History of the WolvHaven Server

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The WolvHaven Server's History continues to evolve, feel free to add in content!

Founded somewhere in Early 2011, the WolvHaven Server was founded to be SilverWolv's personal private minecraft server among friends. Over the years the server has experienced many events, good and bad and has overcome several blunders. The server continues to navigate its way through being a rather informally run minecraft server to where it is today becoming a rather well-known server in the minecraft transport builcing & city roleplay community. This page documents a rough outline of major events that happened in the server over the years and continues to evolve.

2011: Humble Beginnings

The WolvHaven Server was born in early 2011 as a private minecraft server for SilverWolv and his friends. SilverWolv was recently introduced to the game of Minecraft and the endless possibilities and blank-canvas nature of the game was attractive to him. He mainly spent his time in Single Player until he joined his friend who went by the username of __Husky__'s minecraft server. There he experienced the joys multiplayer minecraft for the first time, and decided to start his own server.

New Centrif is born

Main article: New Centrif (1st Haven)

Upon discovering that one could import an existing minecraft world into a vanilla server, the WolvHaven server was born. The server had no official name, and was run purely on the vanilla minecraft multiplayer server that came with the game itself. The server was founded with a simple goal to build a city in minecraft with minimal help from mods to the games. A funamental aspect was also that there was to be no official texture pack, as it would be a hassle to distribute and maintain such a resource.

WolvHaven back then was not a 24/7 server, and was operated using hamachi to allow other players to connect. This was often very cumbersome for new members but was sufficient given its private server nature.

Troubled Times

After the retirement of New Centrif in end 2011 with the release of minecraft 1.0 during minecon 2011, the server set out to experiment using bukkit and plugins for the first time. However with limited understanding of how permissions worked, the server soon switched back to vanilla minecraft. It would go through several iterations of different worlds and formats before settling on the next iteration of the city called Wolv City.

2012: New City, small traction

Wolv City replaces New Centrif

Main article: Wolv City (2nd Haven)

Wolv City later replaced the city of New Centrif as the main world of the server. It was also with this iteration of the city where WolvHaven took on the survival multiplayer gamemode that is familiar with us today. Players would travel out of the city in survival and mine for resources before coming back to the city to trade among themselves. Wolv City also had a particular district named Wolv Haven, which is where the server eventually gets its name today.

The Founding Fathers

SilverWolv had previously also mostly played on a seperate minecraft server named "Lucky Kingdom" where he met mash_p0tat0es. Mash originally asked SilverWolv whether he had any wool for a giant pig statue he was making, to which SilverWolv replied that he didnt even have enough wool for a bed and couldnt give him any as a result. Their friendship grew when SilverWolv bought a plot of land and built a simple wooden house in his town which he found to look very nice. Eventually SilverWolv also founded a town called "New Centrif" in the server, and mash also joined in.

Eventually both players connected on social media and mash joined in on the server on 2 April 2012 as an admin. He eventually invited his classmate y0urs_Tru1y to join the server as well, who would soon be promoted to Moderator, and then later Admin.

Together, SilverWolv, __Husky__, Mash_p0tat0es and y0urs_Tru1y make up the founding fathers of the server.

The Bukkit Experiment

Up till early 2012, the server had been running on a vanilla minecraft server. It's initial experiemntations with bukkit eventually failed due to the lack of knowledge with in-game permissions and how overall plugins worked together in general. There was also no initial need for the server to move to Bukkit given its simple nature and small playerbase.

Economy Reset

The server also underwent its first and only ever economy reset during this period of time after experimentation with economy plugins left players with illigetimate spawned-in balances. The experiment lead to certain members having millions while others in the negative balances. This negative balance eventually lead to the server's net total amount of money in circulation to be over a negative million WHD.

A full reset was performed, resetting every player's balance to $1000. All members, including staff were to obtain currency from legitimate methods such as mining and trading. To assist in this new mode, the Jobs plugin was introduced; but the very same plugin would lead to several problems with the economy later on.

Popularity on Twitter

SilverWolv would on occasions share screenshots of Wolv City on his twitter, which eventually got the attention of RookieMC97, who was a rather popular figure within a community with over 1000 followers. RookieMC97 eventually joined the server to tour and posted screenshots of the server online, which sparked interest in many of their followers who then came online to visit. However, despite all this, the server continued to remain private as SilverWolv did not have a way to finance or pay for server hosting due to a lack of a credit/debit card.

2013: New Haven, WolvHaven is public (for a short while)!

New Haven replaces New Centrif

Main article: New Haven (3rd Haven)

Wolv City eventually outgrew the ambitions for a growing minecraft city, and hence the 3rd iteration of the city, New Haven was born. This was also the first time in the server where the WorldGuard was used to protect the city's infrastructure.

Server goes public for 2 months

SilverWolv eventually reached a deal with his parents that he would finance the server and his parents would assist to pay the server bills using their payment cards. The server was hosted on a server hosting platform called mine-o-city hosting for a very affordable cost of US$5 a month, and the server only had 1GB of RAM at the time.

The server opened to the public in June to much fanfare, and had a consistent playerbase that mainly enjoyed playing survival, and new members of Staff joined the team. Carew, PixelVox, PunchingPixel and KuteKake, who were all from the Twitter community that RookieMC97 promoted to as well. This which lasted for 2 months till July where a disagreement between SilverWolv and his parents led to the plug being pulled on the server as there was no way for the bills for the server to be paid without a card even if SilverWolv could afford it.

Mission #SaveTheHaven

When the news broke that the server was going down members of the twitter community started a campaign called "SaveTheHaven" to help finance and pay for the server. A member started a paypal which ran into some issues eventually although some members had sent money to the account. The amounting pressure eventually gave way due to questioning as to when the paypal would be ready to allow for the payment of the server bills to be made and the idea was dropped with refunds made to all who had contributed.

WitherGate: Mass Grief Attack

WolvHaven experienced its first mass grief attack in 2013 where an exploit involving wither explosions and damage was used on the SandBox by a player called MrGreen289. Over half of the SandBox was damaged as a result and had a great impact on the server as the SandBox then was one of the most popular worlds within the server.

Investigations later found that it was caused due to inadequate protections by WorldGuard, and was immediately fixed.

PixelGate: Staff betrayal

Due to a disagreement between SilverWolv and PixelVox, PixelVox threatened to release the NewHaven city world file to the public as he had been entrusted with the world save file for rendering purposes on the premise that the file would not be shared. This prompted SilverWolv to release the world as a safeguard onto planetminecraft. Since then, SilverWolv has been very wary of who he entrusts server files and access with in the staff team.

Launch of the Wiki

In August 2013, the WolvHaven Wiki was launched using a free service provider shoutwiki. Several articles about 3rd Haven were written. The introduction of a Wiki for the server was one of the goals of SilverWolv, similar another popular Minecraft creative server at the time - The VoxelBox.

The WolvHaven Wiki would prove to be rather unpopular later on, with frequent service outages, slow support, and a lack of customisation.

Connections with Epsilon From Tumblr

SilverWolv regularly posted builds from the server on Tumblr which sparked the interest of a player by the name of nakokun, who was the owner and founder of the city of Epsilon. Both players and servers forged a strong bond and friendship as they would often help each other out and build on both servers.

The WolvHaven Gathering and Christmas

Main article: The WolvHaven Gathering

The server later went public again during the November and December school holidays, and the very first WolvHaven Gathering was held in November 2013 together with Thanksgiving and Chsitmas festivities in the server. SilverWolv was also experimenting with WorldPainter during the period, and soon after the next iteration of the city NewWolvHaven was being planned and built.

It was also during this period of time where Axton would join the server, with ambitions to build a mass transit railway network that connected the city.

NewWolvHaven Replaces NewHaven

Construction for 4th Haven began in late December 2013. For the first time in WolvHaven's history, the world was custom generated using a program called "WorldPainter". It was also the first time where the city would be comprised of multiple islands instead of a single island, which was the case in the previous iterations of the city.

2014: Public, but very quiet

2014 was a relatively quiet year for the server as SilverWolv was busy studying for his GCE 'O' Level examination. The server was mainly patronised by players who played Survival Multiplayer but did not see a lot of activity.

In March, Mash_p0tat0es had donated a minecraft server which he paid but did not have a use for till the end of the year. He had bought a year long subscription with hosting provide Nitrous Hosting but plans for his own server did not fall into place, and passed the server plan over to WolvHaven. As a result, the server was hosted online, but without much supervision as SilverWolv would only come online during the weekends until December

BlameNitro

Nitrous Hosting was not very popular with WolvHaveners due to frequent downtimes and an imposed limit on storage space. As a result, whenever there were technical difficulties, #BlameNitro was the go-to tagline.

YouTube Channel

The WolvHaven youtube channel was launched in August 2014, and its first youtube video of a timelapse ride of the BERT District Line was released, and since then, YouTube would be the main source where players would find out about WolvHaven. The video has over 140,000 views as of 2021.

Stalingrad Tram opens (October)

Main Article: WolvHaven Tram (4th Haven)

In September 2014, a building competition, dubbed "Innovate", was announced to the public, with the aim of receiving creative transit ideas from the commuters themselves, which in turn, would be turned into reality if it met the three criteria: low-cost, low maintenance, and efficient. Many submissions were considered, such as a trolleybus or monorail system that ran on all three islands. However, it was settled and decided that a tram system was the most cost-efficient, low maintenance, and efficient in terms of passenger flow.

On the 13th of October 2014, player Matthieu_Dinh, who had envisioned the project, unveiled the Stalingrad Tram, or the Tram Line 1, or as it's known now, the WolvHaven Tram. The line opened on the 13th of October 2014, with its original route running from Stalingrad Coast (Now Stalingrad South) to Stalingrad. Just a few weeks later on the 2nd of November, Tram Line 1 extended further up north to Central Park East (now SOHO) and to Nationale (now Parkroyal) with the entire route stretching 1.4km over 9 stops.

Tram service was unreliable at first but with the introduction of a revolutionary automatic spawning tram system on the 16th of January 2015, tram service delivery increased to 95%, and ridership was at an all time high. Referred to as the future of rail transit, the WolvHaven Tram was very successful in its first year.

Upon completion of Tram Lines 2 & 3, and the revitalisation of Tram Line 1, ambitious plans were drawn out to expand the tram system further east, and possibly even into Westford, as a means of solution to replace the debilitating status of the poignant bus system back then. However, due to an also debilitating ticks per second situation, all plans were shelved and eventually replaced with buses that served the planned routes.

2015: The start of a new Era

The WolvHaven most people are familiar with began from 2015.

Financing is here

SilverWolv managed to register for a pre-paid debit card to use to pay for the server bills, and in 2015 the sevrer shifted to a 1GB server hosted by MCProHosting. The server was renewed at 2 month intervals.

Titanium Server

Nixholas joined the server in April 2015 as he was a classmate of SilverWolv, and would contribute to many aspects of server administration, mainly handling the technical aspects of the server. A proposal for a cheaper alternative server hosting provider was given with more resources such as RAM and storage space.

The idea was for all WolvHaven services to be centralized into a single machine, with a website using xenforo. However, this proved to be fatal as a DDoS attack brought the server down. It was later found out that the server hoster was using dated hardware, which resulted in the loss of over 4 months of data and progress.

City-Build 1.0: Project Westlandia

Main Article: Gardellia

Autobus22 introduced a new creative city-building concept to the server, whereby a national rail network would be built and players would be able to claim stations and build towns and cities around their claimed stations. Work had progressed but several design flaws led to the termination of the project. It would later be replaced with Old Gardellia in early 2016.

City-Build 2.0: Westlandia2 (Old Gardellia)

The project that opened after Westlandia would be the original Gardellia. This version of the world was a large world painted flat island, with the intention that players would be able to terraform the terrain to their liking after. This edition of Old Gardellia was mired with controversy, stemming from disagreements over borders caused by the small station spacing, unequal WorldEdit rights and poor or selective enforcement of the rules.

Joshypocalypse: WorldEdit disaster

In September 2015, the largest WorldEdit accident in the server occured. Then server member Jotch was working on the construction of the WolvHaven Metro extension into Mechanicsburg which was originally meant to go in the lower deck of the Silonner Bridge. He had made a selection in the North of Westward before proceeding to another location near Palais De Royale to work on another project.

However, Jotch did not deselect the selection earlier made in Westford, and while making a selection near Palais De Royale, the second point of the selection failed to register, likey due to connection latency issues. He then proceeded to //set 0 on a selection that made up almost 50% of the city.

Due to the server's then recently upgraded hardware, this meant that the server was able to handle and process most of the world edit operation before crashing. As a result, they relogged into the server to find that almost all of the city had its ground level deleted and replaced with an approximately 7m deep hole.

The Joshypocalypse incident led to the introduction of WorldEdit limits on the server to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.

2016:

City-Build 2.0 Terminated: Too much drama

In early 2016, SilverWolv announced the termination of the original/old Gardellia citing excessive drama that was caused by the world and inadequate moderation or enforcement standards. A replacement world would be worked on which would later become the current Gardellia world. A new world was desired to address all of the design issues faced by the original Gardellia.

A search for a suitable world seed was initiated, and the seed "qixtato" was selected after rounds of suggestions. Work on the network would progress over the rest of the year before its final opening.

City-Build 3.0: (New) Gardellia is here! launched (Christmas Day)

Westlandia2's replacement was launched on Christmas Day, 25th December 2016.

2020:

Media Revolution

newsnet, WolvHaven's first independent media organization was launched in January 2020 by MatthieuTofu & CM Raiders. It marked the end of the WolvHaven Broadcasting Corporation's monopoly on the WolvHaven media market.

Server leadership changes (August)

(POS and stuff)