The New Age – Progress Update

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Good day everyone. Just a quick progress update on the new Age.

Four years ago, I proposed the Age of Darkness II. I believed then, as I do now, that for new stories to grow, the old ones must eventually become ruins. That philosophy is finally becoming reality once again, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see.

Day by day, the world is shifting and reshaping. New lands are forming, and the entire map is evolving. It’s a careful balancing act: preserving what matters most while making space for the next chapter of The Ancient World.

It will still feel like the world you know and love. Just… older. And more Ancient 🙂

I’ll share a lot more when it’s ready.

The Website

Over on the website side, I’ve been repairing hundreds of broken links in The Codex, writing new articles, and cleaning up older ones. It’s honestly in the best shape it’s ever been, and the amount of history in there keeps growing.

I encourage you to take a look and explore. If you’ve been around for a while, you might be surprised by the small details and memories you’d forgotten.

The history of The Ancient World is so exhaustive but I believe it’s imperative that it’s properly documented. I have a lot of memories of TAW, but you never know how reliable our memories will be years from now. Small but important details are easy to forget – which is why I’m trying to do the work of archiving it all now so we’ll always remember our history.

If you played on The Ancient World and have a story to tell, I’d love for you to make a Codex Submission. It can be anything – your character, your faction, a place, an artifact, or a moment you remember. If it mattered to you, it belongs in the history.

Thanks everyone!

Copyright & Future Plans

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For fifteen years The Ancient World has been more than a server to me; it has been a labor of love. Together we’ve built, fought, and created years of history. My role has been to help steward and guide that history, keeping the world alive and evolving.

And now, after fifteen years, TAW is officially registered as a copyrighted work.

Going forward, the world will continue under my direct stewardship as it always has, focused on new Ages, new stories, and thoughtful change. If you’re excited for what’s next, you’re welcome to join me.

The Orrostar Project

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Many of you have expressed dissatisfaction with how Orrostar was handled after the Vile Mountain event. To address this we are now looking for new volunteers to help us re-work Orrostars destruction.

What a redesign might entail;

  • General tweaks to the general shape and structure of Vile Mountain
  • Block changes across the entire continent
  • The addition of lava lakes, new land forms, and other anomalies to better support the destruction narrative and make it more visually appealing

Final notes

  • This project will be focused on Orrostar alone but may expand to the other continents later
  • We will not be rolling back Vile Mountain or undoing the destruction event. The purpose of this project is to make the Orrostar destruction more palatable

If Orrostar matters to you and you have the knowledge and experience required for this project, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us!

Back to Java

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After a few months of being on Bedrock edition and a lot of trial and error, I have come to the foregone conclusion that Minecraft Bedrock Edition is absolute garbage.

converting bedrock chunks back to java

I really wanted Bedrock to work out. It seemed like the logical next step for TAW moving forward by making it accessible on more devices so we could choose how we wanted to play. I personally don’t enjoy PC gaming the way I used to and I’m sure I’m not alone. Being able to play a bit of TAW in the evenings from the comfort of a playstation controller was a breath of fresh air.

But Microsoft’s Realms “Service” is much worse than I expected it to be. Almost nothing works properly. And I can’t even reliably download backups of the world, which randomly decided to stop working back in late August. So I’ve had enough and I’m pulling the plug on it.

To think that in the past a couple kids could start up their own server hosting service and provide us a better and more reliable service than Microsoft can in 2024.

TAW Age of Darkness – Bedrock Edition

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Using behavior packs I’ve been able to replicate some of the elements of Age of Darkness onto the Bedrock Edition on The Ancient World. The over world is now also frozen over and is in permanent night with snowfall.

Here’s a quick video I made to demonstrate the mob behavior. There are no spiders or creepers, only zombies and skeletons. And they have enchanced behaviors such as tracking the player through blocks – allowing them to find their way to you from afar, and will amass themselves into medium sized hordes.

No digging abilities as of yet, and no wardens wandering the surface. But I’m already impressed seeing this much working on Bedrock so far. I’m playing on Playstation 4.