GuitarXpress

For those who somehow haven't heard by now, last week I lost my father to a substance overdose.
 
It's been a crazy week, and will likely be a crazy few weeks going forward as we continue to work and get things sold and get the finances caught up. I've spent most of the past week trying to process everything, work on my home, and most of all - figure out exactly how and why this happened.
How and Why
 
My father has been in a rough spot for a long time - and the events that led to my father's passing are numerous and go back many years. First and foremost, his disability. He used to be active and fit - but in his 30s became disabled with a bad back and knees, unable to be active whatsoever. This wasn't a nail in the coffin, but becomes a key component of future problems. In my early childhood, my parents divorced - and for a few years, I lived with my mother and saw dad on the weekends.
 
Despite the divorce being less than peaceful to say the least, it was something dad never fully got over. As we've been cleaning stuff around the house, there are things - especially in the garage - where items have been virtually untouched and undisturbed since mom last lived here nearly 15 years ago.
 
The first nail in the coffin was the loss of my grandmother, his mother, in 2014. She was a literal saint of a woman, and is who I attribute more of my personality traits towards in a lot of ways. I was still young and was able to recover relatively quickly from her loss, but obviously dad was less able to do so - and was crushed by her loss. A few years later, in 2017, we lost grandpa - his father. This of course also worsened things and was another nail in the coffin.
 
At some point after this, before he moved over to the property that grandma and grandpa used to live in, he started using illicit substances - more specifically, one known as K2 or Spice. Perhaps as a way to cope with their loss, or perhaps as a means of escaping his other problems, or both - he started on these substances and this would be the real start of his downward spiral.
 
As time went on, he began to change. He began involving himself with questionable women, and later became susceptible to romance scams. The money left behind by my grandparents was around 100k and by the start of this year, the entire account was drained to zero. We burned through it all within 3 years. Due to his drug use (and perhaps some other health issues), he also began wrecking vehicles. One by one, each vehicle became undriveable in one way or another. All this while he continues to send out money to fake women online, purchasing miscellaneous junk items, and as he struggles to find a purpose in life.
 
Eventually, we reached a point where he wrecked the van - a sort of family heirloom of a vehicle, purchased by his grandmother - a Red/Maroon Chevrolet Astro Van from 1989. We were down to zero working vehicles, and when he looked outside, all he saw was reminders of his failures. I know he was haunted by this, as he's told me about nightmares he's had where grandma and grandpa came back to visit and saw the property in a state of disrepair, the money gone, and most of the vehicles wrecked - and this was before the van was wrecked.
 
He had no transport. He was stuck in his home, alone except for his pets, his thoughts, and his addiction. At some point, he switched from K2 to compressed air, the kind you'd buy to dust out your computer. He would huff the chemicals within - and this is likely what increased his tendency to have wrecks and go unconscious at random times. He ultimately finally decided that these issues, his addiction, and the worsening finances and guilt were too much to bear - and so he stocked up on cans, and had one final conversation with me on August 20th. His security camera footage shows him coming outside to grab a delivery of 16 cans of compressed air on the 21st, and heading back inside - never to be seen alive again.
 
He likely passed away on the 23rd. I found him a day later, on the 24th - after calling his phone and having it go straight to voicemail. I got an Uber to his house, walked in, and saw a pile of empty compressed air cans, empty cigarette boxes, and my dead father with a can still in his hand.
 
 
 
I mentioned earlier about his disability. I think one of the key pitfalls that he ran into was a lack of purpose. He's told me about this in passing once or twice over the years, though he phrased it to make it seem as if it wasn't really serious. However, in retrospect, it's clear that he felt purposeless for a long time. What I knew beforehand and have only heard reinforced from everyone I've talked to was that I was pretty much the one thing he had going for him. When everything and everyone else failed him, he at least always had me.
 
However, by the time I graduated High School and he moved over there, things were a bit different. I was still reliant on him financially, but I was able to otherwise live independently, especially with a remote job that I got earlier this year. He only ever had to come over to bring groceries and check the mail. But as this year went on, things changed. He continued to make poor financial decisions, and the money continued to get worse as a result. Things kept getting worse instead of better. I think that while he was contemplating taking himself out for a while, I think it was only when he finally concluded that I'd be able to manage without him that he finally made the final decision and didn't look back.
 
When he wrecked the van, I took it upon myself to try and figure out how to proceed. With the help of Michael, I developed a plan to keep us going without him driving - both out of necessity, and to keep him off the road before he got himself killed. As he continued to lose giant chunks of money, he told me about it - and I got onto him about it and told him to get stuff sold to get the money back so we'd be caught up. I think he realized, either before or after those conversations, that he was beginning to financially harm me rather than help me. And I think towards the end, he realized that I was able to take care of myself and figure things out quickly. I think at that point, he realized that he could leave - and while I would of course be in pain, I'd be alright in the end. And I think that's what allowed him to finally decide to leave.
What This Means for Me (and Chaotic United)
 
As we continue on this process of selling stuff, cleaning up my place, and so on, I likely won't be doing much of anything with the server for a number of months. There's a lot to do, and once it's all done - I'll likely need time to properly grieve. That being said, you'll still see me in Discord - probably more often than before, as during this time the last thing I want is to be sitting around alone with my thoughts.
 
As for me, this whole ordeal has given me new perspectives and reinforced old ones. It's reinforced my existing desire to avoid any and all drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering and addictive substances. It's also reinforced and better contextualized a belief I've been hearing about lately in regards to aging and purpose.
 
You see, I'm terrified of death. As are most people - not much news there. But for me, I'm genuinely looking into having myself placed into cryonics upon my death - with the hopes of being reanimated in the future and brought back to life. However, part of that has also brought me to another discovery - having purpose in your life is key. The most common age of death is shortly after retirement. Too often, people get old, retire, and then a few years later - die, after doing a whole bunch of nothing. In areas where people often life near, to, or past 100 years old, they all still work in some capacity doing something.
 
Dad hasn't had a job since I was a few years old. Sure, he had me - but once I graduated and he moved out, when you look at it through that time frame - it matches up surprisingly well. He left, didn't do a whole lot, and then passed - albeit from unnatural causes, but still.
 
In the past, I've been angry and upset that I've had a self-motivation to create and develop projects of my own. Every time I've held a retail job, I've been miserable - as the whole time I can't think of anything else besides how much of my life I'm just wasting on meaningless garbage, and how awful it'd be to keep doing this for another 40 years. I've been angry because I'd hear other people say things like "yeah, I don't mind it because it gives me something to do" - meanwhile I've got no shortage of things to do. Even with no job whatsoever, I'd never get half of it done. However, seeing now what happens when you lack that purpose - I feel as if I should be more grateful that I have this gift. Because it really is just that - a gift. It's a gift that, providing I still keep it through the rest of my life, will allow me to maintain that sense of purpose into old age - and potentially add decades to my life.
 
This whole situation has also given me two new purposes as well. One, to do everything I can to understand how this happened - and avoid it. To ensure that when I have a wife and kids, that I don't end up in the same boat - I don't want my kids to find me dead at 50 from cigarettes and huffing canned air. I want to help ensure that my own kids also avoid the same mistakes and learn the same lessons. I want to avoid the disability, avoid the drugs, and maintain my sense of purpose - and be there for my kids and grandkids as long as possible.
 
The other purpose is to undo the mistakes my father made, and honor the legacy left by both him and my grandparents. I want to do everything in my power to ensure that the things they taught me, the things they knew, and the good will and joy they brought to the world doesn't end with their absences. I want to go out there and do the things dad did, to be there for people in the way dad was. I might even learn to drive grandpa's old Jeep, put on dad's old coat, grow out the beard - and drive around town paying a visit to his old buddies in the restored Jeep.
 
I want to not only make my father proud, but make my grandmother and grandfather proud - so that when I do finally die, I can go up there and tell them all about my success story and see the looks of pride on their faces.
In Memoriam
 
One thing I've gone ahead and done, and will continue to expand upon once things settle down - is I've set up a memorial page for dad here on the website. It includes a slightly altered version of the official obituary, including some additional details that I was unable to include in the original, and fixing a couple typos I didn't notice until later. It also includes details on what his involvement in Chaotic United was, as well as a list of all the people who contributed to the GoFundMe or donated directly via PayPal.
 
Additionally, anyone here on the forums who has an account and contributed money will also receive the Bearded Legend award. Eventually, I plan to get a sort of gallery set up containing some images of dad from over the years, and set up similar pages/galleries for grandma and grandpa.
 
Until then, you can check out the current memorial page here: https://chaoticunited.net/memorial/gary
 
Most likely, the burial will happen this Saturday - but we won't know for sure until tomorrow. Even after the burial, there's still a lot of work to be done - so don't expect me to be doing much work on the server for a while. However as I said - I'll likely be in voice chat very often. If you ever want to chat, just ping me. Odds are, unless I'm on the phone or busy somewhere, I'll jump right in.
 
I thank all of you for your kind words and contributions during this time.
 
Rest easy, dad - after the hell you were in, you deserve to finally have some fun up in heaven. Enjoy the reunion with grandma and grandpa, take care of Chico for me - and someday, I'll come up there to join you and we can all reunite together as one big happy family.

Hey, everyone!
 
Our MC server has just been updated to 1.17! Surprisingly, it didn't take too long compared to past updates - only a couple weeks from the initial release. For the most part, the server is unchanged from 1.16 - however, there are a few key changes to go over.
 
Website Updates
 
This is a fairly minor bit, but still worth mentioning. A couple days ago we quietly updated our forums theme. Not much within the theme itself has changed, however we've done some adjustments to the logo design (for the first time since 2016). Compare these two icons - the left one being our previous Discord icon, and the right being its updated replacement.
 
 
 
 
One thing we wanted to do was make a more cleaned-up version of the HD logo. You see, this specific recreation of the logo came all the way back from 2016, when I was only just learning how to do graphic design. It wasn't bad per se, but it wasn't fully faithful to the original logo either. It had a little more curvature than made sense and if you looked closely, you'd be able to see some imperfections.
 
Since 2016, I've gotten a fair bit better at graphic design, and so I wanted to go back in and make a more faithful recreation of the logo - and at the same time, make it look just a little more fresh and line up with the current visual design by turning what used to be 2 flat colors into subtle gradients based off of those original colors. Top it all off with a drop shadow, and you've got an update that - in my opinion - manages to be both a more faithful recreation of the original logo, while still feeling fresh enough to not feel like some kind of crufty carryover.
 
For those who might be unaware of this original logo, the only remaining image of that logo is this:

 
If you can't tell, it's almost laughably low-resolution, and was pulled from the old CU forums in 2013. From 2014 to 2016, this is as good as we had to work with. It wasn't until 2016 - where I was finally able to both recreate the icon as a vector graphic and track down the original font used - that I was able to finally utilize a higher resolution version of that logo. There almost certainly was a higher resolution out there - but the only person likely to have it is the original designer - MikeStardust. He's not around anymore, but hey - he made that original logo all the way back then, and we're still more or less using it now - so he ought to get some credit.
 
SkyBlock Reset
 
Now, first up in regards to the server itself, we've ended up having to make a fairly significant change to SkyBlock. Our original plan was to keep all the worlds left unchanged until 1.18, and then perform all the fresh resets at the same time as the big world overhauls.
 
Unfortunately, our old SkyBlock plugin, uSkyBlock, has no update to 1.17 as of yet - along with that, there's been several issues that have been persistent with that SkyBlock plugin for a while - most immediately the issue with Nether Portals not taking players to the right locations. So, we've decided to switch to a brand new SkyBlock plugin - one that seems to have a lot more active development, and which is already updated for 1.17. There's no way to migrate data from the old plugin to the new one, so this will require a world reset. The silver lining is that we won't need to reset SkyBlock come 1.18 - this new world will be retained through that update.
 
We hope that this new plugin won't be too difficult to adjust to. Please bear with us as we all explore and learn this new SkyBlock plugin - there might be some issues here or there that crop up. If there are any, feel free to report them on our Bug Tracker.
 
Cracked Support
 
We have to talk about cracked support going forward. Despite my own personal belief that people really should have bought Minecraft at some point during the 10 years that CU has been around, I've made it a point to maintain CU's cracked support on the MC server - primarily because, well, we've always been cracked. Chaotic United's MC server began life as a cracked server, and that support persisted even through Nuclear District. We haven't advertised it as a feature, and premium players (people who own a copy of MC) don't have to /login or /register, but it's been left in for the few cracked users we may still have from time to time.
 
This is something that could potentially change going forward.
 
Early on, cracked support wasn't really too difficult to maintain. It never got in the way. AutoIn helped ensure that skins were forwarded and that premium users never had to mess around with login commands. However, over time, things have somewhat degraded a bit and cracked support isn't nearly as seamless as we'd like.
 
In terms of minor surface-level bugs, there will sometimes be cases where the "Please /login with /login <password>" message is shown after the automatic login confirmation - which has resulted in some confusion for existing and new users, causing them to think they had to log in. Not a big deal really, but still a source of confusion. There are, however, more serious bugs which sometimes show up (and sometimes don't). There have been several cases where username changes have resulted in someone being unable to play - as FastLogin will treat them as a cracked player. Now, this issue has seemingly been nonexistent since 1.16 - but still, it's an indicator that sometimes these kinds of critical issues can crop up.
 
Along with that, cracked severs generally get treated less than favorably by both the Minecraft community as well as server lists. This is why we haven't advertised CU as a cracked server in many years.
 
These issues alone aren't enough for me to drop cracked support, however. Most of these issues are minor, uncommon, and when major issues crop up, they often get fixed. However, those issues combine with something else that make me willing to consider it.
 
There's been a thought floating around within the staff team for a while now that this cracked support may be holding us back further than we realize. It's possible that players join, realize we're cracked, and then dip as a result. It's also possible that server lists are able to identify us as cracked due to AuthMe and FastLogin and are quietly burying us in the deepest pages of the list. And, of course, it's also possible that neither of these are happening and that cracked support has nothing to do with our lack of player retention.
 
So, starting sometime soon, cracked support will be temporarily dropped. The current plan is to start this with 1.17.1, though it may be sooner or later depending on how things go. We had originally planned to include this as part of the 1.17 update, but for a number of reasons we've opted to postpone it for just a bit longer.
 
 We aren't ready to commit to ditching cracked support permanently just yet, but we want to experiment and see if dropping this support happens to fix some of these issues - most likely, this will remain the case until the end of the year. The good news is that in early testing, AuthMe and FastLogin both work without issue on 1.17 - so there won't be any technical barrier to keeping cracked support. The bad news for you cracked folk out there is that if dropping this cracked support happens to turn around our population problems, then this will likely be a permanent change. Only time will tell.
 
The Future
 
To wrap things up, something I plan to do starting with 1.17 is properly get back into Minecraft server stuff again. I've been doing some reflection a bit to try and figure out why it is I haven't felt the desire to do anything on CU outside of the bare minimum maintenance here and there - and I think I've figured out why.
 
The answer is in that very question - I haven't wanted to do much CU stuff for a while because for a while, it's largely just been maintenance and bugfixing and reimplementing old features again. I haven't been getting on and working on cool things because I want to make something cool, it's because there's some big problem that I have to solve in order to maintain a baseline.
 
What I want to do starting with 1.17 is knock the two big looming clouds out of the way. Cross-server /tp and /warp functionality. I've been putting these off for a long time - and I think the time has come to finally fix this. Once that's done, I've got a comically long list of possible features that I want to work on - and I think that's the key. I need to make new things - even if those new things are small. I need to stop sitting around and working on features that already exist and fixing bugs - I need to get in and start doing what I used to do with the server - creating new things.
 
I've devoted a long period of time lately towards Elaztek Studios and the Blamite Game Engine - it's been over a year since I last did a hard focus on Chaotic United. And while I don't plan to spend the entirety of the next year focused solely on Chaotic United, I think it's time for the pendulum to swing in the other direction for a bit.
 
Stay tuned.

Man.
 
What a wild thought - to think that it's been 10 years since Chaotic United first launched itself into the world, and to think that we've still kept it going all this time later.
 
There's been a lot of people in the past who never thought CU would make it this long - some of which who may even prefer that it didn't, rather than carry on in our relatively quiet corner of the internet as we've since done. In previous anniversary posts, the tone has always been the same old tired ramblings along the lines of "we're gonna make this year the best one ever guys". I'll save those words this time around - as I've already said them enough before. What I'll do instead is give some insight on what our future plans are - even if those plans are still quite loose at the moment. I'll also give some proper credit to a few people towards the end of the post - people who, had they not showed up and stuck around, likely would've ensured that we didn't make it to our 10th year.
 
History Lessons
 
First and foremost, I want to share what will likely come off as "well, duh" for most of you - but is something that I've only come to fully understand over the past year or so. As many of you know, I have a borderline obsession with history. More specifically, the history of CU and any of its siblings, cousins, and other distant relatives. I've put in countless hours and a lot more money than is reasonable in an effort to preserve as much of that history as possible. The most expensive single purchase I've ever made for Chaotic United was the acquisition of the chaoticunited.com domain name. Now, you may be wondering - what's so important about the .com domain? After all, we're still on .net - so clearly it must not be that important, right?
 
Well, you see, there's two major "eras" of Chaotic United. There's the "Old" Chaotic United, which refers to the original CU server and staff team from 2011 to early 2014. Then, there's the "New" Chaotic United, which refers to the re-established CU that we've been running here on chaoticunited.net from late 2014 through to the present day. The old CU operated out of chaoticunited.com, and we initially were hoping to launch under that domain as well - but at the time it was held by either Josh or Killerteddy, we never really found out for sure. So, instead, we started up on chaoticunited.net and never really left.
 
After many years of it being consistently unavailable, the domain finally became available in June 2017. Sort of. Normally, domains are relatively cheap - usually 12-14 bucks a year per domain name. However, there are also such things as "premium domains". These are often older domain names that either once carried a lot of traffic, or names that are considered desirable. When one of those older, traffic-heavy names nears expiration, a premium domain reseller will often make a deal with the registrar (the site/company that the owner registered the domain with) and buy it off of them before it ever fully expires. From there, they'll make it available through them for a massive markup in price. In most cases, I'd never deal with them. In fact, several years prior, one of them got ahold of tidalwavegaming.com and tried to sell it for over a thousand dollars. After a few years, though, nobody bought it and it did eventually expire - at which point I snatched it back up for the standard 12 bucks for a year.
 
However, chaoticunited.com was different. This was, to me, an opportunity that could not be missed. It may never become available again - some other random person or company could grab it, and any hope I'd have had for ever obtaining it would be crushed for good. On top of that, the domain was also the key to unlocking all of the preserved content on archive.org's Wayback Machine - which at this point is likely all that remains of the old CU's forums and website. I was not missing that domain. So, $800 later, I was the new owner of chaoticunited.com - and it's been that way ever since. Luckily, the high price tag was a one-time fee, and all later renewals have just been the standard rate.
 
I imagine that for virtually everyone reading, that kind of money sounds absolutely batshit insane for what amounts to 3 changed letters in an address bar and URL. And for most people, yeah - it's not worth it. My point is that for me, these are reasonable and acceptable lengths to go to when it comes to preserving the history of this community. When Nuclear District shut down, the admins at ND agreed to send me a copy of their forum topics and posts, which I then was able to merge into CU's own forums - and you can see them all to this day. I've ported and re-ported old forum themes from the past and brought them into the modern day. The MC server, while certainly not identical to the old CU's server, still has all the hallmarks of the original server. You've got the same ranks, with the same perks, at the same prices. The hub is still a big biosphere, and the survival spawn even has those CU letters in the sky pulled straight from a classic CU spawn.
 
However, all of this focus and emphasis on the past has, for many years, left me somewhat blind to something. Something that should have been obvious - and sometimes I even seemed to sort of get it, only for nothing to come of it. For new players, the history doesn't matter. As much as I may wish it to be different, the reality is that someone coming into CU for the first time in 2021 doesn't really have much reason to stay. The MC server certainly has a large number of features, including two dungeons and a custom ore. There's a wide variety of gamemodes, ranging from minigames to creative, from skyblock to a more purist form of survival.
 
But for someone new, it's not enough. Why build in creative when there's seemingly nobody to show your creations to? Why set up shops in survival when there's no customers? Why strive to have the biggest, baddest island in skyblock when there's no obvious competition? Oh, and the minigames? Well, most of them require 2 or more players - and if you're online by yourself, that kinda limits your options. And most importantly, why stay here whenever virtually all of those gamemodes can be found elsewhere, in more populated servers?
 
The uncomfortable realization I'm coming to is that, outside of some brief nostalgia for old CU veterans, or at best maybe joining the Discord which is comparatively quite lively, there isn't. For someone who is joining Chaotic United's MC server in 2021, there is virtually no reason for them to stay. We have a community, of course - CU isn't dead. But most of it lives exclusively on Discord. And if you're joining the MC server, you see a server with 0 players on, and likely decide to move on elsewhere. It's quite the sad realization, really - and certainly not the kind of thing you want to read (or write) on the 10 year anniversary post.
 
The Future
 
But, there's a silver lining in that realization. It is that realization that will allow us to move forward. Now, make no mistake - my fetish passion for CU's history isn't going anywhere. I don't believe that anything I've been doing in terms of preservation has been the problem. Rather, the problem is that there hasn't been much besides that. There's no reason why CU can't act as both a time capsule of its own past, and also act as an enjoyable experience in the present. After all, hasn't that been the point the entire time?
 
So, the plan going forward. What is it? What does it entail? Well, we recently did a poll on Discord asking about the idea of introducing RPG elements into our survival mode - which the votes were heavily in favor of. The idea behind RPG as well as other ideas is this: to get people in the door, we need two things. One, we need something that is unique. We need a reason for people to be here and not on some other server. This concept isn't alien to us, as it's what led to the Teddy dungeon, the Magic plugin, and Durite. However, I feel that these features, while fun, aren't impactful enough to get new players hooked. Clearly they aren't - or else we'd have a bunch of people by now. The other thing we need is content that can be enjoyed alone. While it may seem counter-intuitive to join a server only to be playing a solo experience, at the end of the day - we have no real choice at the moment. If there's nobody on the server, we pretty much have to design around that. This is one of the ideas behind RPG elements, and potentially later down the line, a full-fledged RPG gamemode. These features are going to be built with both solo players and groups of friends in mind. The content should be fun alone, and it should be fun with friends. We've also got a few ideas for minigames that also follow this philosophy, though those are still in the early drafts at the moment.
 
And... yeah. In terms of plans, that's all we've got at the moment. Nothing is super fleshed out yet, but this is the direction we plan to move towards going forward. Our history is, and will continue to be an important part of CU. However, we have to be more than just a large museum of our own past. We can have the museum, sure - but that museum needs to be a part of something more.
 
Special Thanks
 
Lastly, I feel that it's only appropriate that we list off a few key people that have helped ensure that CU made it to its 10th birthday. I won't be naming every key figure of CU, but you can find a (mostly) comprehensive list over on the Credits page.
 
First up, a guy known as ntx2 - he was a former Manager/Admin of the old CU, and even hung around Nuclear District in its early days. He did a great deal of work for the old CU, many late nights staying up to fix issues and iron out bugs. Even made a couple of the old spawns, too. Without his presence, the old CU server likely would've had its playerbase drop off much faster than it did - potentially leading to an early demise. He was even the one to find me on HurricaneCraft and introduce me to Nuclear District - had he not done that, it's entirely possible that I would've never known about ND at all.
 
Next up, Stoneharry - the primary developer of old CU's World of Warcraft server. While this isn't something that I ever really played on, it was still a key service of CU for many years, and one that from what I heard had quite a great deal of custom content.
 
After him, Atomicbeast101 - another former Manager of old CU and the Founder of Nuclear District. He footed the bill of old CU's server in Teddy's absence, and later left to pave the road for ND to rise up and carry the torch forward - free from Teddy's attitudes and mismanagement.
 
The last person I'll name here is none other than Michael, who has gone by many names over the years - LetsplaymasterDR, AwakenedRage, MysticaWare, and EpticRikez just to name a few. From 2014 to 2015, he hosted our MC server out of his own hardware - free of charge. Back then, my only other alternative would've been my Acer laptop or some weak PC - which needless to say wouldn't have made for a very fun server experience. Not only that, but he's continued to serve as a more technically-knowledge admin over the years, and for a few years up until early last year, once again paid for a dedicated server for CU - out of pocket. And if that wasn't enough, he's done something that may end up being even more significant than that just recently.
 
After my continued struggles for employment, bouncing from retail job to retail job, he was able to offer me a job - creating content for a game that his studio is working on at the moment. It's a small team of only a few people, but even so he was willing to hire me on as an employee. I don't have to keep sifting job boards and hoping to find something that's tolerable at best. He's given me an opportunity to do something creative and exciting - and get paid doing it. A job that I can take pride in, and an opportunity that I feel as though I hardly deserve - an opportunity that I absolutely must not let go to waste.
 
Along with those 4, I do encourage all of you to take a visit to the Credits page, the Veterans page, and the CU Timeline page - as they each have a walk-through of CU's history, naming important members of CU's past and present.
 
Lastly, but most certainly not least - as cheesy as it sounds - is you. Yes, you. Each and every one of you who have stuck through, whether that be for a few weeks, months, or even years. You are the reason we have a community, the reason why despite everything that's happened, CU continues to keep on going year after year. Without you, there is no Chaotic United.
 
Wrapping Up
 
And with that, I suppose it's time to wrap this thing up. 10 years of Chaotic United - and hopefully at least another 10 yet to come. Whether or not we reach our goals of bringing CU back to it's former glory is something that will only be told with time. I can't (and won't) promise that this year will somehow be different than the last, but I can say that I think we're slowly but surely moving onto the right track. It may take a long while yet, but I'm not one to give up so easily. I think that, with all of us united together, anything is possible.
 
Here's to the next 10 years.

Hey, everyone!
 
As you've probably guessed by the title - Semi-Vanilla has returned! Unlike the original iteration of Semi-Vanilla (which, if you weren't around then, was more geared as an experiment), this time Semi-Vanilla will be remaining as a permanent feature of CU's server going forward.
 
As with the original server, most of the cheat-y perks from the various ranks are disabled here. The only perks you'll get are cosmetic perks (things like /nick, /me, etc), with the only exception being that all Donation ranks will have access to /craft. The goal is to create something that's relatively close to vanilla survival, with a few comforts added in. You'll be able to claim land and create shops - as well as earn money from mining and killing mobs.
 
Additionally, we've introduced a brand new hub to the server as well to go along with this change. Feel free to explore the hub and spawn - they're some of the best spawns we've brought forward in a while, as they were built by our build team - the same team that brought you most of the newer minigame maps as well as the Teddy Dungeon.

That's all we've got for now - I won't keep you waiting. Go check out Semi-Vanilla! As usual, if any issues come up, let us know or submit a bug report. Otherwise, have fun!

Server: Discord
Username: Windwhistle#1720
Banned By: the entirety of chaotic united
Reason: Being an overall general dick who lost his filter. No excuses.
Have you been banned before?: 2 times
Why should you be unbanned?:
I'm sorry to anyone I hurt. I - in general, as a person - don't like hurting people. I'm known to sometimes fly off the handle and become someone who I am not. Not much more to say other than that. The rest is up to everyone else.

Is there anything else you want to say?: evie convinced me to do this
What would you do if you were unbanned?: beat my meat

Hey, everyone! Just within the past day, we've taken the first step on migrating CU's server to a BungeeCord setup. There's a lot of technical talk about that in here, what it will entail, and how our plan has changed from the original goal.
 
Additionally, we've got some details on my break as well as the current status of my job. If any of that interests you, keep on reading.
 
My Break
 
As most of you also know, I took a fairly long break from working on CU stuff due to some drama and other nonsense that transpired towards the end of summer. Those events, combined with me already growing stressed and tired due to the seemingly insurmountable pile of bugs, as well as a desire to go back to working on Blamite, led me to finally retreat into Elaztek. Unfortunately, it seems that while I was gone, player counts have begun to drop back down again. They haven't plummeted to 0, but they've gotten uncomfortably close. Granted, I don't think this is entirely my fault, but there's no doubt that my departure contributed to this.
 
Now, for those of you who have been around for years, you likely have seen me do similar things before - and me taking a few months off here and there tends to be somewhat ordinary at this point. However, there's a lot of new faces around this year - and to them, the thought of me taking multiple months off seems absurd. I want to try and explain my thought process on this. Let me start by saying that yes, I am well aware that these breaks are not ideal. Ideally, I'd have things set up in such a way that, when I feel the need to take these breaks, the server doesn't have to come to a grinding halt. I know this - but I don't know of any way to solve it in the immediate future.
 
My primary reason for taking these breaks is to avoid the same trap that the staff of old CU and ND fell into. People like Alex, Nik, Kendev, ntx2, and many more all devoted everything to CU for a few years. Whether they loved it or hated it, they gave it their all pretty much nonstop for years. But after those few years, they were done - and they never came back. The only significant figure of old CU/ND staff who's really still around is Nuke (aka, Atomicbeast101) - but even he isn't exactly considered active. He's still largely moved on with his life - only coming in when he feels the urge to do so, or if his advice in particular is being sought after. But everyone else? They're pretty much gone. The most I've seen from the others is a single drop-in after a few years, followed by departure.
 
I don't mean to say it's a bad thing per se. People move on with their lives - that's a given. But me? I genuinely don't see myself ever truly wanting to leave. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but I easily see myself still doing something here in another 10 years. What I fear is going too hard too fast and burning myself out - to such a point where I too want to wash my hands of CU and move on with my life.
 
I don't want to do that. I never want to do that. While I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to keep CU going, and even people who may do it better than I did - I don't know of anyone who would be willing to commit to it this long term. I've been doing this more or less consistently since 2014. I've taken breaks during that time, yes - but I'm still here. I still do my best to ensure the continued growth and survival of Chaotic United. I may not be the best when it comes to carrying this torch, but I sure as hell won't ever let go of it. I don't know if anyone else out there would be willing to do something for 6 years - all while seeing such limited success. I'd imagine most people would call it quits a year in if their server only brought in 4-5 people.
 
But even if someone else out there could and would do what I do - I love this community. As small as it may be, Chaotic United has been a part of my life for nearly half of it. I first joined in January 2012, and almost 9 years later I'm still here, still playing on CU. I don't want to let it go, and I don't want to burn myself out to such a degree where I can't bring myself to even touch it again. And this isn't just me either - the advice "remember, this isn't a job" has been given to me pretty regularly since I began, often from those same people who have since moved on from it. And it's that approach that leads to these extended breaks.
 
I haven't, and likely never will treat CU as a job. When it begins to feel like one, I know that means it's time to step away for a little while. Ideally, I'd have things in place so that when those times come, it doesn't inevitably lead to the server suffering. This is a problem that likely won't go away anytime soon - but one that I eventually hope to nail down and resolve. But it's something that can only happen with time.
 
If you're upset at that fact, I'm sorry. I understand if some of you are irritated that I don't commit 150% into CU like those who came before me - but I try to look at it from the broader scheme of things. Is it better if I burn myself out and end up deciding to close CU after a year or two of that? Or is it better if, while I may take long breaks here and there, I am able to stick around and keep pushing forward for potentially another decade, if not more? I lean towards the latter, but hey - that's just me.
 
The good news is that this topic also marks the formal conclusion to my previous break. I am officially back to working on CU stuff again. I've got a lot of stuff planned (as always), and for those who read my previous announcement, this may come as quite a surprise. What happened to that job where I was working 60 hours a week? Well...
 
My New Job 2.0
 
If you're active on Discord, you likely have heard the news. I quit USPS after just a week. Yeah, I know. It's kind of pathetic, but not without justification.
 
The job at USPS was not only physically demanding, but also mentally taxing as well. In addition to effectively lifting weights for 8 hours a day (at least), you also had to keep your mind on about 8 things at once. That detail, combined with something I should've known from the very beginning, led to me taking a rapid exit before things got too crazy. What was that other thing I should've known? The fact that I am not willing to work 48-60+ hours a week. I imagine that for many people out there who don't have a ton of other stuff going on in their lives, they can afford to devote hours upon hours to work. But me? I've got enough on my plate to stay busy without any job at all - so in retrospect, accepting a job that would demand more than 40 hours a week was a fairly dumb decision on my part.
 
So, if I knew that going in, why did I go through with it? Why accept it only to quit after a week?
 
Two reasons: One, I had the idea that as a PSE, aka a Mail Processing Clerk, that the job would be largely non-physical. Maybe it's just me, but when I think of the term "clerk", I think of an office clerk or something similar to that. I don't imagine lifting these heavy things nonstop for 8-12 hours a day. I expected that I'd be doing occasional lifting, with the bulk of the job being standing or sitting somewhere, sorting letters into slots. What's worse is that I didn't have anything to go against that until my 4th day at the job. The first two days were orientation, the third was supposed to be training but we ended up being shoved into doing work for a whole different position, and the 4th day was the first day doing our actual training.
 
The second reason was largely more to do with it - the pay. I would be making $18.15/hr, and that detail alone had me distracted and justifying anything else to myself and to those around me. I was so fixated on that hourly rate that I forgot my own personal beliefs and values. I've always been of the mindset that time is infinitely more valuable than money. I'd rather make enough to get by and be able to enjoy my time out of work, rather than dedicate 20-30 years of my life to work and do little else. I want to enjoy my youth as best as I can, I don't want to wait until my body is falling apart after decades of abuse to finally enjoy myself.
 
But fear not - for I've already landed a new job: I'll be a cart attendant at Walmart. Yes, I'm going back to Walmart ladies and gentlemen. And yes, this will still be a very physical job - but the difference is that it will only be physical. Mentally, I can essentially tune out aside from ensuring I don't get run over or shove a bunch of carts into a vehicle. Along with that, you're largely left alone as long as you're doing your job well. It doesn't pay as great as USPS, but it starts at $11/hr, which is fairly decent all things considered - and assuming my hours are decent, will still leave me doing pretty okay once things stabilize. Not only that, but I'll have a much better work/life balance that I wouldn't have had at USPS.
 
Most of all, however, the job itself is something that I not only have experience with, but is something that I could honestly see myself growing to enjoy. I did it for an hour at a time twice a day back at Schnucks, and out of everything I did there - I enjoyed pushing carts the most. I liked the freedom and peace you had when you were out there just left alone. And that was during the winter, too - the weather I enjoy being out in the least. For those unaware, I'm a bit weird in the sense that I really like being in hot weather. I've routinely gone on walks in over 100 degree heat, and while I finish those hour long walks drenched in sweat, I always felt good during and after them. I don't know why, but for me - sweating genuinely feels good. Maybe it's just the feeling of accomplishment from having done something to make me sweat rather than the sweat itself - who knows. I enjoy the heat, sun, and rain - and I can tolerate cold and snow. All of that combined makes me think that, after the initial adjustment phase of getting used to being on my feet that many hours a day, I'll actually like the job. I find myself honestly looking forward to that first day pushing carts in the heat - as weird as that sounds.
 
The point of all of this is that I've switched jobs, and with this job, I'll still have time to dedicate to CU and/or Elaztek. In other words, everything in that previous topic about me not being around to do stuff? Forget about it - that's all null and void as of now.
 
But enough job talk - let's get technical and talk about this renewed plan for BungeeCord!
 
BungeeCord
 
In the past, I've been both gung-ho and also extremely hesitant to start jumping ship to BungeeCord. I always knew in the back of my head that it'd become a requirement for continued feature and player growth, but for a while I figured we'd be fine up to 60 or more players. However, there were a couple brief times earlier this year where we hit 15 players - and the TPS dropped from 20 to 17. TPS, aka Ticks Per Second, is used to measure how fast or slow the server is running. Minecraft natively runs at 20 ticks per second, so 19-20 TPS is considered perfect. 17 is playable, but lag is noticeable. 15 and below starts to become very frustrating, and anything below 10 is usually considered unplayable by most.
 
You may recall some of the issues with BungeeCord - namely that things begin to feel more sparse and separated. Things that people take for granted just don't work between servers, so for me that was a deal-breaker. Not only that, but getting those features introduced would take months... so why is BungeeCord already here?
 
Well, upon reflection, I've decided to adjust how these changes will come into the server. The original plan was to get everything accounted for, then split off all the gamemodes at once and shove the entire transformed server out at once. I think that grouping everything into this umbrella made me feel more hesitant to start to tackle it, due to just how much work was attached to this - which in turn sapped my motivation to even do it. This is what led me to shelf it repeatedly.
 
The new plan is to, instead, introduce these changes gradually over time. As of today - Chat, Ranks, Announcements, WorldEdit schematics, and the tab menu are cross-server. As time goes on, things like Mail, Player-to-Player Teleportation, Warps, and CUEmotes will become cross-server as well. These will be developed and rolled out as time goes on. Once these core features are made to work between servers, gamemodes will be broken away from the main server, until eventually every gamemode has been sectioned off into its own server. Make no mistake - this will all take a while still. However, doing it as a gradual rollout means that you'll see these changes gradually come into effect, and it means that new gamemodes (like Semi-Vanilla) will be available sooner, rather than having them held back until the surrounding components are ready.
 
As of now, there are three servers available, currently accessible using /server:
 
Hub/Waiting Room (hub)
 
This server will act as a fallback in the event that one of the other servers is restarted or crashes. At the moment, restarts will unfortunately still kick users outright, but at some point we plan to get this solved. Here, you'll find a modified version of the hub that we used when we were merged with Nuclear District, and they still had their own server. It's kind of been a tradition that every time we've had BungeeCord setup that we end up bringing this old hub back - so why should this be any different?
 
Semi-Vanilla (sv)
 
Once everything is ready, this is where you'll go to play Semi-Vanilla. Much like when we had it before, it's server name is simply sv. It will be largely comparable to the original Semi-Vanilla server - no advantageous perks for donating, no crazy custom items, just a vanilla survival experience with economy and grief protection. You know - the basics. The only significant change is that unlike before, you'll still have your same rank on this server - as ranks are synchronized between servers. You'll have the basic cosmetic perks (like /me, chat colors, etc), but all of the real perks will remain locked to Survival.
 
As of right now, you won't be able to do anything here. We've still got some work to do before Semi-Vanilla is ready. When that day comes, expect an announcement all about that.
 
Main Server (cu)
 
This is the main server, and it's largely unchanged from before. As of right now, all the gamemodes are currently within this server. Over time, however, gamemodes will be broken off into their own separate servers - at which point this server will likely act as a true hub server, and might contain some of the other miscellaneous stuff (such as builder world for instance).
 
Also in keeping with tradition, the server name was kept as cu - since back when we were merged with Nuclear District, this was the name that our server got. This is one of those other things that has largely remained unchanged every time we've messed with BungeeCord before.
 
Other Changes
 
A few other smaller changes have been made that are notable, but don't really warrant a full section of their own. So, let's go through them here.
 
Branding
 
First off, you'll likely notice that some branding has been updated within MC. Since 2013, CU has rocked a Cyan and White color scheme within in-game messages. Outside of this, however, we've mostly stuck to a regular blue color. As of 1.16, Minecraft now supports hexadecimal color codes. What this means is that we are no longer limited to the 16 colors available, but that we can now use any color we could possibly want - including the exact shade of Blue that we use on CU's forums. After holding a poll, the overwhelming majority of the community voted to use this Blue color instead of Cyan - so you'll start seeing more and more Blue instead of Cyan. This won't be a universal change starting out, as some plugins don't yet support these color codes. Along with that, all of our custom plugins have the CU branding hard-coded in, and many of them will keep their existing Cyan branding for the time being. As time goes on (most likely when each of these plugins receives an unrelated update), the branding will be changed to the new Blue color scheme.
 

 
Dynmap
 
Since dynmap doesn't have any native support for BungeeCord either, we have to have separate dynmap instances for each server which uses it. In order to ensure the livemap continues to be easy to use, you'll now see a navigation bar when viewing the map on Desktop, which lets you switch between the different dynmap pages for each server, as well as return to the Forums or Homepage. Right now, the only options are the Main server and Semi-Vanilla, but this will expand as gamemodes get broken off into separate servers.
 
Announcement Plugin Port
 
Since 2014, we've been using the same Announcement plugin that I found on BukkitDev one day. It hasn't been maintained past 1.8, so I've been keeping it updated myself since then. Since it's such a simple plugin, I tried to see if it was possible to port the entire plugin to BungeeCord - that way, announcements would display cross-server (and that way the same message would be broadcast). Turns out, yes! With the only major changes being how configuration files are written/read, the old plugin never did anything that depended on Bukkit APIs that didn't also have an equivalent in BungeeCord (since it was just chat). This doesn't mean a whole lot to you guys, but I thought it was neat that this old Bukkit plugin was able to be completely ported to an entirely different API.
 
Redesigned Tab Menu
 
Since our old tab menu plugin lacked BungeeCord support, we needed to find a new plugin. And boy, did we find one. This new tab menu is everything I wanted the tab menu to be back in the day. Have a look for yourself:
 
Old Menu
 
New Menu
 
The old animations were easy to migrate over, it has support for the new hex colors, and you can do a lot more with it than you could with the old plugin. Not only does it group players depending on what server they're in, but a few useful stats will always show at the top and bottom of the list. Additionally, you'll notice that usernames display differently as well. Each username will display in a different color depending on what rank they are - a feature that has been absent since Nuclear District's original MC server in 2014. Along with that, staff members will have a gold star (yes i know it looks like a snowflake, its an 8-spoke star) next to their name, and AFK users will have a gray hourglass next to their name. They're small additions, but ones that I think are pretty neat.
 
Contextual Information in Chat
 
Try hovering over a player's rank prefix or username in chat - you'll find something new! If you hover over someone's username, you'll see a few stats (as of their message) and you can click their name to start sending a message. If you hover over their rank prefix, you can get some information about that rank - be it what they do, or how to earn it.
 
User Tooltip
 
Rank Tooltip
 
 
Wrapping Up
 
Whew - another nice and lengthy announcement update in the bag! A few other minor changes were made here and there, but if you're interested in those you'll need to check the full changelog. Otherwise, that's all we've got for now. Hopefully, we'll have another one of these coming sooner rather than later.

Hey, guys.
 
It's been a rough couple of days here for me and undoubtedly for several of you as well.
 
As you all have probably heard by now, Wind has decided to leave us and CU behind. For how long, who knows. The way he decided to go about it resulted in him being kicked and later banned from the community due to the repeated hostility he's expressed towards everyone - myself included.
 
I've known Wind since 2016. He first returned to CU under the name Arlem. He was a guy who was talented at building and was adamant about never using WorldEdit, and played a hefty amount of Paragon. Over time, we grew to become close friends, knowing all the deepest secrets about each other. Always being by the other's side no matter how bad it got.
 
Unfortunately, it seems that at this time, that friendship has been severed - possibly even for good.
 
It's been under considerable strain for the past couple months. I have no doubt it's been playing a part in why I've failed to be productive, both within CU and in my own personal life. Several situations have come up over the past month or so that have done nothing but cause me to be an emotional wreck. He's gone off on people, and gone off on me most of all. I think that "oh he's just in a shit mood and he'll come out of it in a day or two", only to then hear how he's talking normally to someone else - which fucking kills me - because it makes me think that maybe he won't come out of it, that maybe this really is how he feels and what he thinks. It makes it feel as though the friendship we've had genuinely does mean absolutely nothing, that maybe he truly does believe I'm as good as dirt. That I'm just a piece of shit, or that I may as well go back to being a cum stain on my mother's back, and that I should go to hell.
 
I wanted to be there for him whenever he needed me. I wanted to be there through the good and the bad, the same way I have been for the past 4 years. But I can't keep being the punching bag every time something like this happens. I love the dude - I really do. But I've reached the limit of what I can handle. Originally I was going to wait for him to come around, to wait and see if he'd come around. I want to stick by his side the way I always have.
 
But I can't. Not anymore. Not until he gets the help he needs.
 
I can't help him anymore. I've been trying for years, and where did that leave me? Alone, miserable, and broken.
 
Last night, I reached my breaking point. I cried for the first time in nearly a decade. It started when he got online as an alt under the name "Toiletwhistle", and had only two messages:
 
 
My mood was just starting to come up a bit when this happened. Minutes later, espon (wolfbitez) mentioned that Wind was seemingly still talking to him - which of course had me fucked up since it suggests that Wind doing this isn't just one of his episodes, though it seems so clear that it must be - right? I felt massive rush of anger and frustration - venting to a few people in voice chat which built up to me standing out of my seat and shouting my words. I went into the hallway towards the storage room, let out the loudest scream I could, started banging on the door - and then the tears came. I broke down - right in Discord for everyone to see the absolutely pitiful mess of a person I'd been reduced to. I had to be moved to the Staff channel since I was obviously not gonna come over and move myself.
 
That's the state of mind that one of my best friend put me in. That's what Wind did to me.
 
How can I in good faith call someone a friend when that's the kind of shit they do to me?
 
I can't.
 
That being said, my hope is that this won't be permanent. I don't hate Wind. I pray that he'll come back around. I pray that this is just another one of his episodes - that this isn't really him. But I can't let myself get dragged down with him. It's crushing me. It's driving me insane. It's pushing me to and beyond my breaking point. Everyone has their limits as to what they can take. I think that, unfortunately, I've reached mine.
 
 
Taking Some Time Off
Yesterday I was banned from his server, blocked on Discord and later he got on MC just to remind me that I'm a piece of shit. Other staff members banned him from CU - but I've taken it upon myself to ban him from Elaztek and block him myself. I pray that this won't have to be a forever thing - that maybe he'll come back around, realize how awful he's treated myself and everyone else, and get the help he so desperately needs.
 
I feel like shit doing this. It'll likely haunt me for a long time still - but it's better than being abused like this all the time, I guess.
 
This combined with gradual fatigue and frustration with everything has brought me to the decision to take a break. I've been wanting to work on stuff for Elaztek Studios for a while now, but have felt too obligated to CU - what with the increasing player counts and massive amounts of donations - to step away. As much as I was hoping to avoid this - I've got to look out for my own mental health.
 
The past months have left me shattered and broken. I begin to dread getting up for fear of what awaits me on Discord. It's a feeling I haven't felt since 2017 - except it's different this time. At least in 2017, Wind didn't hate me. He only hated the decisions I was making. Now, it seems that the target of his wrath isn't my actions, but me.
 
If you're worried that I might not come back - don't be. In fact that's largely why I'm taking a break. Just as I've cut off Wind in an effort to preserve whatever may be left between he and I in the hopes we can come back together later, I'm taking a break from CU now to ensure I don't reach a point where I want to rid myself of being an owner on the community. I love CU and I love the community it has. It's truly satisfying and amazing to see that, while we may not have yet achieved the larger playerbase I'd love to have - we're still here. We've got a tightly-knit community here where everyone is a friend, and that's pretty damn cool.
 
The plan is to, upon returning, be eager to get back to work on the server. Whether or not that'll happen, I can't yet say. Of course it also depends how long the break is.
 
I don't know how long this break will be. It could be just a few days, it might be weeks, it may even be a month or two. I don't know yet. But it's apparent to me that I need to take some time away from CU.
 
 
To Wind
Wind, if you're reading this, know that I don't hate you. I love you - the real you. I want nothing more than my friend back. That's why I have to do this. I have to cut you off for now until you get better. Believe me I feel like absolute shit doing it. But I don't want to grow to hate you. I want to someday see you get the help you need - real help, not the "help" you got before - and that the two of us can reunite and go drink a couple Capri-Sun™s together or some shit. I pray that that day comes sooner rather than later. But I can't keep going through this, man. You're dragging me down with you. These past months have been unbearable for me, and nearly everyone I've talked to has been telling me since it began that I should cut you off. And at this point, after breaking down to tears in front of effectively everyone - I can't argue with them anymore.
 
Please come back. Get the help you need and come back. Once you do I'll happily welcome you back in with open arms. But I can't take the abuse anymore. I hope you understand. If you think that me doing this is a dick move to do, I understand. If you want to never talk to me again because of it - it sucks, it hurts, but I understand. I didn't come to this decision lightly, if that makes it any better.
 
I'm not removing your plugins. I won't erase your work. You've contributed massively to CU and I can never thank you enough - and I'll see to it that people remember you because of it, whether you return or not.
 
 
Where to Find Me
So, where will I be during this break? I'll be camping out over at Elaztek Studios primarily. If you wanna keep up with what I'll be up to or keep on talking to me in voice chat, you're free to hop into the Elaztek Discord. Fun fact - the Premiums and Veterans among you will get your ranks back upon joining over. If other people are over there, you'll likely see me in voice chat.
 
If you aren't aware, Elaztek is a game development studio that I've (kind of) started up. Our current project is the Blamite Game Engine. Rather than using an off-the-shelf engine like Unreal or Unity, we want to build our own engine from the ground up. From the community side, we admittedly don't have a whole lot as of yet. Even so, we do have a forums and Discord.
 
Now that being said, I'm also gonna try and stay active in CU in terms of the community. While I do believe I need a break, I also don't believe that secluding myself from my friends is going to make anything any better. In fact I'm fairly sure it'd do nothing but make everything that much harder. So in addition to Elaztek, you'll likely continue to see me in the CU discord, talking in text channels and in voice. However - please do not ask me to get on the server, or drag me into situations, or inform me about bugs or anything like that. The only reason I'd be sticking around is to talk to my friends. I want nothing to do with any server stuff and will not be involved save for very extreme situations where I absolutely must be there. If I can't get away from server management stuff in the CU Discord, then my fallback will be to either mute the server and live solely in Elaztek, or if that fails - I'll transfer server ownership to my alternate account and then leave the server until I feel ready to come back.
 
If you wanna sign up on the Elaztek forums, you can do so at https://elaztek.com 
If you're interested in joining the Elaztek Discord, you can join at https://discord.gg/DYMFVWZ
 
I'm sorry that I have to do this. I hate that it's gotten to this point. I hate that a friendship has been strained so heavily to lead to this. My hope is that when I make my return, I'll be ready and eager to get back to it. I hope to return and start working on getting bugs fixed, new gamemodes added, and making the MC server the best it can be. But that won't happen with me being in this mental state.
 
I don't know how long it'll take me to reach that point. Maybe it'll just be a few days and I'll be ready, or maybe it'll take a month or two. Maybe it'll be somewhere in between. I don't know how much time I need because I've never felt so fucked up like this before. I've never been in a position where I felt that it was necessary to cut a friend off. For my whole life, friendships have only ever become distant - never strained like this. It's a new pain - and it's miserable. And considering just how much of Wind is still within CU, I don't see myself being able to recover as long as I'm still here trying to work on it.
 
Once again, I'm sorry for doing this. I'm sorry that this topic is kind of all over the place and disorganized - I'm just not in a great headspace at the moment. I hope to come back sooner rather than later. Until then, you can find me on the Elaztek or CU Discord servers.
 
 
Have a good day, yall. Try not to miss me too much.

Toast.

fad.bmp

Important: To see Durite's custom textures you will NEED Optifine! You may download that here!
 
Hello lovelies!
I made new toys for you guys, and it seems like only a handful of you actually know about it. So, I have decided to make this lovely little guide for you so that you can start your hunt for Durite, the strongest material on Chaotic United!
(yes even stronger than netherite, don't let the tool stats fool you.)
 
 
Let's start with some background on how to find some...
First, you'll need a Netherite Pickaxe (or a Durite Pick) to mine the Durite. Keep in mind; Silk Touch does work on Durite Ore.
You can find Durite Ore in craters like this:

 
The craters all lead to one large impact zone! The person who finds this can have Owner on W i n d F r o n t i e r :
(@KiranFuryPhoenix otherwise known as IlphenDai is the first to have found it!)

 
Confused on what W i n d F r o n t i e r is? I don't care, we're moving on.
 
P.S using dynmap can help you locate the craters
 
 
But Wandwaffle, why do I want Durite!?
Well, for starters, if you have OptiFine installed and you accepted our custom server resource pack, you're gonna look like this:

 
 
Damn that looks cooler than a polar bear (;) ) but what does Durite do!?
Durite Sword: Does a total of 9 damage points per hit. The tool will say it does 7 damage, don't let that fool you.
Durite Pickaxe: Will mine a 3x3 area of natural stone blocks. (Andesite, Granite, Stone, etc)
Durite Shovel: Same as pickaxe, but with dirt blocks.
Durite Axe: Same as two above, but with wood blocks. (kinda useless cuz veinminer but whatev)
Durite Hammer: This is a brand new item that acts similar to Grifblock's Gravity Hammer!
Durite Hoe: Will till a 3x3 area of grass/dirt. Can also act as a growing agent like Bone Meal to crops by right-clicking them.
Durite Bow: A bow crafted with Durite instead of sticks. This bow can achieve a level higher than a fully drawn critical arrow.
 
Durite Armor: Will store the damage you take into a brand new attack that you can unleash by right clicking an entity!
Durite Elytra: Allows you to boost yourself while in flight by punching the air. (like the firework does, but without it)
 
Durite Hopper: A filtered hopper! Click on the filter item inside of the hopper with the item you want to set or remove from the filter. Click on the filter item to set it to a not filter.
 
 
Ok that's all cool...but how do I craft it?
Most of the crafting recipes are the same as all the other vanilla items with the exception of a few items.
 
Here's a few noteworthy crafting recipes:





 
 
 
 
I think that covers most of it, friends!
If you have any questions about Durite, please don't hesitate to ask me.

Man. Crazy to think we've been going nine years. Nine years is a long time.
 
Typically, the past anniversary posts have been worded along the lines of "yea we're pretty quiet now but we'll get somewhere soon i promise!". Last year, I wanted the 8th anniversary announcement to be the final one following that format:
 
 
Well, we aren't quite there yet unfortunately. That being said, we are undeniably closer to that target than we have been in a very long time - possibly closer than we ever have been. Which, hey - I'll take it. Any progress is good at this point.
 
So, let's take a look back and reflect on the past year.
 
Reflecting on Year 8
 
We started the 8th year off with, once more, a promise of hope for the future. We were hard at work on updating to 1.14 - though it still took much longer than any of us would've liked. It saw the departure of several staff members and the introduction of new ones.
 
While year 8 wasn't as groundbreaking as we all obviously would've hoped - it was still a new beginning nonetheless. It marked the point where we fixed a number of the deeply-rooted management issues with CU. Not server issues per se, but issues with how I managed the people. I'd had a pretty serious issue with holding on to staff members for far too long. People were on the staff team for no other reason than I was used to seeing their name in Blue or Green. The vast majority of those people didn't even need to be demoted - when I laid out the new expectations going forward, they simply stepped down to avoid that uncomfortable situation.
 
With those folk out of the team, room was available for new users to fill that role. The most notable addition is, of course, @Z0mbieslayer2013. You know him, you love him - and believe it or not, this is his first time as a Moderator. While there are certainly times where this is clear, he's done something that really doesn't happen as often as it probably should - he asks questions.
 
Not just questions on "how do I do x", or "what do I do if Y happens?" - no, no. He stands up straight and asks questions about why things are they way they are. Questioning things that have been the case for years and pointing out things that should be obvious improvements. And while not all of his ideas and suggestions have been implemented - the fact that he still proposes changes and enhancements at all is important. When you as a leader surround yourself with people who just agree with you all the time, you're living in an echo chamber. And if nothing else, Zombie is ensuring that I'm not sitting in one.
 
The second half of year 8 saw us hit some of the biggest population spikes we've seen in years. As unremarkable as reaching 10 or more users on the server at once seems, it's a step in the right direction - and a step we've not seen happen in years. The last time we saw numbers that high was in early 2017, roughly 3 years ago. And while those heights tend to happen at random with much of the activity still hanging much lower, activity as a whole has improved. 0 people on isn't the norm during the whole day - you'll typically only see it at a couple specific parts of the day (typically very early/late).
 
And of course, we've been slowly working on migrating everything over to BungeeCord - in an effort to remove technical issues. And this will be our primary focus for Chaotic United's 9th year.
 
The Plan for Year 9
 
Our plan for this year is similar to what we did in Year 8. Where Year 8 was the year of fixing management-related issues, Year 9 is the year of fixing all the technical problems that have been building up since 2014. Fixing long-time issues, and making future issues easier to nail down and resolve.
 
However, due to the sheer volume of issues that are scattered about, there's no way for us to have a single, coherent memory of each and every issue. This is where you come in.
 
If you find any bug - or anything that so much as looks like a bug - report it on our Bug Tracker. Our goal is to start the decade off with a solid technological foundation - and to enter the second decade of Chaotic United as a strong, stable, secure, and reliable server. A server that doesn't have a series of ridiculous roadblocks keeping people who would otherwise enjoy the server from having fun. And most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough - do NOT just tell me about a bug. My memory is NOT reliable and I guarantee you I'll forget about the issue entirely within 24 hours - if not sooner. This is the reason we have the bug tracker, so that issues aren't just "forgotten" and so that their status can be tracked.
 
If you've told me about an issue before, report it. Anything that you'd consider strange or "probably not intentional" is something that should be reported. I want to know any and all issues you guys might have, severe or not. Even if it's a completely harmless bug, report it. I want to get each and every bug on that bug tracker fixed - I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say I'm sick and tired of having a buggy server - and I'm sick of making you guys constantly put up with a buggy server.
 
Speaking of Server Stuff...
 
Something sort of huge has been developing here lately - and you might've already heard me mention it. But if you haven't - in the coming months, we'll be doing a bit of server consolidation. Most of this is outside of Chaotic United entirely, but one change that will affect CU (slightly) is that the Elaztek Gitlab will be hosted on the same machine as the MC server. For a while (and still at the time of writing), it runs on its own machine with a couple of things that aren't CU or Elaztek related.
 
I know what you're thinking: "I don't give a damn about server consolidation - that's not exciting". And you're absolutely right. However, the next part (at least for me) is.
 
As part of this consolidation, I will be taking over the payment of the CU/Elaztek servers moving forward. The only things I won't be paying for are the relays - as those are so cheap that Michael will continue paying for them. That being said, a couple of the unused ones are being dropped. If you're worried - don't be. If you use a relay, the one you use will be kept online. Several that we have are just not used whatsoever - and as such, they're being dropped.
 
For those of you who have been around for a while, you'll know that Michael has been fairly crucial to paying the bills for most of the time of the CU revival. He hosted the server out of his house from late 2014 through to mid-2015 when we merged with ND. From there, we moved to a VPS which I paid for. A while later (2017 if I'm not mistaken but don't quote me on it), Michael stepped back in to pay for the dedicated server that we've been using until today.
 
After finally getting a stable job that shows no signs of going anywhere, I'm finally in a position where I can actually cover these bills. And with this transition, I think it's all the more important that we all thank and honor Michael for what he's done for CU since 2014. It's no exaggeration that, if he never came along, we absolutely would not be here today. I'd have likely given up on it after my old laptop died and I'd probably be on a whole different path - never getting a chance to know any of you guys. The legacy of Chaotic United would've ended in mid-2016, possibly even sooner - when ND shut down. That would've been it and the book would've closed. But thanks to Michael - we persevered.
 
As small as we are, we've held strong and steady and managed to hold this thing together all this time. We've made sure that, if nothing else, Chaotic United's story didn't end several years ago - to ensure it lives to see a new year, a new decade, and a new generation. And while there are numerous people who have contributed to that (see the credits page (which im aware needs some updating)), Michael is easily the biggest contributor by far.
 
So - on behalf of all of us, thank you Michael for all that you've done thus far, and will hopefully continue to do.
 
Oh yeah - sidenote, Michael won't be leaving the community. I know the way I wrote all that makes it sound like he is, but in reality he's still gonna be a big part of the backend management of CU - it's just that he won't be putting his own money into it anymore.
 
When we start moving things to the new server, we'll be sure to announce it both on Forums and Discord - as there will be a little bit of downtime during the migration.
 
Wrapping Up - For Now...
 
Well, I think that about wraps it up for now. Some of you may think that this is yet another "hope for the future" post. And I suppose in a sense, it is. But this one is a bit different. I'm not proclaiming that we're starting a new beginning today. We already did that last year.
 
I'm saying that right now, we're a little behind schedule - but still on track. This isn't the start of a new age of CU, but rather the next building block of that new beginning.
 
I can't say how soon it'll be, but our goal is to be running smooth and stable and with either minimal or no bugs by December. Will we achieve that goal? Only time will tell - so stay tuned.

I am not suggesting dropping or forgetting about minecraft, but for example.. when you go to chaoticunited.net what is the first impression you get? Minecraft. Click on forums, minecraft. I'm not saying put less effort into minecraft instead put more effort into versatility.

Most newer games don't have player-hosted servers, although they have ways to build a community.
I'm aware that WoW and Runescape arent particularly new games, in fact they are  just a few years younger than me. Both these games have ways to build a community, whether it's clans or friend chats, u can do it. I've played a lot of CS:GO for example with people I met on a runescape clan. With that being said, managing a clan on both of those games can be fun and can help CU grow even if its a smal amount.
Other games such as CS:GO do have ways to build servers and connect people. I don't know if you want to dedicate time to opening csgo servers or other shooters such as tf2 but it can be rewarding for the community.
 
Also I do kind of agree with minecraft being "dead". Is it really dead? No. But does it have a declining player base? Yes.
With new games coming out such as Fortnite or Apex, people are starting to shift to those games. My young cousins (11yo) used to play minecraft all the time and now just play fornite with their friends. I'm aware this doesn't mean everyone shifted over to these new games and that minecraft isnt just for kids but it's just goes to show that even they are leaving minecraft for other games.
 
A small investment of time into these new games shouldnt hurt this community at all. 

Sup Bitches, I know you all remember me and still don't wanna give me OP, whatever.
 
I have a suggestion take it or leave it, but I see a lot of potential in chaotic united not as a server but as a community. The main reason its doing completely garbage is because you're holding onto minecraft. Minecraft it self is dead, so any community related to it will also be dead. Now I am not saying get rid of minecraft because halo has an awkward fetish with blocks but maybe instead turn this into a gaming community. You have everything you need to set your self up for success, but you fail at using it. IPB is a powerful system, and it looks like you guys got it all down pact, except no one wants a whole forums based off minecraft. The old chaotic united was obliviously popping because minecraft was popping, what they did was take what was popular, offer a platform for people to connect on, and add a little twist of customization to keep it going.
 
Example: World of Warcraft
Indeed it was a very popular game around 2012 or whatever, so what did the owner decide to do,  create a platform for players to interact,  then invested in a private custom server to keep those players attracted. 
 
Example 2: Runescape
It was very popular around the same time, and once again create a platform base for players to interact and socialize, trade ect for the game, invest in a private server to keep the player base connected and involved. 
 
Then minecraft you already know how that went.
 
Those games obviously died out but by that time killerteddy knew that and was already planning on switching the game plan. Unfortunately the trail of stupidity caught up to him and he lost everything he had setup in place to keep the dream going.
 
If you guys instead turned this into a hub focused on gaming as a whole, then the players will flow in from those games and hopefully feed off into other games as well. WoW players would hop on MC for a bit, MC players would hop on runescape for a bit so on and so forth, because all those platforms were offered within the same community, friends can go play mc together, then to collect money in runescape or whatever you do in runescape I never played it really.
 
I think in order to achieve this a clean start, or a re make and re open is in order to clear out all the old and re brand and re image chaotic united for what it originally was, a gaming community because that's what everyone misses, the community aspect. Times have changed and chaotic needs the same. 

Howdy folks! Some stuff has been happening the past few days and I think it's high time we let you guys in on some of it.
 
As you probably know, Minecraft 1.14 released just a few days ago. Our test server has, as of today, been updated to 1.14 - granted there's still a ways to go. A lot of stuff is broken, but not as much as was broken with 1.13. Survival is mostly playable, however most other gamemodes aren't functional just yet. This will obviously change as time goes on and things get updated, Spigot and our plugins alike. This is still a fairly decent outcome considering that we are only a few after 1.14's release and we're already somewhat up and running on it.
 
But of course, something else is significant about today. Today is April 26th, CU's birthday. Today marks 8 years since Chaotic United first opened its doors to the world.
 
That's quite a long time, and a lot has changed in the world since 2011. Many of us here were children back then. Many of the people who were around back then have moved on from Minecraft, and many of those did so years ago. For a lot of people, it's sad to look at the current state of the community in comparison to back then. Part of our apparent lack of progress is my fault.
 
For the past couple years I've neglected to run my staff team properly, and over the past couple of years the importance of staff expectations have degraded. The importance of being active decreased, I failed to give people things to do, and people were still growing up and moving into a new phase of their lives. Many of the people who had nothing but time back then nowadays are busy with college, work, or life in general.
 
I've told this to my staff team just the other day, and I'm going to tell you - I want this 8th anniversary to be a turning point. A turning point for me, for this team, and for this community. The torch I've picked up and continue to carry has been neglected - and for that, I am terribly sorry. But sorry isn't enough - the only thing that's enough is correcting the mistakes of the past and building a better future. To deliver on the promises and goals I had back in 2014. And while those goals may be high - too high to be realistic, as some say - I believe in aiming high.
 
A pattern has been consistent for each and every one of these special dates - a promise of "things will get better soon, guys", time and time again like a broken record. My goal is for this one to be the last one. I want our 9th birthday to be a celebration, not a message of hope for the future. I can say things will get good soon, but sooner or later people are going to stop having hope. We've been declining, not growing. I want our next birthday announcement to be reminiscent of the one that was posted after it's first year of life:
 
On 4/21/2012 at 1:47 PM, Spencer said: Chaotic United is now a year old, give or take a couple days. It was once a much smaller community known as "Fatality Minecraft" that only consisted of a Minecraft server, run off of killerteddy's computer.
 
This year has been amazing, we've expanded rapidly and became a successful and known gaming community. Our presence has spawned many other small gaming communities, some chose to try to develop alongside of us and others tried to attack our member base and steal the ideas that our community was founded upon.
 
None of our achievements and goals would have ever been met without you guys, the community. So we owe it all to you. Many original members of Chaotic knew that we were always branded by our blue colour schemed styles so I've decided to revamp our current theme to blue and white as opposed to the green and white. You'll also find various of improvements and new features that were added in the past week.
 
Also, in addition to all this we've reached 100,000 total posts! That's a huge milestone for us, and in less then a week or so we'll hit 25,000 total members. Out of all the projects I've lead or contributed to none has been ever so successful as Chaotic, and I'm proud of what we've all built Chaotic United to be.
 
So once again, thanks everyone for making Chaotic's first year an amazing and the development team is working diligently to produce new and truly custom and immersive content. And also a special thanks to all of our donators and supporterss, without you we wouldn't be able to fund the server costs and development costs. And we're still very proud to say that not even a cent of donation money has ever been spent for our personal benefits. 
 
I want next year's post to look more like this, instead of preaching hope of future prospects for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. You'll start seeing the effects of some of these changes as we update to 1.14, and as we move into the rest of the year.
 
Now to clarify something before we wrap up: When I talk about a turning point, I do NOT refer to any shift away from Minecraft. We may start to explore having one or two other servers, but we're gonna be sticking to Minecraft as our main server for many years to come. I firmly believe that the issue is not entirely due to the server itself (though there are definitely some things that need to change on that front), but moreso to do with how we as a team actually function - along with a lack of any sort of marketing/advertisement.
 
Keep your eyes peeled on forums and Discord - things are gonna start happening very soon that will mark a turnaround in this community.

Hey, folks! Some new things to talk about today! This time, all about the lovely CU website.
 
As of now, we have retired the old CU helpcenter in favor of a new one (which may or may not be based on the one Elaztek uses).
 
Our old one was pretty clunky in both looks and usability. It was generally just not that great. So, we've opted to migrate everything to a brand new helpcenter, integrated into the forums rather than our main website.
 
Some topics (in particular, ones that aren't really standard articles) have not and likely will not be migrated over anytime soon. However, you'll still find links to them in our new helpcenter. The old helpcenter and any links that it contains are now considered legacy and as time goes on will be further and further out of date.
 
You can check out the new helpcenter by clicking here.
 
In the first draft of this announcement, that's all that happened. But then, something else happened - the homepage got a slight facelift. Not a huge change, but if you check the homepage, you'll see the latest announcement topic featured right there, along with the image and other basic information about it. Cool, right?
 
Lastly, our dark theme got all the new banners added to it because it turns out I forgot to add them to it. Better late than never, right? 😅
 
That's all for now folks! We can't share many other details just yet (though you should keep your eyes peeled for some news soon), but 2019 is shaping to be a big year - a truly defining year for CU. You may also notice several staff in Discord in voice (in private staff channels) around 3PM Central, as we're doing a staff meeting today - the first in a while. There's also some other neat things in the works behind the scenes besides that as well - details of which we hope to share soon.
 
But, for now, that's all I've got. See you folks soon!

I just passed this on to Halo. Hardware wise the server can handle it, but its a matter of whether any mods or server plugins conflict with it. You should expect to hear something on the Discord soon about it. 
 
 

Hey, everyone! Remember that poll we did a few days ago?
 
Well, taking the poll into account, we've made our decision and CU is now introducing a brand new server - a Semi-Vanilla server!
 
sv.chaoticunited.net
 
So, what is this server exactly?
This server is the pure Minecraft experience. There is an economy system in place, as well as grief protection, and other basics. There is going to be a single donation rank - VIP, for the same price as the main server's VIP rank: 10 dollars. We will also be having time based ranking make a return as well - more details on that later. There is no McMMO, Jobs, or anything of the sort - it's essentially the core MC experience as it was designed. Additionally, there are NO donation ranks that feature things like /item, /gamemode, or /fly or any other such perks. The perks for VIP will be as follows:
 
Semi-Vanilla VIP Perks List
 
The goal of the server is to create an experience where all players are equal, a fair playing field. Along with this server's implementation, we've introduced BungeeCord again (and a hub that may look familiar to some of you who were around in 2016). The main purpose of implementing BungeeCord is to advertise this server separately from the main MC server. Now, this may not end up sticking and we may end up migrating the server into the multiworld setup with the main server, it just depends how things go. Until then, the servers will be isolated and you can switch between them by doing /hub, /main, and /sv.
 
What does this mean for the main server?
Nothing! All the ranks and their perks are remaining the same. In fact, we have lifted the restriction on /item - which means you can spawn to your hearts content again! The main server will continue to be our primary focus, and will receive the most attention as always. Even so, for any players looking to try a more pure Minecraft experience (or just wanting to play uninterrupted survival with your friends), we encourage you to give our new server a whirl!
 
Bungeecord?
Yes! You can connect to either server straight from the other. There is no cross server chat or message capability at this time due to several issues that we found while doing so, including problems with Discord integration as well as other problems that took more away from the experience than anything. There will be a portal in the main server hub to the left of the Survival portal that will take you to Semi-Vanilla, and the hub server will have portals that lead to both servers. Additionally, forced hosts have been setup which will allow you to connect to any server via IP. The primary IP, mc.chaoticunited.net or mc.chaoticunited.com will take you to the main server, hub.chaoticunited.net will take you to Network Hub, and sv.chaoticunited.net will take you to the Semi-Vanilla server.
 
Why all this? Why not just make the existing Survival mode be like this instead?
A few reasons. The biggest reason is previous donators - several people have donated specifically for the advantageous perks like flying, itemspawn, and so on. Taking these perks away is, in our eyes, the same as basically stealing. People paid for their abilities and they deserve to keep them. Additionally, we felt that doing it this way would be better suited on its own server in order to bring in people who, say, don't want to be in a giant server with tons of stuff - but just want pure Survival. This gives people a way to get introduced to the community and eventually explore the other server on its own.
 
What about advertising?
Not much to say yet, but I am likely going to end up with a job by the end of the month - which could open a few doors.  
 
 
Can't wait to see you guys on the server! We hope you guys love it, and we're excited for the ever brighter future of CU!

Y u gotta flex your 2 huge screens like that
That background is dope tho, gj

There is a very good chance that Tesla will be successful in the next 5-10 years. Elon continues to amaze his fans/customers with top-notch electric vehicles and home goodies. The majority of Americans + perhaps the world are currently combating climate change that are happening around us. Our traditional cars currently use fossil fuel which obviously contributes to climate change. That would encourage more investments into electric vehicle industries such as Tesla.

As many of you know, Elon Musk is becoming a real-life Tony Stark. Tesla, one of his companies, has recently launched their own Semi Truck along with their new and improved Roadster. And just for fun, they decided to launch their own pickup truck as well-- which is capable of holding a pickup truck on its bed. I know, amazing. However, many successful company leaders have been critical of these moves claiming that they won't be successful at all. I, for a fact, know that some of these critics are connected with the gas industry and are just saying that just to make sure there isn't a decline in gas sales. But, I wanted to ask you guys: Do you see Tesla failing or succeeding in the next 5-10 years?
 

 
Personally, I am a huge fan of Elon Musk and all of his companies: Tesla, Solar City, and Space X. (Discussion about Space X is for a totally different post)
 
New Tesla Roadster
This car is just ridiculous. This car is crazy quick going 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds (first ever car to break 2 seconds) and 0-100 mph in 4.2 seconds. While we don't know the exact top speed, Elon Musk was able to disclose that is it more than 250 mph. Easily, this is the fastest accelerating car ever made, and also the slickest car Tesla has ever made.

 
On top of that, Tesla has always been heavily criticized that electric cars would never work because their mile range per charge would be extremely low and charging stations would be very far apart. Tesla's response? They have built over 1000 charging stations worldwide, which equates to around 7000 charging ports. They were able to double the amount of chargers every year, and are continuing to do so today (https://electrek.co/2017/10/03/tesla-supercharger-network-1000-stations/). Also, did I forget to mention that the new Roadster has a mile range of 620 miles. 620 MILES!!
I mean, just look at this beauty go. The acceleration on this Roadster seems outlandish and impossible.
This is the quickest car in the world:
 
 
 
Tesla Semi Truck
I know, crazy right? Tesla unveiled their new project-- The Semi Truck. Huge companies such as Walmart and UPS have already purchased this Semi Truck that hasn't even came out yet. The specs on this thing are just crazy, and watching videos of this thing don't seem natural at all.

 
This Semi Truck goes from 0-60 mph in just under 5 seconds, and it goes 0-60 mph in under 20 seconds with a maximum load of 80,000 kg. Trust me, watching videos of this just feels weird. Take a look:
 
Tesla decided to place the driver's seat in the middle of the truck, which sounds unorthodox; however, it looks pretty neat and seems to be effective. I mean just look at the inside of the truck. 

 
Tesla Pickup Truck
Not much has been said about this, but this just looks ridiculous.
 

 
If you want to watch the whole Tesla unveiling video, here you go:
 
 
So what are you're thoughts on Tesla?

Hey, folks! Since our December survey has been concluded, we are going to go over the results now.
 
In total, 9 users participated in this survey. Thanks to all of you! If you submitted a survey and did not get a code, contact me and I will get your code.
 
Survey Responses
 

 
First off, let's talk about what modes you guys want to see. The top picks were Survival, Creative, SkyBlock, and Parkour. The top 4 picks are all core modes of CU, and have been present for a while now. Behind those, RPG, SkyWars, and MobArena were voted for. RPG is currently a project we have going on behind the scenes, and has been mentioned a few times before. We will keep you guys updated as that starts to come together. MobArena also made it in at the last minute for MC. SkyWars is something we've wanted to do for a while, but sadly we are having some trouble finding a proper plugin for it. That being said, we will keep you guys posted and we will continue to look into these.
 

 
Of these, the big winners were mcMMO, Jobs, and random loot chests. So far, mcMMO and Jobs were both in, but loot chests weren't able to make it in (yet). We have some ideas, so stay tuned for that! Quests and /warp event both scored fairly well, both of these being ideas we want to explore in the future. Quests is an uncertain one due to an RPG server basically taking that role, but as with the chests - we have some ideas. /warp event is basically where periodically, the staff will host an event within the server (mostly in Survival) with some kind of award tied to it. These were common on old CU, but have fallen out of favor since 2014. We may end up looking into these however. Vanilla survival and an Auction house were both not really wanted (among those who voted).

 
The overwhelming winner in this scenario was another modern MC server, though I think in retrospect I should have added a "no more servers" option. Followed closely behind was a modded server, with everything else falling in line behind that. We already have both of these, which seems to mirror the current server structure anyhow. Not much else on that.
 

We got some fairly positive feedback on our Beta 1.7.3 server. Of those of you who played it, most of you rated it a 3 and a couple of you gave it a 5/5. A fair chunk of you didn't really vote on this (or just had no real opinion of it) due to not playing, but really, the point of that server isn't to bring in huge mountains of people anyways.
 

 
Lots of love for Brink of Chaos! Most of you voted a 4 or a 5, but one of you voted 2 . I suspect this is largely due to the steep performance requirements of the pack, but I can't say for sure. Whoever voted for that, if I am incorrect with my assumption, do let me know why it is you voted the way you did!
 

 
Generally, we had positive opinions on our main server. A lot of you voted 4 or 5, with a few of you giving it a 3. Honestly, for a server that was pre-relaunch, I was expecting worse. Good to see a lot of you guys are enjoying it!
 

Now for the good stuff. This is an interesting one. Based on the chart above, you would think that TTT would be the winner. However, we held a similar poll on Discord of just this question, and we were met with different results.
 

 
As you can see, CS:GO was actually the winner in this scenario, with TTT being at the very bottom. However, looking back at the original chart again, we also notice that CS:GO is split across 2 options, which if combined result in a 5 - which is above TTT. That being said, the results there are much closer than the total annihilation that CS:GO did to all the others on the Discord poll. In either case, we do actually have a CS:GO server now. You may recall back when the failed merge occurred, we had a CS:GO, ARK, and a couple other servers. When Elaztek started up, those servers got moved over to Elaztek. The CS:GO server as of now is basically a shared server between the two, which are on much better terms nowadays. You can play by connecting to csgo.chaoticunited.net
 

 
The 3 big winners of this were story-driven games, puzzle games, and games that bring you to their knees with absurd difficulty. Behind that came power fantasies, then MMORPG's, and then everything else. The reason we asked this will become clearer as time goes on. You'll see.  
 

 
I had to edit this graph in Photoshop, because Google Forms decided to shove it into multiple pages - hence the 2nd page thing beneath the actual votes. The ones you see are the ones on the graph. Most of you picked that it didn't apply, or "I still play". Two of these are clearly trolls, so let's ignore those. Some said that you didn't have time to play games anymore - the sad truth. Life is that big thing that comes in the way of your game time and some people just don't have the time to play MC and invest hours and hours into building things anymore. Others said that they just got bored of Minecraft itself - and sadly, there isn't a whole lot we can do in this case either. If you are bored of MC itself, the core game, all we can do is offer other services and do different things to encourage you to remain within the community (which are continuing to make an effort to do). Others of you voted that you were just embarrassed to play a "kids" game. I understand feeling that way, but let me offer a thought - I am 18, many of our players are 16 and several are in their 20's. Other large servers are run by adults or at the very least people with mental maturity. On top of that, our community is very loose when it comes to adhering to any sort of PG-13 nonsense. So don't be embarrassed! If you want to play MC, don't let the opinions of others prevent you from doing that.
 

For those of you who have seemed to find another server, the top reason was a variety in gamemodes. Behind that, it was a tie between there being more to do, someone who has some beef with the CU community for being "cancerous", and someone who seems to not be very fond of Alycat. We are always working on improving our selection of gamemodes - which, thus, leads to there being more to do. The issues with the community and with Aly, unfortunately, aren't issues that can exactly be "fixed". So I'm sorry that those of you who picked that feel that way.

 
Not gonna lie, not a lot of useful stuff here. Ignoring the trolly/uncreative/funny stuff, there is one real suggestion among this. Map resets every 7 months - nice that you picked up on my love for the number 7, but even that can't really convince me of this. Our build team isn't exactly huge, and creating an entirely new set of spawns every 7 months just gets exhausting and just isn't feasible. Prizes for being on top of leaderboards is an interesting one, I like this. Parkour is something we already have - however we may do some "one time" maps for /warp event. Not sure what trivia is, nor do I know what you mean by "make factions better". Whoever suggested this, I would appreciate if you elaborated a bit, I am intrigued by what you may have in mind.
 
Also, can I just ask: who in the world just put "Yes". You said yes, you had ideas - but you seem to have forgotten what the ideas are. ._.
 
 
 
 
Anyways, I want to give a huge thank you to all of you who participated in the survey! While some of the feedback make take time to implement, it is never forgotten and it is always taken into consideration when we discuss what we want to do to expand and improve Chaotic United. Have a great day everyone! And remember to check out our MC server if you haven't for a while. We just relaunched at the very end of 2017 and so far 2018 has been incredible! We are continuing to expand and improve MC with each passing day.
 
Also I had to re-do this entire post because somehow I managed to send the "back" command to my browser with some kind of obscure key combo or something, so that sucked.
 
Anyways, have a good day everyone!
 
- The Chaotic United Team

Hey everybody. The time has come.
 
Chaotic United has relaunched! Let's go over some of the big changes!
 
No? Well, for those of you who have no interest in reading the post, check the info directly below. Below that is the actual post.
 
 
 
MC.CHAOTICUNITED.NET
1.12.x
Backwards compatiability still works, so you can still play on anything from 1.4.7 to 1.12.2, though it is NOT recommended. 
 
NEW GAMEMODES
We have introduced MobArena! After being on the request list for a good while, we finally managed to introduce MobArena. To start off, we have 3 maps and we plan to expand and add more as time goes on.
 
The first map is called Heat, a nether-themed map built by myself along with some help from @*-=(Jayden)=-*.
The second map is called Ruin, which is a map built off the first CU revival survival spawn (2014) made by @AimWicked.
The third map is a modified version of the survival spawn area from CU back in Beta 1.7.3 (2011, not our current beta 1.7.3 server).
 
Additionally, we have introduced The Arena - a PvP-focused gamemode. Like MobArena, we have 3 maps to start with and we will be introducing more maps as time goes on.
 
The first map is called Beaver Creek, which if you couldn't tell, is a map from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 remade in Minecraft. It was built outside of CU and the original map can be found here.
The second map is called Tomb, which is a map from MCUniverse that was formerly only referred to as Quake. It is a small map and is designed for close-quarters encounters.
The third map is called Labrynth, which is derived from an old thing that @alycat built a long time ago, but better spaced out and better adapted for arena gameplay.
 
The Arena is not complete. We plan to expand upon this mode as time goes on. We plan to introduce SurvivalGames, SkyWars, and other lesser-known modes, some of which will be exclusive to CU.
 
PARKOUR UPDATES
 
Our parkour plugin, NDParkour, has recieved some updates as well as having new maps added.
 
The plugin itself now stores each player's checkpoints and remembers them, and will reject unlocking the same checkpoint twice. This was particularly an issue on larger, vertical maps that just went up and up. If you were to fall down and land on an older checkpoint, you were suddenly set back a huge margin. That will no longer happen anymore.
 
Additionally, there is now an Easy, Normal, and Hard mode. Normal mode is how the plugin has operated in the past. Easy mode operates by allowing you to set a checkpoint at any location, but cuts your award down to 25% (1/4 or 0.25x, however you want to format it). Hard mode gives you 10x the award you normally would, but disables checkpoints entirely.
 
In addition to the various changes that have been made to the plugin, we have a few new maps. You guessed it, 3 new maps.
 
The first one is Oasis, a parkour map set within a mountain wall with a shallow pond of water. It was built by myself with the actual parkour layout being made by @*-=(Jayden)=-*.
The second one is called Sandstorm, which is set within a desert. Once again, the main parkour layout was built by @*-=(Jayden)=-* with the map styled and prettified by me.
The third map is a simpler map, called EndParkour, which has an End-style theme. It has a strange uniformity to it.You guessed it. @*-=(Jayden)=-* made the core map, with the map prettified by me.
 
Additionally, an older map now known as MagmaParkour has finally been expanded upon. Instead of 3 short layers, the original vision for the course has been realized and it is a crazy tall course. It's also worth a fair chunk of cash, so keep that in mind too.
 
WEBSITE UPDATES
 
Our website has recieved a facelift. We wanted to keep it still fairly similar to the previous website and keep it familiar, but at the same time bring a noticeable facelift. You will notice some new animations as well as some updated page designs. The timeline page looks a lot better than ever before, and most of the website now works better on mobile.
 
Mobile navigation is now a separate menu instead of an awkward emulation of the main navigation menu. The helpcenter index looks much better and now has individual icons for each page. Additionally, the icons are more obviously links.
 
FORUMS UPDATES
 
We have added some new features to the public on our forums.
 
We are introducing Blogs for public use! As a regular user, you are able to create blogs and add entries to them as you desire. In the past we have been using Blogs internally for our update changelog. Now, you can manage your own, too!
 
Additionally, we are now launching our Download center! Our vision for the download center is to foster an environment for content creators, inside and outside of Minecraft, to share their content and, eventually, be able to monetize them if desired. We are still working out the kinks in this system, and we will make an announcement later when we have more definite figures on it.
 
 
THE FUTURE
 
This update is not the final stage of the server. Now that we've finally launched, we will be working to test things better with you guys and expanding the content further, and here soon we will start our advertising campaign. All of us have been working pretty hard (the admins especially) and so we will be taking a little bit of a rest break in between now and then. We've worked very hard to help create a truly awesome experience, and to finally begin to push to a new frontier in the future of Chaotic United.
 
Lastly, for those of you who submitted survey results thus far, you will be sent your crate key codes via Discord, or if that fails, via forums. We will be posting survey results soon!
 
 
That's all for now folks. We want to thank all of you for sticking with us this far, and we hope you can stick with us going forward into the future.
 
 
View Full Update Changelog
 
 
The Chaotic United Team
-----------------------------------
haloman30
alycat
AwakenedRage
16dbaxter
esponshadow1
Blizzardbball

Ok that looks lit man

Hey everyone!
 
Just thought I'd let you guys you know our plans for 1.12.
 
You may recall last year when we did our official relaunch. The original plan for this was to rebuild our MC server from the ground up and, well, re-launch.
 
The major problem in the way that was executed is that at the time we had one physical server to work with and that was it. As a result, the MC server was inaccessible to normal users and thus a lot of potential traffic was simply lost. During a large portion of the time, myself and many other staff members were effectively "on break", mine of which was pulled to a screeching halt when I learned that Nuclear District planned to close. After that fact, we wanted to just get MC back online, and thus, no real major changes were made and we merely had the same server with a fresh coat of paint.
 
Nowadays, however, we are not in this position. I have a personal server of mine that nowadays is used for testing out CU servers. Most of the things detailed in CU Updates #17 will make their debut on 1.12. This time around, we are going to do a real relaunch. And this time, there is no pressure on us to rush everything just to get a server up. We can take as much time as we need without making you guys be unable to have anything to play. Some of the work for 1.12 has already been done, actually. Mostly in regards to spawns and builds.
 
So far, we have gotten a handful of additions suggested by you guys for Brink of Chaos mods. But now, I want to ask you guys what you want to see on our vanilla server. Any particular features or plugins or gamemodes you'd like to see on the next iteration of Chaotic United Minecraft, just as before, send me or any other staff a message, be it public or private, with your suggestion. If it is feasible and everything is compatible, then you can expect to see it make an appearance. Just know that due to our still limited resources, that we can't add literally every mode ever created (yet), and thus the most popular suggestions will be prioritized (this mostly applies to gamemodes. If you just have a simple addition to the server or a specific mode, this isn't as much of an issue).
 
That's all for now, folks! We hope to see you all on 1.12 and beyond!