What an eventful weekend this was! First of all congratulations to Empire Minecraft for attracting well over 300,000 players (301,221 at the time of writing) and for continuing to go strong full force! Like so many of you out there I've also had the pleasure of doing the event, and really enjoyed myself doing it, but also kept an eye out for the surroundings. I don't only go after the loot I was so impressed with the whole thing that the very moment I stepped into the first house I knew I had to do something more. This is simply too awesome to be left alone without some extra attention. Small disclaimer: This has been a rather turbulent weekend and I do not fully recall the exact order of the builds anymore. So it is possible that the pictures don't reflect on the actual route we took, but that doesn't make this event any less awesome IMO. Fun fact (the rest will be put in spoilers): If you only want to check out (all) the pictures I took and skip the essay then I'd like to refer you to my 300k Imgur album. All my pictures, mostly unsorted but usually named, ready for you to look at. Normally I'd dump these on my own server, but when I learned about Imgur albums I figured that this was the best way to go; now everyone can look at every picture I took. Welcome to the event & welcome to the write-up! When you started the 300k event you basically stepped into a small village which was not only jam packed with some good prizes but also with a wide variety of surprises and fun stuff to look at. All you had to do was look around... And it became pretty obvious right from the start that we weren't dealing with "just" a village build here. No sir, this was a village "EMC style"... Entrance to the village with the 300k player on top of the arch It took 3+ stacks of Enderpearls for her to get up there. I promise I won't laugh next time We decided to walk around the edge first and then work our way inwards. And when doing so it became quite obvious how ingenious this whole setup actually was. "Hey look, a dog house!", I thought, but what is that thing inside? Could that be one of the treasure chests? And the dogs name? Frank! We walked around some more and suddenly discovered a small market place with several stands on it. And one of those stands actually had me laughing out loud, this was so masterfully done. Oh my.... The village marketplace, I wonder what stand she's looking at.Well, simple, this one: Uber_Corq's friendly local insurance paper stall. So what does the Insurance Salesman sell here? Everything you might need in your game of EMC Minecraft: Life insurance. Car insurance. Creeper insurance. Insurance Scam Insurance! BUT... as said there's also treasure to be found. And boy did they hid treasure! From easy to reach areas such as, for example, the local bakery. Which was located at the edge of the market square, right where you'd expect a building like this: And once inside you could rejoice because you found yourself yet another one of the dozens of available treasure chests: Can you spot the chest in this picture? But there were also places which were a lot harder to reach, and very inviting to those who kept looking for these kinds of details: I wonder what is up there... Treasure was literally scattered all over the place. It was wonderfully done... When we eventually found ourselves in the middle of the area I immediately spotted this cozy looking building which just screamed out to be explored: Now that's a building I'd move into right away! So impressed with this cool looking building I ran right over, only to be called back to the square I had just passed because.. well... Didn't I want more treasure? Say what? The small square I simply ignored And for sure... The motto of this scavenger hunt surely had to be: "don't ignore the obvious, because things aren't always what they seem...": Look Shell: more treasure! Did you know that Aikar's original home server was smp2? This place had everything. What to think about a nice park which featured a bench looking over a pond. If this were real life I sure would have spend some quality time here to soak up the feel for the area. This was another one of those wonderfully made areas: The local park, if I could I would sit right on that bench! And what is a park without a stable and some horses? The horse on the right was owned by Aphea.. There was just soo much to see and do here. One house completely furnished with lots of stuff inside it while another seemed completely empty. Well, if its empty then its probably not worth exploring, right? Nothing to see here... or is there? "Don't be a party poop, lets look upstairs!!" What do you know... I stand corrected.. once again (note: I'm not exactly sure about the order of these pictures, I could have mixed 2 houses up, but in general these events did occur) Oh, and before I forget, I promised that I'd also thank Maggie, Chuck and Bob for allegedly showing Ayanamikun some of the chest locations. Specifically one which was under a tree. Look, he's showing me the way! There was just so much to see and do here... You only had to put your mind to it... "Look, kitties!", That's no kitty... its a moderator! Two even! Did you know that you can visit Aikar's first build on smp2? Just use /aikar when you're there! And that brings me to the end of my post. This area was just SO massive that if I'm not careful I'll easily be writing up 3 posts about it. If you want to see all the pictures I took then you can do so by checking out my EMC_300k Imgur album. Which leaves me with the following: A massive THANK YOU to all the staff members, and EMC in general, for setting us up with this wonderful and masterfully done event! At one moment even Aikar was in the event area (top of building), how cool is that?! Poor Aikar, having to fight of a horde of chasing players (small rant, sorry, this needs to be done): Guys, this was awesome and in my opinion an event to never forget. This was SO much better than a regular drop party. This was brilliant. A Minecraft event like a Minecraft event SHOULD be. Why do I say that? Well... At the risk of going "essay"... Minecraft is all about playing the game how YOU want to play the game, right? So was this event. You could simply play it alone, you could play with friends (which was more fun) and you could even simply ignore all the chests and just check out and enjoy this massive EMC village and ponder about all the work which went into the details. Even the prizes were brilliant in my opinion. Everyone had a good chance to get away with a ton of loot. But... Sharing with friends could get you even more loot. Bottom line: you could participate (or not participate) in this event exactly in the way you wanted to. Truly in the spirit of Minecraft in my opinion. So once again... Thanks you guys (staff), this was totally awesome! Sincerely, Peter
I should've bought some of that insurance. EDIT: I love the image of the 300000th member at the event. That's great!
