The Island

The Island is the largest community build project in The Old World. It is located to the south east of the The Capital.

## History

The Island was born out of WhiteLikePaste's desire to mix things up in the realm and was originally intended to be just a throwaway map. Having recently completed the Nether Hub project, and feeling discouraged over a decrease in player activity, he wanted to do something that would allow him to get back to basics.

Unable to locate a seed that matched what he had in mind, he resorted to custom made maps on the Java version of Minecraft.

Several maps were reviewed for the project. The goal was to find something that wasn't too small that it would limit players from building at the scale they wanted, but wasn't so large that players would build too far away from each other and defeat the purpose of a community build.

To encourage players to build on and around The Island itself, the decision was made to introduce the concept of "No Man's Land". The  intention was to create anarchy everywhere outside of "safe zone" of The Island. This required the use of a different map from The Old World in order to protect the existing builds.

On November 4th, 2020 an advertisement went up for The Island to a largely positive reception. Since the surrounding area was a throwaway map at the time, many players were brought in at once since there was no risk that potential griefers could damage The Old World.

### Island Growth and Formation of The Committee

The Island grew at a much faster rate than anticipated and land was quickly was quickly used up. As a result, several players chose to build out on the water resulting in an expansion to the "safe zone".

Given the amount of players that were brought into the realm, issues quickly arose with theft. WhiteLikePaste felt it was necessary to establish a committee of players interested in helping to grow the realm and keep it enjoyable for members.

### World Merge

Several weeks into The Island event, it was determined that the majority of players were more interested in building and helping each other than they had interest in griefing or PVP.

Older realm members also expressed interest in returning to their previous builds. Although The Island had been intended as nothing more than a temporary thing, a community had developed over that time and the decision was made to merge The Island with The Old World using MCC ToolChest. Realm members were given a weeks notice to bury everything in their personal inventory and ender chests somewhere on The Island, so that everything could be transferred to The Old World.

On December 1st, 2020 the transition was made and The Island officially became part of The Old World.

### Aftermath

Several anomalies resulting from the world merge were anticipated. However, a new issue arose related to a bug in Minecraft at the time.

After being transferred over, double chests were inadvertently placed closer to the chunk borders resulting in them becoming invisible chests. The invisible chests could crash the realm and cause a loss in playtime upwards of an hour. Realm members were instructed to break these chests upon locating them. The 1.16.201 update corrected this issue.

The backstory of The Island was detailed in the video How The Island Happened which was released to mark the 1 year anniversary.