An announcement from the evil treant

Hello fellow Cubians! Taken from the CW Newsletter I sent out today, here’s a bit of an announcement about that weighty thing known as “the future”. Get yourselves comfy with a hot beverage of your choice!

Over these past eight years and onwards into our ninth, my goal with Cubic Worlds has always been to provide a friendly place that values whatever time spend you spend in it – and I hope that those of you who still play from time to time would agree that’s largely been a successful mission. Although we’re not as busy as we used to be, I would guess that most of the remaining “Vanilla+” servers like ours are probably seeing the same steady decline – but hey, let’s not be too downhearted when we can still get a decent crowd of folks for a weekend event!

Personally, while I still get a lot of satisfaction from doing everything I do on the Minecraft side of CW (and that absolutely won’t be changing any time soon), I now find myself getting more and more excited for the possibilities of Hytale, a game I mentioned in the previous newsletter. After keeping a close eye on the game’s development blog since it was first announced, I feel confident enough about it to say that I would like to start a Cubic Worlds Hytale server as soon as it’s possible to do so. The ethos would be exactly the same as Minecraft – a family-friendly place to build and adventure in however you want, with as few world wipes as possible. Given how flexible Hytale claims to be, it would be so much easier to create interesting custom content for players. New block types, new items, and much more, all in a way that doesn’t need mods or plugins for either the server or the client!

Of course, Hytale isn’t out yet, and from recent news, it’s likely to be quite a few months before even a closed beta begins. It may not live up to expectations. Between now and then, any number of things could happen. I don’t have a crystal ball to know for sure! But the obvious question is this: If Hytale does become the next best thing, what happens to CW’s Minecraft server? Well, as much as I want to, I can’t give a cast-iron guarantee that I could continue to run both a Minecraft and Hytale server at once – it might finally be the time when someone else has to take over. But if that happens – and I really can’t stress how big and important these “if”s are – I guarantee that I’ll be on hand to offer every bit of knowledge and advice I can to ensure the Minecraft aspect of CW continues on for years to come.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to joining you for some cake-chomping later today!