'Widg3ts' sure claims to know a lot about this community for being a brand new member of it. Certainly there are reasons to be suspicious of this story, but I do not think any of his are good ones.
Providing a save would be great, though I believe a time lapse for this experiment would make this very cool. Nevertheless, despite the so many people screaming that this experiment might be fake, its what probably will happen with humans anyway. Which always made me feel sad.
Thanks for sharing this :-)
Nobody's suggesting that the scenario is implausible, only that it seems unlikely that the OP conducted this experiment himself.
Providing a save would be great, though I believe a time lapse for this experiment would make this very cool. Nevertheless, despite the so many people screaming that this experiment might be fake, its what probably will happen with humans anyway. Which always made me feel sad.
Thanks for sharing this :-)
Of course we're "screaming" that it might be a hoax. Any project could be a forgery, be it a project that someone claims to have built "legit" in Survival but which was actually made in Creative mode, or some achievement some random person is bragging about, or some upcoming or past game feature (Herobrine, anyone ?). If you're not even open to the possibility that this could conceivably be a hoax, you're seriously narrow-minded.
I also disagree with the pessimistic assessment of mankind from you and others in this thread. We live in probably the most peaceful age of mankind, and we're making great strides towards peace, prosperity and environmentalism. Don't just focus on the bad, look to the good we're doing for once .
I might add, if the map was this devastated, there'd be no reason to play. This whole thing is a scam/cry for attention. The post should be labeled as a fraud. Social engineering experiments (what this truly is-- an expirement on the forums, and a story going viral...attempting to make people believe this stuff) aren't in the spirit of the game, the forums, or the people that are here.. this should be recognized as a giant troll, and the associating accounts for the poster should be banned, and this thread marked as a joke--alternatively, the post could be edited, and the good 'ol "what if this was true" added.
Come now, what real harm has been done? Perhaps you feel stupid for being taken in or something (I honestly don't understand what you're so angry about, and that's my best hypothesis), but I love hoaxes like this, especially when I believe them in the beginning. The OP was an excellent write-up (except from spelling/grammar mistakes, perhaps), and the screenshots did a lot to add to the mood. It's also a very plausible scenario, which is the hallmark of good urban legends.
You should not have edited your post, it makes you sound like an ass. You cannot confirm or deny the legitimacy of the story or the screenshots, no reason to **** on the post. It was a good read anyway.
No one can conclusively prove anything, but we're fortunately still entitled to state our opinions. After having read more of the posts here, I'm inclined to believe this story is a hoax. Which makes it all the more awesome .
Nobody's suggesting that the scenario is implausible, only that it seems unlikely that the OP conducted this experiment himself.
Elsewhere in the thread he says he got it from 4chan or something. Which, come to think of it, is also a bit suspicious, isn't it?
I think it fairly obvious that the original experiment never happened. However, the outcome is so plausible, the timeline so intriguing, that its believable that it did. Its an experiment worth "repeating" (or doing for the first time, if you prefer).
And why am I positive the original experiment never happened? Not because of destroyed nether portals only partially destroyed, or accessible resources no one has bothered to mine. No amount of guesswork based on the screenshots are needed. It boils down to one simple fact: where are any of these 30 people? Just one. Someone who says "yeah I was there, it was awesome!" No one bragging? No one complaining? No one with a personal diary of their gameplay?
Why does this make so much sense? Even in a video-game humanities greediness and lack of forethought lead to the complete deterioration of and eventual destruction of the environment. What's even worse in my opinion is that the only successful ones were those that capitalized of the misery of others. It's honestly hard to believe that you could fail so hard at MC, even in single player I try to preserve the environment, knowing that mining all the ores and cutting all the trees will have dire consequences.
The screenshots were added to the story. They are not the original. The story is copy and pasted from 4chan or another website.
A quick Googling of a paragraph from the OP pulls up an archived /vg/ thread created on the same day this thread was posted. However, the person who posted the text links back to here. It's original, at the least.
This is an interesting read, even tickles the brain to even imagine such an event taking place.
However, too many inconsistencies.
30 players and very few knew how to make a tree farm for infinite quantities of wood?
Let's not forget cobblestone generators, there is plenty of information about both of those things to make them.
Not to mention that there's a lack of images concerning these "large builds" that all these resources were consumed for.
Another inconsistency is the way everywhere looks. It LOOKS TNT'd for sure. No doubt in my mind about that.
Very few people in Minecraft mine the way it looks in the images, they make flat areas most of the time. They don't make random holes everywhere, it's far too inefficient. Also slows down travel time across the landscape considerably. Surely one person out of the thirty would do that. But I saw no evidence of this.
With proper work, one person alone could have made a farm to feed everyone, a tree farm to supply endless supplies of any type of wood and a cobblestone farm for ANY type of build.
I can understand sand disappearing but Dirt? Not much use for dirt in big builds unless making gardens... Which funnily enough requires grass to grow on it. So why the scarcity of that?
Another thing to note is that none of the so called 30 players have come forward, all I can see is a lot of destroyed land and some buildings that can easily be built by a SINGLE person with very few supplies.
Also look at the nether portal.
NO ONE would fill in the gaps after mining some of the obsisian out and if you were using it then why not all of it and random parts?
No just no.
TL:DR? Sorry but I have to say this is fake, no matter how sugar coated it is.
I've hosted a few Minecraft servers in the past. Proper, 100MB/s servers that is. If anyone is still reading this, and would still like to join in an experiment like this, email me at [email protected] and I'll see how many people I can get together. If we get enough people, we'll figure out a server.
This is an interesting read, even tickles the brain to even imagine such an event taking place.
However, too many inconsistencies.
30 players and very few knew how to make a tree farm for infinite quantities of wood?
Let's not forget cobblestone generators, there is plenty of information about both of those things to make them.
Not to mention that there's a lack of images concerning these "large builds" that all these resources were consumed for.
Another inconsistency is the way everywhere looks. It LOOKS TNT'd for sure. No doubt in my mind about that.
Very few people in Minecraft mine the way it looks in the images, they make flat areas most of the time. They don't make random holes everywhere, it's far too inefficient. Also slows down travel time across the landscape considerably. Surely one person out of the thirty would do that. But I saw no evidence of this.
With proper work, one person alone could have made a farm to feed everyone, a tree farm to supply endless supplies of any type of wood and a cobblestone farm for ANY type of build.
I can understand sand disappearing but Dirt? Not much use for dirt in big builds unless making gardens... Which funnily enough requires grass to grow on it. So why the scarcity of that?
Another thing to note is that none of the so called 30 players have come forward, all I can see is a lot of destroyed land and some buildings that can easily be built by a SINGLE person with very few supplies.
Also look at the nether portal.
NO ONE would fill in the gaps after mining some of the obsisian out and if you were using it then why not all of it and random parts?
No just no.
TL:DR? Sorry but I have to say this is fake, no matter how sugar coated it is.
1. I am pretty sure any tree farms or cobble generators would be destroyed or hidden somewhere by the time the picks were taken.
2. The "large builds" were probably destroyed for resources.
3. I highly doubt people stripping the map for resources would leave perfectly flat areas. Random holes everywhere are what you'd expect of people desperately stripping the land of resources. Also, do you think people would put a large flat area in front of their base? If you need to defend your base from raiders you're probably going to make the land hard to traverse on purpose.
4. Like i said, these things would probably be destroyed or well hidden.
5. Small buildings/ruins are probably what was built anyway, so those things are probably the only things that survived.
6. I don't know why someone would try to fill it in, but the person that did probably had a reason.
I ran a very similar experiment, except the map was much, much smaller (100x100) and the world around the box was removed with WorldEdit before the experiment began. Glass was placed atop the box to allow sunlight and was then protected with WorldGuard.
It continued for about three weeks of about 6 hours of play every day with 12 people. These results simply didn't happen when I ran the experiment, maybe it's because we were more forward-sighted, maybe it's because the game mechanics have since changed.
In fact, it brings up some things that don't make sense about this experiment. Why is grass, outside of new seeds, necessary? How was the Merchants' Guild able to farm animals that in recent versions of the game spawn with the chunk, and thus don't respawn? How was food "scarce" when rotten flesh is a perfectly acceptable option? You don't need grass to grow wheat, only dirt and a hoe.
What version of the game was this experiment run on?
What version of the game was this experiment run on?
Most people are assuming it was 1.7.3, as that would have grass for farming animals and rotten flesh/spider eyes not being available.
Also, the Merchant's Guild could of just used wheat, but since in none of the images it shows the guild with any grass or wheat, I am assuming that this part of the story is false, this assuming that the whole thing isn't anyway.
People aren't understanding this. The story is from minecraft alpha, when animals spawned on grass. The screenshots were later added as a dramatic effect, it was copy and pasted.
It does look sort of hard to believe. Why wouldnt any faction decide the ****-ass griefers were to much and attack their base? two stacks of any material should have been enough to get there. It probably is fake since if it has pistons then its newer than alpha but if grass still spawns animals its before pistons.
Listen, it's fake. A guy made it up to sound interesting. There's a hundred things that point towards the fact that this is a hoax. Don't waste time discussing it.
There was an actual story, as I said, this is copy and pasted then edited. This was actually done in minecraft alpha.
Nobody's suggesting that the scenario is implausible, only that it seems unlikely that the OP conducted this experiment himself.
I also disagree with the pessimistic assessment of mankind from you and others in this thread. We live in probably the most peaceful age of mankind, and we're making great strides towards peace, prosperity and environmentalism. Don't just focus on the bad, look to the good we're doing for once .
Come now, what real harm has been done? Perhaps you feel stupid for being taken in or something (I honestly don't understand what you're so angry about, and that's my best hypothesis), but I love hoaxes like this, especially when I believe them in the beginning. The OP was an excellent write-up (except from spelling/grammar mistakes, perhaps), and the screenshots did a lot to add to the mood. It's also a very plausible scenario, which is the hallmark of good urban legends.
No one can conclusively prove anything, but we're fortunately still entitled to state our opinions. After having read more of the posts here, I'm inclined to believe this story is a hoax. Which makes it all the more awesome .
Elsewhere in the thread he says he got it from 4chan or something. Which, come to think of it, is also a bit suspicious, isn't it?
I support gas pockets in MC (see thread in Suggestions)!
And why am I positive the original experiment never happened? Not because of destroyed nether portals only partially destroyed, or accessible resources no one has bothered to mine. No amount of guesswork based on the screenshots are needed. It boils down to one simple fact: where are any of these 30 people? Just one. Someone who says "yeah I was there, it was awesome!" No one bragging? No one complaining? No one with a personal diary of their gameplay?
As he clearly stated in the story, he said DIRT WITH GRAAASS ON IT.
A quick Googling of a paragraph from the OP pulls up an archived /vg/ thread created on the same day this thread was posted. However, the person who posted the text links back to here. It's original, at the least.
However, too many inconsistencies.
30 players and very few knew how to make a tree farm for infinite quantities of wood?
Let's not forget cobblestone generators, there is plenty of information about both of those things to make them.
Not to mention that there's a lack of images concerning these "large builds" that all these resources were consumed for.
Another inconsistency is the way everywhere looks. It LOOKS TNT'd for sure. No doubt in my mind about that.
Very few people in Minecraft mine the way it looks in the images, they make flat areas most of the time. They don't make random holes everywhere, it's far too inefficient. Also slows down travel time across the landscape considerably. Surely one person out of the thirty would do that. But I saw no evidence of this.
With proper work, one person alone could have made a farm to feed everyone, a tree farm to supply endless supplies of any type of wood and a cobblestone farm for ANY type of build.
I can understand sand disappearing but Dirt? Not much use for dirt in big builds unless making gardens... Which funnily enough requires grass to grow on it. So why the scarcity of that?
Another thing to note is that none of the so called 30 players have come forward, all I can see is a lot of destroyed land and some buildings that can easily be built by a SINGLE person with very few supplies.
Also look at the nether portal.
NO ONE would fill in the gaps after mining some of the obsisian out and if you were using it then why not all of it and random parts?
No just no.
TL:DR? Sorry but I have to say this is fake, no matter how sugar coated it is.
1. I am pretty sure any tree farms or cobble generators would be destroyed or hidden somewhere by the time the picks were taken.
2. The "large builds" were probably destroyed for resources.
3. I highly doubt people stripping the map for resources would leave perfectly flat areas. Random holes everywhere are what you'd expect of people desperately stripping the land of resources. Also, do you think people would put a large flat area in front of their base? If you need to defend your base from raiders you're probably going to make the land hard to traverse on purpose.
4. Like i said, these things would probably be destroyed or well hidden.
5. Small buildings/ruins are probably what was built anyway, so those things are probably the only things that survived.
6. I don't know why someone would try to fill it in, but the person that did probably had a reason.
The day I tried to install Civ 2 on my new computer and realized i couldn't because Civ 2 is too old was the day my heart broke.
Guess I'll have to settle for 3 and 5... (If only Civ 4 actually worked too...)
Wait for time
In the break of new dawn
We will never meet
It continued for about three weeks of about 6 hours of play every day with 12 people. These results simply didn't happen when I ran the experiment, maybe it's because we were more forward-sighted, maybe it's because the game mechanics have since changed.
In fact, it brings up some things that don't make sense about this experiment. Why is grass, outside of new seeds, necessary? How was the Merchants' Guild able to farm animals that in recent versions of the game spawn with the chunk, and thus don't respawn? How was food "scarce" when rotten flesh is a perfectly acceptable option? You don't need grass to grow wheat, only dirt and a hoe.
What version of the game was this experiment run on?
Most people are assuming it was 1.7.3, as that would have grass for farming animals and rotten flesh/spider eyes not being available.
Also, the Merchant's Guild could of just used wheat, but since in none of the images it shows the guild with any grass or wheat, I am assuming that this part of the story is false, this assuming that the whole thing isn't anyway.
There was an actual story, as I said, this is copy and pasted then edited. This was actually done in minecraft alpha.