User:Darparniox/10years

The Dogcraft Server is turning 10 years old on the 28^th of September, 2025.

To mark the occasion, we're holding events all around the community. Here on the Dogcraft Wiki, we’ve curated a list of the 10 articles we think tell the story of the server over the past 10 years.

In addition, launching shortly will be an Interactive Timeline that will allow anyone to explore the server's history in more detail

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Curated articles

As we get closer to the 28^th, every second day, two more of our curated articles will be revealed and featured, so check back regularly!

Survival 1 - Pioneer
Beginnings

The official Dogcraft Server was launched on the 28th of September, 2015 to a group of whitelisted [Pioneer]s, and later opened to the public in November of that year.

The very early Dogcraft community was a mix of tight knit players who knew each well already upon launch through the forum community or unofficial servers, and new players that came and often went. This is evidenced by a world that was packed densely with builds around spawn, some impressive and complete, some in various unfinished states. There was often little central organisation of builds and initiatives, especially in the first few months of the world. Forum threads, alongside signs in game, and /mail acted as the main methods of communication.

In the latter year or so of Survival 1, the server began to have more organised initiatives, such as the first events by the staff Events Team, founding of the first player settlements and player led events such as elytra races.

Survival 2 - Settlement
Boom

Survival 2 was launched in the second half of 2017, and was open concurrently with Survival 1, though almost all players switched and were active on the newer world. The world was relatively short-lived - just 14 months.

During this period, the elements of organised player communities began to crystallise. This was a natural progression as similarly interested players become more familiar, but was also fueled by the rise of Discord as a communication platform, which allowed more organisation and regulation within a player group to accomplish increasingly specific goals.

The biggest rise in prominence was that of public settlements, which developed from the conditions described earlier, and exploded once spotlight was put on them by ReNDoG. This phenomenon has been posthumously referred to as the Townpocalypse.

Survival 3 - Evolution
& Diversification

Survival 3 was heralded by an abrupt hard reset of the economy, and removal of previous worlds, the first instance of it's kind on the Dogcraft Server.

Public 'community' projects continued to evolve, expand, and gain legitimacy. For example, community projects such as the Survival Railway Network, Nether Transport Network, and Grand Map were hosted in the Spawn admin claim itself. Earlier, the most prominent public communities had been base around a settlement, in Survival 3, those settlement communities continued to intertwine and diversify. New groups formed around those diversifications. A few organisations began to develop which were founded on the basis of events on the server, becoming sort of meta-projects, such as the DC Courtroom.

Also a popular phenomenon in Survival 3 was the proliferation of shared bases between groups of a handful of players. These had quite possibly quietly existed in the past, but several of these bases were on a scale seldom seen previously and difficult to achieve without more than a few members. Those bases achieved a level of renown that others had not, and display the deepening ties of players as the server aged.

Survival 4 - Amplification

In April 2020, the Dogcraft server moved server hosts from rented hardware to dedicated hardware at the premises of [Admin] staff. This brought with it marked increase in performance and the beginning of Survival 4, another fresh start. However, the hype of a new world and world events of the time would cause a marked increase player number upon launch and therefore huge strain on the server. The decision was made to implement a second parallel survival world 11 days after launch, Beagle, which successfully combatted these performance issues.

In many ways, Survival 4 continued the trends of Survival 3 but with increased volume and scale. The events scene was particularly lively during 2020 and beyond, with a notable run of well-attended live events, in part so successful due to the aforementioned increased playerbase. These were bolstered by the reformation of the Events Team during Survival 3, who continued and expanded their work significantly in Survival 4.

Transport networks, now a staple of the server, expanded to new heights in terms of scale even in the face dual worlds, due to ever-increasing resources and new initiatives. Creation and success of new networks was also present, which brought new infrastructure, and before the end of the world had inspired more in the form of future plans.

Survival 5 - Fragmentation

Community elements still there, just with less world continuity to support a thriving world. Factors outside of dc control didn't help.

Leon was a settlement endgame of sorts - a culmination of the size, control, and delegation/group build lessons learnt in previous dc worlds.