Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, TN!
I’m assisted today by our Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii.
It’s been a couple weeks since our last newsletter, and we just had our quarterly meeting, so we’ve got a lot to cover. Let’s jump in!
2023 Q1 quarterly meeting
I also appreciate everyone in the community who submitted feedback in advance or attended live for shaping the discussion!
Some of the decisions made during the meeting went into effect immediately, others, like re-enabling images on all of the channels will occur as I have time to get to them this week.
Video On Demand
Thanks to Tommy for filming and streaming the meeting!
Thanks to Blug, DaUltraMarine, and the other HermitCraft community and fan server admins for running the first HermitFan UHC event!
Our team of Kindalas, Maahes0, MercurialVoid, and Salem managed to live and die together and claimed 4th place out of eight teams representing different Hermits’ communities.
It was a lot of fun, and congrats to the winners (who I won’t spoil here, go watch the VOD of me flying around and commentating)!
Minecraft Servers
Deep Slate Nine petitions and parade this Sunday!
Petitions for January will be held on DS9 at 1pm Central on Jan 29th, followed by the Groundhog Day Parade!
Modded Server updates
I updated several mods last week, so if you try to connect and get weird errors, please pop into #modded-setup-help for the latest list.
January 2023 Everstorm launches!
This month’s Everstorm showcases the Seven of Mine Server at the crucial junction when I created a manual backup to migrate it from a Minecraft Realm to a dedicated server! Come witness a piece of community history… if you dare!
Obituaries… so far!
Laxmi13 was impaled to death because she forgot that evil water creatures were a thing.
2023 Pinball FX3 tournament progress
Results so far:
Congrats to Mr. Hardluck for taking 1st place on both of our tournaments so far this year!
Week 1: Fish Tales
Week 2: Theatre of Magic
Week 3: The Champion Pub
Lace up your boxing gloves and practice your Strongbad voice, because this week’s table is The Champion Pub!
See you in the ring!
Streams
Upcoming schedule
I expect to stream at my usual times this week, with a few bonus streams. All times US Central.
Tuesday, January 24th
8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with in-studio guest Quinn Hills
Wednesday, January 25th
8:30am: Crafts with Cleo
Thursday, January 26th
8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
Friday, January 27th
8:30am: bonus HermitCraft stream with coffee
8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
Saturday, January 28th
8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
Sunday, January 29th
1pm: Petitions
2pm: GroundHog Day build contest
8:30pm: HermitCraft 9 Live!
Notable streams recently
Dracula concludes
Crafts with Cleo
Upcoming conventions
I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!
Biggest freelance client for Joe’s freelance contract has ended and has not been renewed. It does mean less revenue but it also now frees up time for Joe to work on more creative ventures.
Joe is also sleeping better as a whole and is more creatively energized
Joe hasn’t felt this excited about editing in years
Streams have had tech back where Joe would like them
Friday morning streams are a hit
Saturday night reading streams are grinding but thoughtful
Focused work streams like that are good for maintaining forward momentum
Potentially adding more morning streams, but requires balance with editing time
Music/Albums
Quinn Hills will be joining Joe in studio to hang out with a guitar for a stream soon
Commercial real estate is cheap right now from the pandemic, and an off site studio is being considered
Night streams might be less elaborate if so, but in the long term Joe would like to stream from the road
More of that will be addressed in depth at the next quarterly meeting
Volume 3 is coming, branding needs sorting but the most important aspect is that Quinn feels comfortable
Joe Hills Speaks Spoken Word project
TTRPG games were fun, and running more one shots on the discord is desired
Call of Cluethulu
Patreon goals and tier review
$3000 goal at last meeting has been meeting that goal
This is because one person has been hitting the $500 tier but it is not long term
Short term/immediate investments have been made with tech upgrades
Long term goals are known, the matter is meeting them.
Kindalas suggests updating the patreon quarterly so folks know it is not abandoned and more folks can be drawn in
If we hit a certain monetary goal (4k or 5k a month? numbers need to be run) do we make some of the servers available to everyone?
Not an individual sponsorship program
Yes this is something we can open feedback for and consider in the future
Funds would cover more staff time and hardware such as laptops for server operators
Vacation mode considered a success
Concerns raised were “does Joe not trust his mods”
He does, vacation mode was not made from a lack of faith in staff
Joe wants to prepare for situations like the company doing well and flying the staff team to PAX for a booth, or so well that we do a staff retreat for a week. In those scenarios, everyone trusted to run the discord in unavailable. Preparing for failure needs to also be met with preparing for success
The test of vacation mode was to see if the discord could exist with NO staff available.
Vacation mode isn’t being considered for when Joe goes to Europe for spring break as Joe trusts his staff to run things while he is away. If that doesn’t work out well that shows the scope for how the discord runs.
Server operators cannot do emergency maintenance on the server consoles as Joe will not provide them with root access on personal devices.
If spring break is a nightmare and can be fixed we will do that. If it goes poorly and can’t be fixed vacation mode would be used in instances like when Joe gets married and goes on a honeymoon.
Vacation mode is for cases of extreme unavailability, such as honeymoons or PAX.
Likely won’t be used for an entire month again, vacation mode is intended to be used sparingly.
Minecraft servers
Long-term server reset schedule, season 9 is intended to last longer than season 6
Current HermitCraft Season expected to run at least 9–12 more months.
This means our flagship server wouldn’t change until then, and not be reset for a while
Modded and vanillish servers would reset on their own needs based upon community members desires and resources
Joe would like to launch a side series/modded server at some point mid year
We’ll solicit feedback for that in March for a May/June launch
Maintenance schedule
Joe was wiped from server maintenance from freelance work but is now more free to do that
Have a preflight checklist before travel and have one item be server maintenance
One server needs an operating system update
Dependant on the data center and Joe’s availability
Discord
One issue is that people are posting big gifs that aren’t alt texted and is hard for Joe to process, and he can’t parse the intended meaning
Spam channels are supposed to be for user-created work, and folks posting reaction images push that work further up and distract from it
Joes proposes best option may be text only channel/category, community agrees
Joe creates All-Text category to host #feels #introductions and #alt-general
Joe knows he can’t broadly replace discord’s full functionality, but he is prepared to spin up an alternative online forum as a place to go should discord but taken over by facebook
Our first channel cull was a learning experience
Future culls will be more forward-looking and consider upcoming game launches, like Pokémon
Culls will not occur every quarter; at most once a year or every other year
Culls will be announced 3 months in advance
Adding channels will be done quarterly
Spam things you wrote channel has been added to the discord
Pokemon channel has been added to the discord
Joe says removing it was a mistake
Dwarf Fortress will NOT be added.
Space channel has been added to the discord
Food-and-drink channel has been added to the discord
Spam-work-you-commissioned channel has been added to the discord
This is an experimental channel.
TTRPG channel has been added to the discord
Technology channel has been added to the discord
Suggested channels that need more feedback are a fashion channel and a research/science channel
New feedback channel for emojis has been added, emojis are likely to be added based on whimsy, emotional investment in your proposals is not advised
The next quarterly meeting is tentatively scheduled for the 3rd weekend in April.
Happy New Year! I’m launching into 2023 with help from our community Liaison ThatTommyBoii!
Final agenda for the Quarterly meeting
Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.
I will be on voice and screen-sharing on Discord, and Tommy will stream it on his channel as well. The VOD and minutes will be posted afterwards.
If anyone has feedback they’d like to ensure we see, please post it in the relevant channels in the #joe-hills-meta category.
Creative work in 2023: episodes, streams, and songs
Less freelance work, more creative energy
Review patreon tiers and patreon community goals
Vacation mode moving forward: how it will work and when to use it
Minecraft Servers
Long-term server reset schedule
maintenance schedule – Brandon (netcropolis)
Discord
Image and embed functionality
Enable ability to share images in channels such as gaming-general and minecraft – Aviva
Text-only channels or categories
Spam channels clarification on posting non-user-created images. – Tommy
Channel culls and reintroductions
Follow-up: Review accessibility implications of screen readers and consolidated channels – Meep and Joe
Frequency of channel culling
Adding channels back to discord
Review server emotes – Kindalas
New and returning channels under consideration
Here’s the current list of channel suggestions. If y’all have others you’d like to see considered, please share them between now and the Quarterly meeting in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels
#dwarf-fortress
#food
#pokemon
#space
#spam-things-you-wrote
#spam-work-you-commissioned
New Year, new Pinball FX3 tournament series!
I’d like as many folks as possible to enjoy our weekly pinball tournament, so I’m kicking off 2023 with Fish Tales, a free download for anyone with Steam on their PC.
I hope to see you on the leaderboard!
Minecraft servers
Deep Slate Nine petitions
Petitions for January will be held on DS9 at 1pm Central on Jan 29th, followed by the Groundhog Day Parade!
Modded Server cliffside build competition
Looking for a long-term build contest? ToxxicGlitter wants you!
Build a home, city, post-apocalyptic society, or whatever dwelling you deem fit, in one of the sheer cliffs around spawn.
At noon Central on February 11th, I will be streaming a visit to the modded server to judge y’all’s work! I’m looking forward to it!
Rules and info can be found in SMP 1.19 Modded by ToxxicGlitter > #modded-cliffside-competition
Parade float build contests
Groundhog Day!
It’s Groundhog day! Again!
Team Redstone will be hosting our next Parade Float Build Contest on January 29th at 2pm Central!
If you’d like to participate, please sign up in Activity Sign Ups > #jan-29-groundhog-day-parade
New Year’s!
Thanks to Team Radical for hosting the 2023 New Year’s Parade Float Build Contest!
Congratulations to our winners SuperStone and Dahlia!
Notable streams recently
Upcoming conventions
I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring! They should have registration info going live soon, so keep an eye on their website this week!
Joe Hills here, with help per usual from our community liaison ThatTommyBoii!
This will be our final newsletter of 2022!
I think that these have been really helpful for keeping me organized each week, and I hope you’re getting something out of them too!
Please leave any feedback you have in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter on our Patreon Discord!
Our first newsletter of 2023 will be on January 9th. We’ll be off the next week in observance of Martin Luther King Day, and will resume our regular Monday publication schedule January 23rd.
Quarterly meeting for January 2023
Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.
More Discord channels
To ensure your idea gets added to the list to be considered at the meeting in mid-January, please post your suggestion with the following format.
[channel] Channel name Overlap: justification for why this overlaps with my interests in a way that isn’t better left to be owned by a community member elsewhere Plus: any other notes that can be read quickly during the meeting.
Channels submitted for consideration:
Dwarf Fortress
Food
Space
Spam things you wrote
Pokemon
Please add more!
The actual list will end up in the January 9th newsletter before the next Quartly Meeting, so please try to have your suggestions in by January 8th to Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels
Upcoming Community Events
December 28th: DS9 New Years Parade build contest
Team Radical will be hosting the Deep Slate Nine New Years build contest at noon US Central time on Wednesday, December 2022.
If you’d like a space on the parade route, please let us know in the Activity Sign-Ups > #dec-28-new-years-parade channel.
December 29th: HermitFan UHC qualifiers
Our second and final HermitFan UHC qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.
Thanks for your patience with the uncertainties of holiday planning so far this season. I’m still attempting to maintain my regular five night-a-week schedule as best I can, but here’s a few things to note this holiday season:
Today’s HHH will not occur at the usual time due to an embargoed Zedvancement group recording
Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.
One of the biggest take-aways from the Empires Crossover was the importance of streaming more when the Euro-crowd is awake, so I’ll be trying to do more bonus streams earlier in the day next year.
Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament
Black Rose for December 2022
Congrats to Toxxic Glitter for his first win of 2022!
It’s also his final win of the year as week-long pinball tournaments have concluded for 2022.
2022 results
In 2022, Forgantly was our winningest competitor with 18 weekly wins!
Mr. Hardluck and Wrex Verdi tied for 2nd, with two weekly wins each!
Here’s the tables we played this year, and who won each. You’ll see some repetition as we played more games than there are tables.
Creature from the Black Lagoon: Parker
Monster Bash: Forgantly
Medieval Madness: Forgantly
Junk Yard: Kindalas
Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
Attack From Mars: Mr_Hardluck
Black Rose: MisterLantz
The Party Zone: Forgantly
Theatre of Magic: Forgantly
Champion Pub: Forgantly
Safe Cracker: Joe Hills
White Water: Forgantly
Hurricane: Forgantly
Red and Ted’s Road Show: Mr_Hardluck
Cirqus Voltaire: Forgantly
No Good Gofers: WrexVerdi
Tales of the Arabian Nights: Forgantly
Space Station: Forgantly
Doctor Dude and his Excellent Ray: Forgantly
FunHouse: Forgantly
Creature from the Black Lagoon: WrexVerdi
Monster Bash: Forgantly
Medieval Madness: Forgantly
Fish Tales: Forgantly
Junk Yard: Forgantly
Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
Attack from Mars: NJCoffeeJunkie
Black Rose: ToxxicGlitter
Pinball Tournaments in 2023
Our Pinball FX3 tournaments will resume the week of January 9th, 2023.
If folks have the chance to pick up the Williams Pinball FX3 packs cheap on the Steam Christmas sale, they can do so with confidence we won’t be switching over to the new mac-compatible Pinball FX for at least half a year.
Even if the new version’s steam launch surprises us by launching earlier, we’ll test its tournament-readiness with hour-long on-stream tourneys until the summer.
If it turns out that the new Pinball FX isn’t tournament ready by this summer, we’ll extend the Pinball FX3 tournament series deeper into the year and re-assess as appropriate.
Notable Streams this week
Upcoming conventions
I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!
Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, TN!
We’re back on the HermitCraft server!
The HermitCraft Empires crossover continues as we welcome the Empires people onto our home turf!
Non-Denominational Lights event on Vanillish server
Ortsg, an NPC designed by Yirggzmb, is visiting Vanillish to host a Non-Denominational Lights event! Ortsg will have a simple task for folks to complete and earn points to get silly prizes!
More details can be found in SMP: Vanillish By Yirggzmb > vanillish-general
NJCoffeeJunkie wins Attack from Mars Tournament!
This week’s Attack from Mars was incredibly competitive, with 19 players joining us! Congrats to NJ on the win!
This week’s pinball tournament will be played on Black Rose!
DS9 Vanilla server updated to 1.19.3
Update your jars like it’s picking season, the new version of Minecraft is here on DS9!
HermitFan UHC qualifiers continue
Our second qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.
December has arrived, so let’s just all get into that holiday spirit and acknowledge that things are going to be a bit more wild than usual schedule-wise for the next few weeks…
Upcoming Stream Schedule Aberrations
Between randomly imposed embargoes as we portal hop through rifts, friends and family in town, and a bunch of evening events I’ll be taking my kid to, there may be quite a few changes to the streaming schedule made with relatively short notice.
This week
My HHH stream for today (Monday, Dec 5th) is cancelled due to a recording conflict
My stream tonight may need to be a game other than Minecraft for embargo reasons.
This week’s Craft Stream (Wednesday, December 7th) will be broadcast with JaneyLaney instead of ZombieCleo
This Friday night’s HermitCraft 9 Live stream will be moved earlier in the day to 8:30am US Central time due to an evening commitment with my kid
Later this month
No stream the evening of Saturday, December 17th due to family obligations
This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time
Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.
There’ll likely be other last-minute holiday changes to things as we go. Thanks for your patience!
HermitFan UHC Updates!
Thanks to ToxxicGlitter for organizing our first UHC qualifier on Saturday!
Congrats to our winners Salem and Maahes0w0, who have secured spots on the team that will represent our community in the January 22nd UHC!
Madelinesocks and Kindalas also were incredibly competitive, and have secured positions as fallbacks on our waitlist if any of our four contenders have an emergent conflict.
Our next qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.
Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, Tennessee with help from our community liaison, ThatTommyBoii!
HermitFan UHC announced for Noon Central on January 22nd!
Several Hermitcraft communities are organizing a cross-server UHC!
This “Hermitfan UHC” will be a group event, with four players from each community playing as a team against the other communities for bragging rights.
Player Selection for our Community
Every community may determine their own criteria for selecting their players.
This community will use the following criteria:
ToxxicGlitter and Yirggzmb will each host a UHC between now and the end of the year, in which only contestants who will be available January 22nd may compete.
The top two players from each event will win a slot in the HermitFan UHC.
The next two runners-up from each UHC will serve as alternates in case any of the winners availability changes before the big event.
Entry is open to $10+/mo patrons
Toxxic’s qualifying round has been scheduled for December 3rd at 11am US Central time, with details in Activity-Sign-Ups > #dec-3-uhc-qualifier.
Yirggzmb’s will be later this month with details to come.
Tommy or I will try to stream those two events for all to enjoy!
Participating communities
The current list of fan communities/patreon servers participating (subject to change):
Cubfan
Etho
GeminiTay
Impulse
JoeHills
Mumbo
Scar
Vintagebeef
xBCrafted
Zedaph
Empires adventures continue!
Weekly Pinball Tournament
Junkyard results
Congrats again to Forgantly!
Getaway: High Speed II
This game is not subdued, it’s as intense as Steve Ritchie can make it!
Minecraft Servers
Everstorm Obituaries
While trying to set up in spawn village, a zombie broke down the door and stabbed Chefnutmeg in the back with a pickaxe.
This week’s big streams
Dracula!
Crafts!
Upcoming conventions
I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!
Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, Tennessee!
Last week’s planned newsletter was initially postponed so we could share the results of a staff meeting we had with guest accessibility expert Joanna Blackhart (and then more stuff happened), so let’s start there!
Accessibility feedback process review
I hired Joanna Blackhart, an accessibility expert in gaming and media, to join the staff and I for a meeting to review our existing processes for handling accessibility needs and requests.
The big take-aways were:
Accessibility processes are most effective when they are pro-active rather than reactive, so it would be better for us to ask for accessibility feedback about anything on the agenda for next quarter before decisions are made.
There is going to be diligence required before we act on any given request. The burden of that diligence ultimately falls on me, and while myself or my staff may ask follow-up questions of the folks making requests to speed up our research, we need to communicate clearly that they are not expected or required to provide that information for their request to be considered.
Moderating the feedback on requests from other members of the community may require a more hands-on approach to ensure folks sharing their own experiences aren’t framing them in ways that invalidate the experiences of others.
In the long term, having a staff member with a specialized role taking responsibility for the items above would be optimal, and I’ve approved a couple hours of research time for QueenDarkLady to draft what a position like that would look like in our community in more detail.
If you have thoughts on all this, please provide it on the Discord in the Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-accessibility channel.
What’s Tommy got to do with it?
In the past, if something isn’t someone else’s job already, I’ve tried to do it myself. Given the workload I’m facing at the moment, I can’t ensure a speedy turnaround on random things that just pop up, and so as community liaison, Tommy is taking point on tasks that don’t necessarily fit under anyone else’s purview at the moment.
As the community grows and changes, there will probably be a lot of emergent roles that will need to be filled immediately on ad hoc basis before we can figure out what they look like more formally and appoint someone else to do them.
I appreciate your patience with Tommy and I as we face new challenges. We encourage y’all to share your thoughts and concerns in the relevant feedback channels to help us better establish structured processes and roles to handle the tasks we are improvising responses to at the moment. Thank you again!
Still trapped on Empires!
Weekly Pinball Tournament
Medieval Madness results
We had a fantastic showing this week, with 17 participants! It might have helped a bit that I streamed playing the table for almost three hours on Friday night.
The results are clear, despite my best efforts, Forgantly has taken the crown with 122million points! Congrats, Forgantly!
Fish Tales
Forgantly wins again with 254 million points in Fish Tales!
This week’s table: Junk Yard!
This week’s table is Junk Yard, in which you find junk to build a craft capable of space flight, despite not being a billionaire! An angel and a devil are there to guide you as you break into a man’s place of business and throw toast at his dog! It’s a tale as old as time!
Minecraft Servers
Everstorm October closes
Our October Everstorm using the Ledger mod is now closed. If you have feedback about how being able to see what anyone changed around you felt and how it would affect your gameplay on a longer-running SMP server, please let us know in Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-everstorm.
Obituaries and Survivors
SuperStone died after being clown-cannonned by the ender dragon.
MisterLantz fell victim to the assassin enderman that had it out for him.
Kindalas survived despite Tommy’s insistence that I be exposed to danger.
MagentaAvocado: Supply short one pearl / Into the portal we dove / Victory was claimed
Laxmi13 made it to the end and back, literally, thanks to the help of friends and overpreparedness.
Everstorm November opens
ToxxicGlitter’s new Everstorm is a friendship adventure through hell. Get started in Realms-and-Servers > Everstorm-November-2022
Obituaries
While trying to set up in spawn village a zombie broke down the door and stabbed Chefnutmeg in the back with a pickaxe.
