what the server wants together. If you have a community that is restarting that’s

Starting a new world – have a general idea of what you want to do. Season five we knew that we did not want to do shopping. In season six we knew that we wanted to do shopping. But as a community have a general idea but then

Don’t overdo it either, because we’ve seen that we’ve had too many meetings sometimes about “is this seed better than this seed?” essentially they’re the same, two blocks difference. And of course the new update has brought us, you know tridents which Mumbo got to try out for the first time. I did.

I’m not disappointed in Microsoft and Mojang. I think they’re lovely, they’re brilliant. It’s interesting, I’ve actually I’ve been reading through the comments section it appears that I’m misinformed of tridents and how they function so I’m gonna get back to it and see how all that goes. But it’s interesting because the aquatic

Update has basically modeled our season, hasn’t it? There’s a lot of aquarium type buildes, a lot of aquatic stuff. Which is unfortunate considering last season I built a very nice ocean base. I kind of wish I had these features present when I were. You were ahead of the curve

I feel like I was the inspiration, in fact. One of the things that a lot of our fans want to hear us talk about in real life is pranks. Okay, let’s just get it out there let’s talk about the pranks. It’s been a very prank heavy season six

And it’s been amazing. It has been awesome. A lot of people want to know a little bit how we do pranks. How do how do we deal with them? Maybe we should chat a little bit about that. To give an example – Cub and I have a

Deal. Yes, if I prank Cub I don’t tell him about it. If he pranks me he don’t tell me about it. It’s hundred-percent anonymous I want to have the fresh prank experience. Absolutely, that’s critical. But that is not necessarily how it is on the server as a whole. Stress, how do you how

Do you deal with pranks on the server? I actually think I didn’t have a prank this year not that I want to say that. Maybe I’ve shoudn’t have said that. That’s probably because you’re the ice queen of the season I loved your UFO thing. I loved that so much

It’s made up so much iron though. The funny thing about that – Stress and I who were part of a pranking group on the server called the Convex. We pranked all these guys, pretty much everyone on Hermitcraft has been has been pranked

At one time or another. And we actually were going to build a Stress monster like you did before But then you built it already. And we were like “what do we do?” I got confused though, because you put cows in there. But the cows, you know –

Usually in sci-fi the cows go up, the cows get abducted . Well, this time the tables have turned – the cows are abducting you! That’s the idea They always think so much, that’s what makes it great as well. I do put a lot of time and

Effort into the pranks we want to make builds that sort of enhance your builds and and everyone’s builds on the server. So that it sort of is a positive thing. Are you saying are you saying that 57 coal

Blocks in a magenta colored schulker box named the Bumbo tool box is not thought through? That’s in my ender chest at all times I don’t know about that, but a lot of effort doesn’t go into into our pranks at least

And I know a prank we pulled on Mumbo last season, included Mumbo in with a certain certain base was quite interesting. That was actually a lot of people’s favorite point for this for the previous season Hermitcraft season five is actually me playing a part in your prank in being a sinking

Ship in a scallion over by Iskall’s base. And I don’t think I fed that well You were kind of chilling out and we could have done something to help, but we decided actively not to help. yeah. You know it’s the bravest way, I guess.

I think the reality is that the pranks on the Hermitcraft server are probably one of our favorite things as a group, we absolutely love them Som are pre-planned, some are not. And you know we all have a great time doing it

We never discussed them before that and one thing – I never know Maybe a warning? Yeah. What I normally see is, normally I get a message that just says “start recording when you get on the server” and then you go to yourself – “okay that means there’s got to be something”

And I have no clue what it’s gonna be. And the funniest thing about a prank is – you never know what the scale is going to be you can pop in and it could be something beautifully geometric, like a balloon eye

At the top of my base. Which is now going to be a permanent feature or it could be an enormous pixel art structure. So you never know. Well guys, listen, I would love to chat with you guys more but unfortunately we’re getting the signal here we need to wrap

Things up. I, for one, cannot wait to get back on the Hermitcraft server I haven’t played Minecraft for a couple of days. I’m starting to twitch a little bit. The withdrawal is kicking in. It’s been an absolute pleasure hanging out with you. Thank you so much for watching

The Hermitcraft panel from the MINECON Earth 2018 Thank you guys for watching, we will see you all on YouTube in a couple days! See you later!