Server Pigstory

Hello, my name is Porkington. I am the guy who created the Server History page of this wiki. That page is meant to be an objective, comprehensive record of all major events in the server, and while writing it, I tried very hard to give proper attention and respect to all players, even my enemies, and as a result, it became one of the most useful, informative, and frequently visited pages on this website.

On this page, I am doing something different. It will still contain truthful and important information. However, I will not try to be objective. This will be a history of SimPvP through my own eyes, so that people understand who I am and what my perspective is.

The Early Days

The server started in 2011, and the permanent server map was generated in September of that year, but I did not start playing until around May 2013, using my alt Pippenger.

In the old days, the server was very active, with new players constantly joining, and new bases constantly being formed. During 2012, the peak of the server, over 33000 unique accounts joined, and in 2013 a similar but slightly smaller amount of players joined, myself included. During those times, you could meet new friends or enemies each day. No server wiki existed yet, so information was hard to come by, and you never knew where anything was or who you could trust. Griefers were more common. In modern times, each time a base is griefed, it's treated like a major tragedy, but the same thing used to happen nearly every day and nobody considered it notable. It wasn't common for new players to ask for or receive much help. It was more common for them to be killed and trolled. The server was a chaotic, dangerous shithole, but it was beautiful in its own way, with a thrilling intensity like nowhere else. The kids these days don't understand what it was like because they grew up in much softer times.

My First Empire

About midway through 2013, I started my first team, which I called The Empire. Unlike other teams at the time, we were fairly nice to all people, including noobs, and we did not grief. We used to spend a lot of time giving free food to new players and inviting them to join us. I was trying to make the server a little less harsh, because I thought it went too far at times. For example people used to frequently insult others by calling them "faggots" or "niggers" and I did not approve of that. I liked the server a lot, but I wanted to make it less offensive and unwelcoming.

My empire also tried to build the largest city of the server, New Caladan, but the project failed when one of our members, DakkaDok betrayed and griefed us. The empire had collapsed by sometime in early 2014, I think around February. The death of my empire seemed like a big deal to me at the time, but in retrospect, it was insignificant compared to other problems.

The Server (Almost) Dies

While I had been focused on my empire, something terrible had happened to the rest of the server. Our rate of new players joining dropped enormously, and so did our average daily players. In 2012 and 2013, it was common to have more than 20 or 30 online at once, whereas by mid 2014, seeing even 10 people at once was rare. In 2013, over 30000 new players had joined, and in 2014, it was only about 5000.

Once people realized the server was starting to die, they started leaving even faster. Many people doubted if it would ever recover, or if the server would even exist for too much longer. Of course, in retrospect we can see that the server didn't die, and kept going strong until at least 2019 and probably much later, but way back in 2014, nobody knew that, and most people didn't see SimPvP as a special server. They just thought of it as some anarchy server which had once been sorta popular, but then became dead. It was a sad place.

During this time I was working on a private city project called Ascaris with my closest ally, Cinnabars, and I was very proud of it because it was the largest city on the server at the time, and may even still be the largest to this day. But I realized how meaningless it was to build a vast city nearly alone on a dying server, so I decided to try and change it.

I Try To Save The Server

Early in 2014, I tried to stabilize the loss of players by moving near spawn, and setting up grassy areas with trees and crops for new players to use. (At the time there was almost no grass at spawn, all of it had been destroyed by griefers and creepers.) It was a great expense of my resources and time, and it also put me at considerable risk, since spawn was still pretty dangerous in those days. But regardless me and my allies succeeded in making spawn more hospitable, and slightly increased the rate of new players.

One of the players I worked with and helped in those days was ostrich1414, who had joined right at the end of 2013 when the server was starting to really die, but me and my friends convinced him to stick around. He later went on to start major teams such as Monarchia and Struthio, and also help many new players to come after him, and encourage them to stay on the server. This means that my efforts to stop the server from dying not only had an effect, but continue to have an effect even all these years later.

After a while, I started to realize that just helping noobs wasn't quite enough to save the server though, because players did not have much incentive to stick around long term. This was when I decided to found the new city Aggersel and invited many many players to it. It became one of the most fun and active bases of its time, which caused people to play on the server more often.

During 2014 some people said that the server's death was inevitable and they shit talked my efforts to save it, but by the end of the year, it was clear that I had been somewhat successful.

In late 2014 and early 2015, the population stayed fairly low and the amount of new unique logins continued to decrease, though at a slower rate than before. It was no longer considered a dead or dying server, thanks in large part to me. The server owner made me an op because of my dedication to the server.

The Big War

In late 2015 I pulled kind of a dick move and started attacking other bases, which caused the First Great War. I'm not gonna say it was a very nice thing to do, but hey, this is a PvP server, and every once in a while I got tired of being nice to everyone even when they were jerks to me.

During this war, I was betrayed by one of my allies, Fluz43, who griefed me even though I had never done anything at all to hurt him. I'm not gonna complain too much about that though, because like I said, this is a PvP server, and it happens sometimes. I am not gonna still be angry about it years later.

However, what did make me pretty angry was that Fluz and his friends started making "memes" about me which included actual photographs of my face as well as my actual name and some general information about my real location. They didn't fully doxx me with my exact address or anything so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but honestly I think that was mostly just because they were too dumb. If they'd had the capability to post more private information about me, I think they would have. And I was worried they might do that if they got the chance, and looked up additional information about me in real life.

This is why Rule #3 was added to the server: Do not share any real life information or content, whether fake or not, about people without permission. Do not contact people outside the game without permission.

I was glad the owner added that rule, but I was still pretty creeped out and worried people might break it, so at that point I quit the server for a year and a half, not even logging on once during that time, not even with an alt. I wanted to play but I was worried people might doxx me or something.

The Server Without Me

For most of 2016 and 2017 I was totally absent from the server because of the doxxing concerns, so I don't have too much to say about this period. While I was gone some of my allies such as ostrich1414 carried on my work of helping noobs and building vast cities such as Quinsigamond to make the server more active. The server continued to get less and less new players throughout 2016 and 2017, but ostrich1414 mostly stabilized the loss and kept it from getting drastically worse.

From what I can tell, the server in this time was in sort of an undead state. It was saved from 100% dying, but it still wasn't nearly as fun and active as it could have been.

My Return

About halfway through 2017 I finally returned to the server. I had been gone so long that many people thought I would never come back, and I had become something of a mythical hero/villain depending on your perspective. But I wanted to return cause I enjoyed the server and I wanted to continue helping it.

I joined ostrich's vast new city, Monarchia, and helped with it. The purpose of the city was much the same as other major team bases like Aggersel and Quinsigamond. To build something impressive while also giving players both new and old a chance to join into a community and have fun playing together.

The other reason I returned was to continue working on my city Ascaris which was extremely vast.

Clipchip Ruins Monarchia

For some reason ostrich brought clipchip to Monarchia, who has never been considered very trustworthy. After not too long at the city, he started building a big TnT cannon thing and threatening to blow up the town.

He never actually did much damage, but he freaked everyone out, and as a result of this, progress at Monarchia drastically slowed down, and players became much less active there.

Clipchip (Kinda) Ruins Ascaris

Not long after that, clipchip and his allies started lurking around Ascaris too, which they had arrived at uninvited. JavelinFury came too. These guys would constantly grief Ascaris in small ways and threaten to blow it up. They caused my building partner and best friend on the server, Cinnabars, to quit playing, and greatly impeded progress at Ascaris. Eventually they stopped attacking me and actually helped with some things, but by then the city had already been kinda ruined. Clipchip is not totally my enemy, more of a frenemy. However JavelinFury is pretty close to a true enemy, that guy is a real dickhead and I think he might grief the whole city.

I Join Struthio

Since Monarchia and Ascaris, the two best cities on SimPvP at the time, had both been fucked up by clip and his friends, ostrich started a new city, Struthio, and before too long I came there to help him. I settled a peninsula a bit outside the borders of his town, and I built a house and some farms there. I also built a huge temple, the Hall of Vatlos, nearby.

I would like to note that this land I'm referring to is the very same land which 90% of Struthio is on top of. Nearly the entire city is on land that I originally claimed, and I never actually gave anyone permission to build there.

The Server Keeps Being Kinda Dead

In late 2017 and early 2018 the server was fairly fun and active, but it still hadn't 100% recovered from the major crash in 2014. There would still be less than 10 or 15 people online at once.

I started talking about how we should try to get more players, but a lot of people had become accustomed to SimPvP's half-dead state, and they either didn't want new players, or didn't think it was possible to get them.

It was at this point that I started implementing my major MSIMPVPGA Plan, which stands for Make SimPvP Great Again. Nobody believed it would work, but it did.

Making The Server Great Again

I started implementing my plan in early 2018, and despite all the naysayers and haters, it was extremely successful.

Improving The Wiki

After returning to the server, I played a major role in updating this wiki, adding dozens and dozens of new pages and image files, as well as creating Server History, the largest page. It was extremely difficult but it paid off. The wiki is much much better now than it was before and that has helped the server become more fun and get new players.

Scouting Other Servers

Part of my plan involved spending more time on servers besides SimPvP, and a lot of people never understood this counterintuitive choice, but it was actually key to my plan's success. Playing on other servers allowed me to see their techniques of getting new players, and it also allowed me to establish relationships with new players, seeing who was trustworthy and who wasn't.

During this time I mainly played on a server called Nocoords, and I formed an alliance with a major player, Sengorn_Leopard, who helped with the largest and best bases there. Later on, Sengorn and his friends decided to try out SimPvP, mostly based on my recommendation, and I helped them get established here and form new alliances even though most people didn't trust them much at first.

Sengorn and jaffdhi moved to Struthio, where they built a ton of stuff and made the city much larger and more active than it used to be, turning it into the most active and powerful city on the entire server. So please realize that the biggest active city currently on SimPvP is on land I settled, and it was built mostly by me and by people I brought to this server. If it hadn't been for me helping out at the city's beginning, and also for helping players like ostrich and Sengorn establish themselves on the server, Struthio or anything like it wouldn't exist.

Meanwhile I used my observations of other, more successful servers such as Nocoords and 24carrotcraft to improve SimPvP's advertisement strategy.

Reddit Advertisements

Around the same time I started going on the subreddit /r/mcservers on reddit.com and writing advertisements for SimPvP. The owner's advertising strategy prior to this had been disastrously insufficient, and was one of the main reasons for the server's decline. It is impossible to exaggerate just how much my ads helped this server. In 2018, for the first time in the server's entire history, the number of new players joining was not noticeably less than the year before. Even years after the server had been declared dead, it continued to grow, thanks to me.

I also helped make the official /r/simpvp subreddit much more active and I am a moderator of it. This has helped the server too.

Official Discord

In May 2018, I had the idea to create an official SimPvP discord server. I couldn't really do it myself, since my mod powers had been revoked, but I convinced one of the mods, DakkaDok, to set it up, and he did so on May 10th 2018 with my help. It is now an extremely active discord, vastly more active than our old obsolete forum was.

Youtube Videos

The final part of my plan was for me and other SimPvP players to become popular on Youtube. Our videos got some traffic and brought a few new members to the server. The effect was very minor on its own, but it worked well in conjunction with the rest of the plan and played a minor role in saving the server. There are many more SimPvP videos than there used to be, and they are mostly of higher quality than before. Lots of people would have made their own videos anyway, but I think my plan helped.

Success

The total result of the five parts of my plan was to make SimPvP a much more active and lively server. Nobody expected it to work. They all thought it would totally fail. But it turned out they misunderestimated me.

The Early Days (Again)

By mid 2019, the server had once again become an active, albeit harsh and chaotic, type of place. Spawn is once again a dangerous ruin. Bases are griefed on a weekly basis. Players constantly join, and constantly quit.

All in all, it is very similar to the early days which most players never got to experience. The major crisis has been solved, and things are back to the way they're supposed to be.

Before I implemented my plan to save the server population, nobody thought it would work. I was considered a bit crazy for trying.

Then, against all odds, I succeeded. A happy ending, right? Not exactly.

The problem is that a lot of people don't understand this server's history very well, and they take my work for granted. They get upset that there are too many people and too much griefing, and too many low quality players. But what they don't understand is that if it weren't for me, this server would probably be a much deader place. What I have found is that there are some people on this server who are just constantly hella mad at me (and often at other people too), for reasons that are unclear and sometimes contradictory. As the old saying goes, haters gonna hate.