Wednesday Where Am I? 7/30/14

It's time for Where Am I? Wednesday! Here is your mystery server screenshot:

Prize: 

• Iron horse armor
• A saddle
• Two leads
• A stack of these babies: 

How to Play and Enter: 

1. Search the server for the place in the screenshot!
2. Once you think you've found it, hit F3 on your keyboard to bring up the coordinates. 
3. Jot down the coordinates for X, Y, and Z on a piece of scrap paper (make sure you correctly identify if they're negative coordinates!).
4. Write a letter to Otter by typing the following command:
• /letter Coordinates (XX, YY, ZZ) <YourUsername>
• (Please replace XX with the X coords, YY with the Y coords and ZZ with the Z coords)
• Please sign the letter with your full username.
5. With your written letter in your hand, send it to Otter with the following command:
• /post Otterun

The winner will be announced along with the weekend spotlight.

Read HERE for more information! 

Special Opening Postponed & Tuesday Poll

Grand Opening
Our special event was postponed.  There was a Mojang/Minecraft related issue that effected all servers, so we were down at the time the event was scheduled.

We will try again tomorrow, Wednesday, at 11am Pacific Standard Time.  Click here for a time converter to help. :)

Tuesdays Poll
The results are in for last week's poll:

WHEN A PERSON LEAVES ONE TOWN, HOW LONG SHOULD THEY WAIT BEFORE JOINING ANOTHER?

No limit.	9 (39%)
3 days	1 (4%)
7 days	13 (56%)
14 days	0 (0%)
21 days	0 (0%)
22+ days	0 (0%)

The majority tips in favor of having some sort of time limit to prevent people from town hopping and stealing materials.  We will test out a 5-day limit for people who leave towns on their own choosing (not including town inactivity resulting in the desire to leave).  Those in this 5-day cool down will receive the title of "Explorer" which will automatically be removed after the 5 days are up.

This week's poll is up.  Some people are concerned about banner (see below) design theft being a problem when 1.8 comes out.  This question is about whether Gazer staff should regulate banner designs to ensure that players can't "steal" another player's idea.

HOW MANY BANNERS SHOULD A TOWN/PLAYER BE ALLOWED TO "COPYRIGHT" WHEN 1.8 COMES OUT?

In-Game Banners
While we anxiously await 1.8 and the arrival of banners, play around with the banner maker in the mean time: http://algoin.de/bngn/

It's tons of fun and you can planning what banner you would like to represent your village or just to decorate your own builds!

Wednesday What Am I?
Finally, Wednesday's What Am I will be posted at a random hour on Wednesday as opposed to the set 4am PST schedule.  This will hopefully give people from other timezones a better opportunity to solve it.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the game!

Weekend Update

The winner for Wednesday's Where Am I is... Minja! Congratulations!  Here's the answer to this week's puzzle.  The location was just outside of Haven (though there was a bit of confusion as the location was altered after the puzzle was posted -- sorry!  Otter will be more careful next time). 

If you want to see the original puzzle, click here. If you want to get in on the next Wednesday game, you can read the competition rules here.

Greetings everyone! A few updates. We are planning a grand opening on Tuesday (be on around 12pm Pacific Standard Time to catch it!  Here's a time converter).  We hope to see a big turnout of people attending the opening!

Also, for the Weekly Gaze, it has been postponed to next weekend. The same spotlight, water features, and the same prize will be awarded.

Click here for last week's Weekly Gaze.

Wednesday Where Am I? 7/23/14

It's time for Where Am I? Wednesday! Here is your mystery server screenshot:

Prize: 

• A magical sheep
• Ten daylight sensors
• A stack of these babies: 

How to Play and Enter: 

1. Search the server for the place in the screenshot!
2. Once you think you've found it, hit F3 on your keyboard to bring up the coordinates. 
3. Jot down the coordinates for X, Y, and Z on a piece of scrap paper (make sure you correctly identify if they're negative coordinates!).
4. Write a letter to Otter by typing the following command:
• /letter Coordinates (XX, YY, ZZ) <YourUsername>
• (Please replace XX with the X coords, YY with the Y coords and ZZ with the Z coords)
• Please sign the letter with your full username.
5. With your written letter in your hand, send it to Otter with the following command:
• /post Otterun

The winner will be announced along with the weekend spotlight.

Read HERE for more information! 

Poll: Townless-ness

The results are in from last week's poll!  We were toying around with the idea of opening a new spawn building, to encourage players to build away from spawn, but it looks like our current system is fine and traveling is all part of the Minecraft journey.

WHERE SHOULD NEW PLAYERS SPAWN WHEN 1.8 COMES OUT?

In a new spawn building, far away from the current one.	5 (27%)
In the same spawn snowy building we've all come to know and love.	11 (61%)
I don't have a strong opinion either way.	2 (11%)
Another idea! (Post in the news comments)	0 (0%)

This week Otter would like to know your feelings on people leaving new towns and joining new ones.  Do you think it would be fair to put a limit on how long someone must wait before joining a new town?  Some people feel it takes away from the community feel when players are able to hop around from city to city.  Behind the scenes, it's also kind of a pain to move a single person around 3 times in a week.

The new poll question is this:

WHEN A PERSON LEAVES ONE TOWN, HOW LONG SHOULD THEY WAIT BEFORE JOINING ANOTHER?

If you have other ideas or suggestions, please comment on this post or the GazerCraft Skype group to start a discussion!

The Weekly Gaze

The Weekly Gaze

Greetings Gazers! This week we are featuring interior decoration! 

First up is Omega with his castle's throne room! 

And we have Krys' house! 

And the Resident bridge to Auriel!

Min and Nikki's hotel lobby:

Before I get finished I want to apologize for the abruptness of this spotlight. Been doing schoolwork since 8am (set my alarm earlier than I normally wake up for work!) and barely got it finished at 7pm. Add in a small break for dinner and I am purely worn out. 

I was thinking of ideas to get the spotlight a little more popular. I decided to make it a small competition. I will air every submission just as before, however I will pick one out of the bunch as a 'winner' and give the town or player that submitted it a prize. Granted, it will be hard to give an entire town a prize, it will most likely go to the person responsible for the construction of the project. So if someone built the paths, and another person build the lamps, if they are the spotlight I need to know who build it so they can receive the award.

*Note. If town leaders submit nothing but their own projects they will lose quite often as I will not give a prize to the same person very often.

For next week's spotlight I decided on WATER FEATURES. If you have a pool, pond, hot spring, creek, stream, waterfall, toilet, share them with me! The prize this week will be five invisibility potions!

Wednesday Where Am I? Winner!

Our latest Wednesday winner is none other than Minja!  Congratulations, Min!  The location was atop the cloud in CRMVille (if you haven't been there, you should check it out)!

If you want to see the original puzzle, click here. If you want to get in on the next Wednesday game, you can read the competition rules here.

Wednesday Where Am I? 7/16/14

It's time for Where Am I? Wednesday! Here is your mystery server screenshot:

Prize: 

• A wolf spawn egg
• A name tag
• Half stack of glowstone lamps
• A stack of these babies: 

How to Play and Enter: 

1. Search the server for the place in the screenshot!
2. Once you think you've found it, hit F3 on your keyboard to bring up the coordinates. 
3. Jot down the coordinates for X, Y, and Z on a piece of scrap paper (make sure you correctly identify if they're negative coordinates!).
4. Write a letter to Otter by typing the following command:
• /letter Coordinates (XX, YY, ZZ) <YourUsername>
• (Please replace XX with the X coords, YY with the Y coords and ZZ with the Z coords)
• Please sign the letter with your full username.
5. With your written letter in your hand, send it to Otter with the following command:
• /post Otterun

The winner will be announced along with the weekend spotlight.

Read HERE for more information!