I am a terrible Minecraft builder. I have no aesthetic sense, I'm lazy, and I get easily distrac – ooh, that cloud looks like a creeper! Where was I? Oh, yeah. So instead of building things in Minecraft, I let others do it for me. I hop from server to server, exploring the worlds that people work to create. I am a tourist, constantly on the lookout for builds that take Minecraft's building blocks and make something impressive. My server browser scrolls and scrolls and scrolls, full of places where people better than me show off what they've made. Some are just impressive creations, while others are created within the server's parameters. I've seen some amazing things on my travels. Here are my favourites.
Server: westeroscraft.com:25565
No matter what medium you're rebuilding A Game Of Thrones in, there is one question looming over everything you do: can you get the Wall right? The Wall is a physical barrier between realms of man and the wildlings. It is 300 miles long and 700 feet tall. It is a barrier that holds back evil. Standing at the bottom of WesterosCraft's Wall is breathtaking. I can't think of another game that could pull off the scale of the Wall without a few tricks of perspective. It is heavily detailed, with a face of mottled ice and the broken remnants of stairways and pulleys. You can wander all the way from the Shadow Tower to the Eastwatch, from coast to coast, admiring the abandoned castles as you follow it. There's even a rumoured square of water at the bottom, where Tyrion famously pissed off the side. If you haven't stood in its shadow, you haven't really seen what Minecraft's capable of.
Server: minetrek.net
My first view of this Star Trek server was disappointing. I'd hoped it would be a world of dramatic recreations of Star Trek's classic battles. Think of what you could do with Minecraft! Frozen dioramas of ST lore, ships caught mid-explosion! While the reality isn't as exciting, the scale of what they've made took my breath away. Frozen in mid-air are dozens of 1:1 scale recreations of Star Trek's most famous ships. It's an avenue of chunky classic Trek and the sleeker, modern designs, all hanging in the air. The server's texture pack even has LCARS decals on the in-game signage. And the answer to the "Do they have... ?" question forming in your brain is inevitably "Yes, they do". It goes on and on and on. I tried to walk the length of the server, but eventually gave up when I found Voyager. I stood on top of the rear nacelle to watch the sun go down, before popping inside and examining the internal workings as laid out in Minecraft blocks.
Server: empirelegacy.co.uk
It's the palace (chat: /warp palace) that wowed me most in Empire Legacy's server. I say "most", because Empire Legacy's Roman Empire-inspired map is crammed with magnificent buildings. The coliseum is there, and actually holds in-game events. The basilica is a gorgeous building of domes, filled with healing religious artefacts. But it was the palace that I fell in love with. From the high chandeliered ceilings to the ballroom, the themed side rooms and the main throne room, it's an astonishing space to wander around. It gave me shivers.
Server: hp.rennervatedgaming.net
Kings Cross (where you can run head first at a wall), Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley… all of them are here in this Harry Potter Roleplaying server. But it's Hogwarts that the players visit for. It's not just the castle that's been lovingly created, with the Great Hall and all the separate houses, but the atmosphere too. When you arrive you're sorted into a house (I am Gryffindor, as I always suspected), and you can wander the castle admiring the work that's gone into capturing every hidden detail of the books and films. It wasn't until I found a bathroom I recognised that I realised just how in-depth this place is: I found a switch on the wall that peeled back the opening to the Chamber of Secrets.
Server: 2b2t.org
This is the end boss of Minecraft severs. If everything until now was a celebration of structured play and creativity, then 2b2t is a celebration of destruction and indifference. It is the only anarchy server that lives up to its name, rife with griefing, hacked clients, and swastika shaped buildings. The missing morals might flood chat with the internet's favourite bad words, but it has made an astonishing Minecraft server to visit. Spawn is (currently) surrounded by lava walls as tall as the server will allow, flooding down into a broken hole that's cracked all the way to the bedrock. There is destruction as far as the eye can see. Everyone has taken time in Minecraft to break bits of the world they play in, but the people that populate 2b2t are like a glacial glitch that eats at the land. They're the erosion that Minecraft misses, turning every build into a ruin, and every ruin into an unrecognisable and abstract collection of blocks. The server is years old and over 500GB in size. If you have a thick skin, you should see it at least once. Just don't expect to survive.
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Server: mc.crafti.ca
Craftica's spawn is a sly joke. I was wandering a pretty, fantasy garden at spawn, strolling around bridges and looking at the beautifully tendered tree in the middle, wondering where it would lead me. There are statues of dragons and streams, and while it's a lovely space to wander it's not necessarily worthy of a mention in this list. But what's beneath it is. I didn't know where to go, so I picked a stream and followed it to the edge of the land a short distance away. Below was a giant carved out bowl, with water flooding down the sides and pooling at the bottom. From this vantage point, the bottom of the bowl was so far away I had to wait for the game to fill in the chunks. Then I noticed a chain leading from the side to beneath the spawn. What could it be attached to? I leaped off and landed safely in the water below, and turned...
Above me was the most astonishing in-game statue I've ever seen: Atlas was shouldering the land I was just stood on, looming over me like a god.
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Source : ign[dot]com
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