When I first heard about Minecraft, I thought it was an odd survival game that people used to build things in and dismissed it. I got the game for my oldest son at that time and left it at that.

Then in September 2013, GW2 released the Super Adventure Box event. It was a jump puzzle game, which I suck with, and was designed like the older games: digi music and blocky graphics. Some reason, it made my autistic son think of Minecraft. He would get animated and verbal whenever I played around in the mini game. So I decided that for his birthday I would get him a copy of Minecraft for the XBox 360.

Watching him play this game was exciting. The moment he loaded up the game, he transformed from a quiet boy to a very verbal one. He sought out interaction and initiated conversation regarding the game. So… I figured I would get the game for myself on the PC so I could stay in the loop of what he was talking about.

I discovered that not only could I play this game like I play Harvest Moon, but also make adventure maps. The notion reminded me of the AD&D days from childhood. So I spent 3 or 5 days building my first space adventure map only for my oldest son to beat it in 5 minutes… Suddenly I gained a greater appreciation for game designers, developers, and programmers. It’s a lot of work – and even more so for those epic games we love.

So then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be easier to have an open world that had mini story dungeons in it?” Players could log in, play however they wanted to play the game and opt to enjoy the adventure story pieces I’ve added here and there.

And thus began my journey as a first time server owner….

Originally published on LiveJournal. Archived here on 09/13/2019.