Survival 2 Launch Event

Survival 2 Launch Event
Survival 2
The End Portal under Spawn; the final destination of the event.
Event
Type	Dragon Fight
Date	September 2nd, 2017, 9:00pm GMT
Activities	Role-play PvP and PvE
Organizers	Staff Team
Attendance	80+
World	Survival 2

The Launch of the Survival 2 world occurred on the 2^nd of September, 2017 at 9:00pm GMT and marked the opening of the second Survival Multiplayer world on the Dogcraft Server. The ceremonies, led by ReNDoG on a live stream on his Twitch channel, leveraged the medieval fantasy theme of the spawn area that had just been finished by the Build Team for a role playing event in which the players had to fight against "Dwarves" (played by build and moderation staff), with the ultimate aim being to defeat the Ender Dragon and kick off the new Survival world.

Order of Ceremonies

Players, lined up in waiting in the Server Hub were able to join the world at 9:00pm as the portal was opened. Upon joining, everyone was placed into the throne room of the Spawn Castle. Players were led by ReNDoG through the spawn region as he read lore books providing some backstory for the area and fight, along the way collecting some equipment. After awhile, players were led underground through a custom-build ravine, at which point a battle event took place.

Moderation staff, equipped with fully enchanted diamond armour, swords and bows were tasked with defending the exit to the Stronghold in the Ravine from players, equipped with simple gold tools. After the battle concluded, ReNDoG proceeded through the stronghold area into a Mineshaft, where viewers helped him collect Ender Eyes to be able to open up the End Portal and battle the Ender Dragon. In the end, as a result of a technical hiccup, the battle lasted an extended period of time as players had lost the equipment they obtained earlier.

After several minutes, the Dragon was slain, and players were free to return through the portal and begin adventures in the new Survival 2 world.

Problems

Although server performance remained stable throughout the event, an array of technical hiccups caused issues. The first problem to arise was that all players were able to access the special lore books placed for ReNDoG and his live stream, due to an incomplete setup of the region protection, leading to several being lost and players being rapidly kicked and punished to prevent them from stealing the books.

In the battle section that took place in the ravine, players were equipped with simple gold armour and wooden weapons, which proved no match for the "Dwarven" fully enchanted diamond equipment, leading to a mass-slaughter of the newly joined (and confused) players. A number of players described the role-play battle as a "bloodbath". Eventually, after making little headway with only only one or two casualties, the Dwarven side was made to retreat.

Perhaps the most notable technical issue, however, was the accidental slaughter of the entire server by administrators. Once ReNDoG had reached the end, an administrator tried to force all players to catch up by doing a "tpall", which would teleport everyone to the same spot on the end island. Unfortunately, the position they chose was such that the plugin tried to correct the location of the teleport to be "safe", which inadvertently selected a position outside of the world, instantly killing almost every player. When players returned to the battle, they had no equipment, so staff quickly tried to correct the mistake by spawning in bows and arrows which were distributed among players. This also meant that most of the special lore books, which ReNDoG had previously just distributed as souvenirs were lost to the void, although  Scooberson was able to save some by placing them in his Ender Chest before he died.

The final technical problem that was later corrected was that the End Exit Portal accidentally placed players at the 0, 0 location rather than the spawn point for a time (as the /spawn location had yet to be properly updated during the Dragon Fight).

Reception & Legacy

The initial reception to the event was largely positive, barring the technical mishaps which caused some frustration. Some players were impressed with the scale, lore and build quality in spawn, while others criticised it as cumbersome to navigate, being only designed for the one-off event rather than to last the whole season; a response that would lead to the succeeding Survival 3's much simpler Spawn Basin.

Later on in the lifespan of the Survival 2 world, members of staff would try to encourage usage of the spawn area through promotional activities such as "Find the Moderator", in which players were tasked with exploring the area to find a Mod in exchange for Dogcraft Dollars.