The Student news source for West Shore Junior/Senior High School

The Roar

The Student news source for West Shore Junior/Senior High School

The Roar

The Student news source for West Shore Junior/Senior High School

The Roar

Popular ‘Minecraft’ expands for vacation

After its alpha-testing release in 2009, the sandbox game Minecraft has had just under six million purchases, with 29,000,000 registered accounts. It is now one of the most widely played games in the world.

“I play Minecraft a lot,” sophomore Daniel Tenbusch said. “It isn’t uncommon for me to skip studying to play ‘Minecraft’ for a few minutes — well, a few hours realistically. It’s just so much fun that the time flies by.”

“Minecraft” was created by the Mojang employee Markus “Notch” Persson. The game’s objective is to do whatever the player wants. There are monsters that come out at night to attack the player, who builds structures as either a means of survival from the monsters or to show artistic talent.

“I’ve built some pretty amazing structures with some of the other players on the server I play on,” junior Sam Edwards said. “We built a huge treehouse once, and one of my friends made a giant pirate ship named after his girlfriend. You can really do anything you want and build anything. That’s what makes it so awesome.”

Tenbusch and Edwards are two of many West Shore students who play on the same multiplayer server, hosted by 2011 graduate Calvin Montgomery, who currently attends Auburn University.

“I made the server a few months before I graduated with some of my friends,” Montgomery said. “Everyone who played at first, except for Alex Colón, was in my class. Soon it expanded throughout West Shore and now the server has around 60 people involved. It’s really great and I’m glad to be in charge of it.”

The server, used almost exclusively West Shore students, graduates and their friends, has had many changes during the past year. The server is moving to its seventh new map Friday night.

“The server doesn’t have a whitelist anymore,” Montgomery said. “We are moving to a new map for a fresh start that will hopefully be a big hit for the summer. I encourage anyone who plays to join the server. It is a lot of fun and we have some amazing players who are really fun to work with. The server’s address is mc.calzoneman.net.”

As Minecraft’s number of players keeps growing, so do individual servers. With an economy, building contest, and dungeon raids, Calvin’s server is one of the most popular among students today. Anyone can join, and it is a “fantastic way to waste your life away during the summer,” as Calvin puts it.

By Nathaniel Curtis

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