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Hey everyone!

First, let me start with... WOW
This caught me by surprise.

A few days ago I decided to redownload Minecraft as it has been roughly.. 4? 5? Years since I've played. Project Ares being the last server my account had ever logged into.

I quickly found out Project Ares was since shut down, and after (quite a bit) of searching where the members migrated to, hoping to find some sort of even Discord group or such, until I found this server. I was ecstatic to find that the project was still alive, as I have had so many good memories in Project Ares.

I joined oc.tc back when it was in beta testing and would only be online Saturdays while Apple streamed the development.

I stuck with the community, becoming a Moderator and eventually Admin. I still have emails about people's appeal requests due to us not having a website or appeal method. In fact, we didn't even have a way to report people.

I was later demoted, though I still stuck around for awhile creating maps, and still being close friends with the staff team.

I've made and helped with many maps including the Fairytale series, and Fort Wars remake.

I later left sometime in 2013, due to my lifestyle becoming more busy between focusing on my career finally being out of highschool and migration to other games that caught my interest more than Minecraft.

Anyways.. new phone.. who dis? AMA.

Why did u get demoted?

Going the zero effort route I'm just gonna paste what I asked you in discord lol.

I'm interested in what you think about the current, most modern maps; since you can provide a contrast no one here probably can (as you were absent for such a long time and didn't see the evolution, but just the initial and final states). What surprised you the most?

If it's possible to take off the rose tinted glass, what style do you actually like the most?

Myself and a few other staff members were a bit too trigger happy with WorldEdit.

For instance,
H0B0 and I would spawn massive TNT cannons on Shroom Trip for both sides.

Though the final instance that for me the demotion was one night, when there were roughly 30 total members online, Sand Wars in rotation was about to start and people were asking for Gravel Wars.

Gravel Wars was something Apple and And would do when they streamed, turning the sand into gravel.

I thought, hey it's late at night and many people are requesting gravel... And I was curious how Dragon Eggs would run. So, instead of the classic gravel or sand I turned it to Eggs. One of MinimalCow's friends took a screen shot and reported it to MininalCow whom reported it to Apple which landed me the demotion.

I found it fair, as technically I did abuse the power by using WorldEdit; but it was in the name of FUN! ;)

Dbzflip tried really hard to protest the demotion lol.

Great question! I feel the maps definitely have changed quite a bit, in terms style, palettes, and even some cool new game modes.

One of the biggest things I noticed is no one uses chests for spawn items anymore, every map includes a spawn kit. This feature was utilized quite a bit as it added a delay between spawning and ready for action, thus restrictions towards rushers and defenses. It seems every map has been adapted towards spawning the items in your inventories which I find truely sad. As it also added the fact that if you use up too many materials too quick- you'll run out and be forced to fight with nothing. It added to the core gameplay and it's truely missed by me.

In regards to themes, there are quite a few beautiful maps but I really haven't seen anything that made my jaw drop like the maps released by Bleangamer, Plastix, IMAH0B0, etc. Ozone for example.
Maybe this is because the community thought with complex aesthetic focus like that would hinder the new player's atmosphere due to it being a lot to take in at once, or maybe some other reason. I do really like some of the themes chosen, and how they were handled in some of these new maps though and they all definitely have their own appeal one way or another.

There are quite a few fun maps on the new rotation and I'm definitely happy to see more game modes such as the Race ones and such (I wasn't here for Arcade).

I also noticed a lot of the same mechanics and strategies used in map making today that were used previously but not many new things that caught my eye. For instance in Fortress Battles (the original) was made entirely of wool, and granted access to flint and tinder. Now imagine the crazy stuff and strategies made using that ;). Shame Nada changed it. There's not many new map mechanics I've seen being drawn forward to add to the experience making the maps feel different from eachother; but that also may be because most ideas were exhausted due to time?

All that being said I do look forward to seeing newer maps especially for after the rework when I feel people will be able to take advantage of what PGM can offer more easily.

I thought you were rockymine because, when I looked at your OCN profile, I saw rockymine's: http://web.archive.org/web/20160911125537/oc.tc/D347HxD

My question is: why did you have that? I'm curious.