Newsletter #6, for May 9th, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!

As always, I need as much help as I can get. So let’s start with exciting news on that front:

New server operator and moderator!

Yirggzmb promoted to server operator

Yirggzmb has been an exemplary community member and moderator for years now, and I am excited to announce that she has accepted a promotion to server operator!

I initially encouraged Yirggzmb to apply for a moderator position because I was impressed by her talent creating Minecraft mini-games. Since becoming a moderator, she’s helped me organize group activities in Minecraft like last year’s Decked Out contest and assisted with post-launch concerns on the Deep Slate 9 Vanilla SMP server.

In her new role as a server operator, Yirggzmb will be creative lead on the upcoming Vanillish server, which we hope to launch around the release of Minecraft 1.19. The goal of the Vanillish server will be to provide interested community members a HermitCraft-like experience with some quality-of-life improvements not supported on the Deep Slate 9 server, such as the Statues datapack for manipulating armor stands, or the Vanilla Tweaks datapack to stop enderman griefing.

We have several polls posted in the Servers and Realms > #tbd-vanillish-next channel. If you’re interested, please check it out and chime in! The more feedback Yirggzmb gets, the easier it will be to launch this project successfully.

In addition to serving as creative lead on the Vanillish SMP server, Yirggzmb will be a supporting server operator on the other servers I’m currently creative lead on, so if something goes wrong while I’m unavailable, she’ll be able to jump in and help.

If you’re interested in weird short-term server experiences, good news: Yirggzmb will also be in the rotation to create Everstorm Hardcore server rulesets, so keep an eye out for future announcements on that!

As the Vanillish server is still in the planning phase, Yirggzmb’s duties will still involve some Discord and occasional twitch moderation, however as she shifts her focus toward active server operation, she will be phasing out her time allocated toward Discord moderation. Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered too!

First new moderator hire: QueenDarkLady

Everyone, please congratulate our first new hire since the initial round of moderators came onboard in fall of 2020: QueenDarkLady!

QueenDarkLady has been a fun and active member of our community in both stream chat and discord for some time now, so I expect many of y’all are already familiar with her.

I had the good fortune to discuss community moderation and cultivating positive welcoming environments at length with QueenDarkLady at Tennessee Game Days earlier this year and was impressed by her audience advocacy.

You may notice that her Discord role has changed to “staff-in-training” for now, but I expect she’ll be up to speed and contributing as a full member of the staff by Friday!

We’re lucky to have her aboard!

Gartic Phone game night hosted by ThatTommyBoii this Friday!

I won’t be streaming due to family obligations this Friday or Saturday, so Tommy has stepped up this Friday night, May 13th, to host a Gartic Phone game night at my normal stream time.

Gartic Phone is a drawing game similar to Pictionary where players draw things based off prompts, and Tommy has suggested folks create spooky prompts in celebration of Friday the 13th!

More info can be found in the Activity Sign-Ups > #may-13-gartic-phone channel on Discord.

Minecraft Servers

Upcoming Experimental and Deep Slate Nine Petitions Sessions

  • May 21st, 1pm US Central
  • June 18th, 1pm US Central
  • July 30th, 1pm US Central

Everstorm server mark II

This is the final week of our second Everstorm server session, so make sure if you want to play, you hop on there before this Friday when we’ll launch the Mark III with some new surprises!

Only one obituary last week:

  • Kasikalli was end raiding, lost patience, and threw some risky pearls that sent him to the void.

Pinball with Musicians series concluded with TNA creator Scott Danesi

Last week’s Friday night pinball stream was a huge success, as I was joined via Discord call by the creator of Total Nuclear Annihilation, Scott Danesi.

We talked a lot about his career and pinball machine design, which I’m sure will shape my HermitCraft 9 mega-base plans!

If you couldn’t catch it live, I strongly encourage you to check out the VOD here:

Upcoming travel & conventions

Here’s a few events I’ll definitely be attending. I’ll be printing POGs with cool art to hand out. I hope some of y’all can make it!

So long and thanks!

Thanks to our Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii for help with this newsletter!

Until next time y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.

Keep adventuring!