Keep Minecraft Pre-modern

Recently, the Hololive EN streamers have visited the Minecraft world of their Hololive ID colleagues, which represents a more complex stage of civilization compared to their own — elaborate, monumental-scale railways, industrial automation, etc. This has made them more aware of the relatively primitive state of their own Hololive EN world. It has even led the keeper of Nature herself, Fauna, to talk about bringing the EN world into the era of advanced industrial civilization — crazy talk! What would the Lorax have to say about that? :)

Minecraft, for both the players and their audience, is about escape, fantasy, and returning to a less complex time and place, where coziness and playfulness replace stress, homework, and drudgery. We are surrounded IRL by advanced technology, buildings, and infrastructure — and we've never been more alienated and fragmented, behaving like joyless drones in an insect hive.

Logging into Minecraft as a player, or tuning into the stream of a player who is already there, is our relief. Not only are we experiencing a simulation of a more cozy and charming place, we're experiencing that while connected to everyone else who is plugging their brain into the empathy box for that stream.

Some players and viewers may prefer a more realistic approach to the world, but most of them prefer the fantastical and playful approach. That's how the EN world was built, and what drew in its viewers. Tree-houses, hobbit holes, ivy-covered lighthouses, playgrounds, secret underground passageways, llama stables, hand-decorated Christmas trees, and so on and so forth.

Its inhabitants built it organically from the bottom up, making it up as they went along, for their own amusement, rather than planning it from the top down, in a way that is more suited to drawing in tourists. There are so many in-jokes and idiosyncratic stories about its structures, which outsiders would not understand or appreciate. Tourists need things to be readily apparent.

So the ID server will certainly dazzle outsiders who take a tour through it, compared to outsiders touring the EN server. But if the whole point of your building the world was not to appeal to tourists, then don't worry about it. The goal was to create a world that feels cozy, comfy, and charming — and that doesn't require monumental architecture all over the place.

In fact, if your goal is to have a place where all of you can run wild, as though on a never-ending sleepover party, too much civilization would only get in the way — both as a physical obstruction after it was built, and as a huge burden of homework in order to build in the first place. Actual civilizations with massive architecture had to rely on legions of slaves to do the labor — and unless you want to become a slave yourself, it isn't worth going down that path.

If you wanted to experience a complex world, you could always visit one outside of your own (as a player or viewer). And that may be exciting as a periodic travel destination. But you will ultimately feel homesick for your cozy cottage in the countryside, and the rambunctious shenanigans of your fellow cavemen, and want to rely on that simpler, albeit more chaotic, world still being there to welcome you back home.

To that point, Gura just got gifted a massive amount of quartz as a building material. She had previously planned to build an Atlantis site in the EN world, but left it partially completed for awhile. She said it was due to lack of building material, and not wanting to turn herself into a slave and mine all of that quartz — but now she can benefit from someone else's slave-like labor that has mined more than enough quartz for multiple civilizations. Will she finally build Atlantis and bring civilization to the countryside?

I think an elaborate interconnected group of monumental structures would take away from the charm, character, and social purpose of the world that the EN girls have made over the months and years. And Lord knows our favorite hyperactive shark wouldn't have the patience to sit still and build all of that, even after already having the raw materials on hand. :)

And yet, she does have all that material now, and she did want to create something Atlantis-themed with it. But that was at the early stage of building their world, and by now it would simply not fit in as originally conceived. However, what if she made it the site of ruins from a once-awe-inspiring civilization? That would be more fitting for several reasons:

- The story of Atlantis is about a ruined civilization, not a still-thriving one, so it'd be more faithful to the source material.

- It would not require as much tiresome building, or raw materials, since you don't have to build the chunks that have gone missing after millennia of wear-and-tear on the abandoned site. You could build three ruined structures with the same amount of quartz, and labor, as one structure in pristine condition.

- It would not overshadow the rest of the EN world, or feel out of place. On the contrary, nothing could be more Medieval, Romantic, or Gothic than having the ruins of a former massive civilization lying only a few minutes away from a quaint bustling village.

I can't be the only one thinking this way, since there are YouTube tutorials for all sorts of ruined structures — here is one for an ancient Greek temple, apropos of Atlantis, but they have ruined towers, arches, statues, anything really. Some more elaborate, some more basic.

Depending on the biome type, you might not have to bother with putting grass, trees, and vines on it to create the overgrown nature effect. If it's in the middle of the sea or ocean, it wouldn't need to have that much vegetation as a jungle or forest. But it's hard to deny the charm of at least some overgrown nature on a ruined site.

One thing I didn't see on a casual look through the examples was having some of the broken-off pieces still on site, just lying around on the ground. Maybe something emo and dramatic like a broken-off head lying near the base of a statue, a la Planet of the Apes. (Server of the Monkes?)

Anyway, one approach to harmonizing the goals of building some bigger things, while also returning to nature. You all have created one of the most cozy communities, not only the environment but the social antics that take place there. And you should be proud of that. :) Keep EN Weird!