Hey CubeCrafters!
2021 was a very interesting year - it's been a rollercoaster of events. But, through all of that, you've stuck with us, and we're eternally grateful for you all! We'd like to have a small recap of 2021 in this thread and discuss some changes we'll be making going into 2022.
During 2020, one of our goals was to reinvest into our Team - and that didn't stop going into 2021!
Last year, Team CubeCraft ended at 125 members - this year, we're ending it at 355 members!
frog memes updates from us!
Twitter | Instagram | Discord | YouTube | TikTok
If you're interested in joining Team CubeCraft, check out our team applications subforum here - we have loads of awesome positions that need some talented individuals like yourself.
Ziax is a games and events studio based in Manchester, UK. You may have previously known us as Digital Tree Media. - After working on events such as YogCon, Insomnia and dock10 Esports, as well as operating the CubeCraft Games network, we're beyond excited to see what 2022 has to offer for us as a studio as a whole. This change was also accompanied by a restructure of our admin team, which you can read about here.
Learn more about Ziax here - you can read up on our projects & our Team!
At the start of the year, we introduced some radical changes to Bedrock - changing how knockback works, improving your experience on the server with platform-based matchmaking and changing how our entities operate. This was groundbreaking for us! - This allowed us to keep improving our network and player experience by tackling the largest issues on our network at the time!
The introduction of our Bedrock resource pack was another way to improve our player experience! Being limited by the server's implementation of entities was always something that made us fall short in our game design. With this being implemented, we've been able to add so many cool things to make our server look spicy - such as our Summer Bundle 2021. This was our first bundle that utilised the resource pack entirely, as well as Magic and Mayhem's mobs & wand effects, and more recently, the new CubeCraft Hub!
The most extraordinary projects we developed in 2021 was not one but TWO full RPGs! The Spring RPG and Magic and Mayhem were such epic projects tackling an entirely unknown part of Minecraft (and game development for us in general). Still, we felt like we did it amazingly! Some notable moments of both RPGs:
2021 had tons of updates that involved the Team exploring places we've never seen before, like Yhornheim & the Darklands! Not only that, but our server also travelled around the globe, where we expanded to the North America and Asia regions! We're super excited to welcome more players to our server, and we hope your experience has been more positive with the better connection you have!
Battle Arena and Parkour joined our roster of games on our Bedrock network, complete with a detailed lobby, awesome maps & an epic rank!
However, 2021 also brought a time for us to say goodbye. Saying goodbye is always the most challenging thing to do - especially when it's to a part of our community. With the 1.12.2 version upgrade, we had to make the difficult decision to remove our 1.8 network.
However, its removal allowed us to further expand our network with beautiful decorations, which is especially seen in our 1.12 Map Update!
We've had so many updates on the network that I could go on about, but these are the most notable ones for us in particular! If you want to look at all of our awesome updates, check out our News subforum!
2021 was a great point of growth for our Marketplace content too! We've pushed out a whole selection of challenging survival spawns, exciting minigames & fashionable skin packs! Here are a few of our favourites, but you can check out our entire catalogue here!
Plants was the first education map that we've ever created - explore the garden & grow a bunch of custom plants, while learning about photosynthesis and the anatomy of a plant!
Thrift Store Fashion has awesome skins showcasing oversized hoodies, stretchy jeans and fleecy sweaters!
Play the classic SkyWars gamemode with your friends - with a custom resource pack and fun maps!
Race your friends in the carnage of Lucky Block Race! Run fast and break all the lucky blocks you can!
Ride your favourite elemental dragon in Epic Dragons!
Furthermore, 2021 saw the release of Persona items on the Marketplace! Grab some fantastic character additions; we've made quite a few! Here are a few of our favourites:
In 2021, we also shifted our Marketplace content to be higher quality - meaning more time is spent making content that we are proud of. We cannot wait to show you the best minigames we've ever created!
In 2021, we closely monitored our Java games and felt some changes needed to be made to a few of them. Due to this, the following changes will be made:
We'll have more information about when this will be happening soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!
Did you know we had a public Notion board? Me neither...
We initially used this Notion board for community talks that the server team and I often hosted regarding big decisions we were making - including the 1.12 version upgrade, knockback and platform-based matchmaking on Bedrock and Tower Defence on Java.
We're still planning on having community talks in the future - but as they have become more infrequent, we aren't updating you all about what exciting updates we have planned. We know this has been a point of tension in our community, and we want to rectify this!
We now have a public update board on our Notion page! Not only will this allow us to update you all on our next steps, but we're also planning on giving behind the scenes progress updates on them!
To stay updated on what we're up to on this Notion board, join our Discord and head to the roles channel to receive notifications!
Check out our renewed CubeCraft Community Board here - all our updates are there!
With all of the monumental achievements we've had, it means that the statistics this year are HUGE!
We finally want to thank you, the community, for everything you've done this past year! We've seen such substantial growth in every way imaginable - from the size of Team CubeCraft to the size of the server, and we're so incredibly humbled and thankful for it all!
2022 won't be any different - we have such adventurous goals, and we cannot wait to show you everything we have planned!
2021 was a very interesting year - it's been a rollercoaster of events. But, through all of that, you've stuck with us, and we're eternally grateful for you all! We'd like to have a small recap of 2021 in this thread and discuss some changes we'll be making going into 2022.
Team CubeCraft!
During 2020, one of our goals was to reinvest into our Team - and that didn't stop going into 2021!
Last year, Team CubeCraft ended at 125 members - this year, we're ending it at 355 members!
- The Admin team sits at 23 members!
- The Design team sits at 43 members!
- The Moderation team sits at 43 members!
- The Development team sits at 19 members!
- The Translation team sits at 220 members!
- We introduced & revamped our QA team, which sits at 12 members!
- We've had countless promotions from Designer to Sr. Designer, Developer to Tech Lead, Moderator to Sr. Moderator & the addition of SrTranslators!
Twitter | Instagram | Discord | YouTube | TikTok
If you're interested in joining Team CubeCraft, check out our team applications subforum here - we have loads of awesome positions that need some talented individuals like yourself.
... Ziax?
Ziax is a games and events studio based in Manchester, UK. You may have previously known us as Digital Tree Media. - After working on events such as YogCon, Insomnia and dock10 Esports, as well as operating the CubeCraft Games network, we're beyond excited to see what 2022 has to offer for us as a studio as a whole. This change was also accompanied by a restructure of our admin team, which you can read about here.
A 2021 server update recap!
At the start of the year, we introduced some radical changes to Bedrock - changing how knockback works, improving your experience on the server with platform-based matchmaking and changing how our entities operate. This was groundbreaking for us! - This allowed us to keep improving our network and player experience by tackling the largest issues on our network at the time!
The introduction of our Bedrock resource pack was another way to improve our player experience! Being limited by the server's implementation of entities was always something that made us fall short in our game design. With this being implemented, we've been able to add so many cool things to make our server look spicy - such as our Summer Bundle 2021. This was our first bundle that utilised the resource pack entirely, as well as Magic and Mayhem's mobs & wand effects, and more recently, the new CubeCraft Hub!
The most extraordinary projects we developed in 2021 was not one but TWO full RPGs! The Spring RPG and Magic and Mayhem were such epic projects tackling an entirely unknown part of Minecraft (and game development for us in general). Still, we felt like we did it amazingly! Some notable moments of both RPGs:
- Exploring around the realms & meeting all the characters in the Spring RPG!
- The Evil Bunny fight - have you seen their Twitter?
- The dimensions in Magic and Mayhem, which was your favourite?
- Fantastic upgradeable wands and armour with custom attacks!
- Elemental mobs
- The Corruption & the Conjurer boss battle
2021 had tons of updates that involved the Team exploring places we've never seen before, like Yhornheim & the Darklands! Not only that, but our server also travelled around the globe, where we expanded to the North America and Asia regions! We're super excited to welcome more players to our server, and we hope your experience has been more positive with the better connection you have!
Battle Arena and Parkour joined our roster of games on our Bedrock network, complete with a detailed lobby, awesome maps & an epic rank!
However, 2021 also brought a time for us to say goodbye. Saying goodbye is always the most challenging thing to do - especially when it's to a part of our community. With the 1.12.2 version upgrade, we had to make the difficult decision to remove our 1.8 network.
However, its removal allowed us to further expand our network with beautiful decorations, which is especially seen in our 1.12 Map Update!
We've had so many updates on the network that I could go on about, but these are the most notable ones for us in particular! If you want to look at all of our awesome updates, check out our News subforum!
Marketplace in 2021!
2021 was a great point of growth for our Marketplace content too! We've pushed out a whole selection of challenging survival spawns, exciting minigames & fashionable skin packs! Here are a few of our favourites, but you can check out our entire catalogue here!
Plants was the first education map that we've ever created - explore the garden & grow a bunch of custom plants, while learning about photosynthesis and the anatomy of a plant!
Thrift Store Fashion has awesome skins showcasing oversized hoodies, stretchy jeans and fleecy sweaters!
Play the classic SkyWars gamemode with your friends - with a custom resource pack and fun maps!
Race your friends in the carnage of Lucky Block Race! Run fast and break all the lucky blocks you can!
Ride your favourite elemental dragon in Epic Dragons!
In 2021, we also shifted our Marketplace content to be higher quality - meaning more time is spent making content that we are proud of. We cannot wait to show you the best minigames we've ever created!
Network changes - Among Slimes & Assassinations!
In 2021, we closely monitored our Java games and felt some changes needed to be made to a few of them. Due to this, the following changes will be made:
- Among Slimes will be moving to the Featured Games rotation. The dwindling player count, especially at off-peak times, means that the game will not be able to start, getting as little as three players online. We're hoping that putting this game into Featured Games will give it the hype needed when it's ready to play.
Graph showing Among Slimes player count.
- Assassinations will be removed entirely. For a PvP game, assassinations has a solid concept, but with the minimal backing that it receives, it is unsustainable for us to continue running and supporting this game. It also expends a lot of our moderation resources due to players cheating or breaking chat rules; we're hoping that our Team can begin to take notice of other parts of the network too.
Graph showing Assassinations player count.
We'll have more information about when this will be happening soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!
Public Notion board rework!
Did you know we had a public Notion board? Me neither...
We initially used this Notion board for community talks that the server team and I often hosted regarding big decisions we were making - including the 1.12 version upgrade, knockback and platform-based matchmaking on Bedrock and Tower Defence on Java.
We're still planning on having community talks in the future - but as they have become more infrequent, we aren't updating you all about what exciting updates we have planned. We know this has been a point of tension in our community, and we want to rectify this!
We now have a public update board on our Notion page! Not only will this allow us to update you all on our next steps, but we're also planning on giving behind the scenes progress updates on them!
To stay updated on what we're up to on this Notion board, join our Discord and head to the roles channel to receive notifications!
Check out our renewed CubeCraft Community Board here - all our updates are there!
Some statistics!
With all of the monumental achievements we've had, it means that the statistics this year are HUGE!
- We had over 30 MILLION unique connections on our server! If we were a country, we'd be ranked 48th in the world in population!
- Our peak concurrent player count was 57,571 players on both networks!
- On Bedrock, we peaked at 52,226 players!
- On Java, we peaked at 9,213 players!
- We used 9 petabytes (9 million gigabytes) of internet bandwidth to deliver our games to you!
- The total playtime of everyone on our network spans nearly 26,000 years! That's 260 centuries!
- Over 50,000 reports dealt with by our moderation team across both networks, and over 25,000 experimental detections responded to aid with Sentinel development! Huge accomplishment by our fantastic moderation team
- Over 124,000 words have been translated and updated by our translation team, spread out through 24 different languages we currently translate on the network! Massive work done by our amazing translation team
A huge thank you!
We finally want to thank you, the community, for everything you've done this past year! We've seen such substantial growth in every way imaginable - from the size of Team CubeCraft to the size of the server, and we're so incredibly humbled and thankful for it all!
2022 won't be any different - we have such adventurous goals, and we cannot wait to show you everything we have planned!