CW Discord History

Note: This article was originally written by one author (Ninjasr) for their personal wiki. The original can be found here. A rewriting process will occur at some point but for now, this serves as a decent base. Those interested in editing the article should discuss what they wish to change on the talk page first.

= Cube World Discord Server =

The Cube World discord server is the official discord server for Cube World, at least I think it is?

It was formerly the official r/Cube_World discord server.

My involvement with this server arguably turned me into who I am today and, for that reason, I consider it a very important place.

Foreword
Considering I visit the Bibliotheca Anonoma which is all about preserving internet culture I occasionally "listen in" on their conversations on discord/IRC/Riot. During one such listening session, I heard they were considering expanding outside of the Chanverse and start documenting other internet sites and their culture. A while later, and some thinking, a thought entered my mind - "What if I write down the history of that one server I'm a part of"... and just like that, came this.

I have to get some things out of the way first.

That's it I think? Let's get on to the first chapter.
 * I don't remember everything all that well and while I do have access to the full text history of the server... I'm too lazy to look through it. Considering I joined it in 2018 and it is currently 2020, that's about 2 years worth of chatting to go through. If I decide to, I'll go through that history - but until then, have this poor recollection.
 * I'll be skipping over a lot of details because I just don't remember everything. I'll also probably remember some things out of order, in which case I'll probably be corrected by my friends on the server.
 * While I will be mentioning "the dark times" and how mods were idiots/assholes/whatever, I have no negative feelings towards any of them and I try to get along with them nowadays. All has been forgiven and forgotten, at least in my case.
 * I won't be revealing names, if I do reveal them it's because I was given permission to reveal them. This is to prevent "witch hunting" . For this reason, it may be difficult to keep track of "characters" since I'll only refer to them as "that mod" or "that idiot helper".

Chapter 1: Enter Ninjasr
I joined the server around late 2018. At the time, I was remembering Cube World and was sad there were no updates. I had read in a comment that wollay was posting regular updates on the discord server... so I set out to find it ASAP. That exploration brought me to the Reddit, where I clicked to join the server. Upon getting there I was going to treat it the way I treated all servers up to that point... stay in it and wait to get @everyone'd for updates.

Then I noticed something - #counting.

The concept of counting caught my attention, so I read the rules and got to counting. Over the next few days, I went from only counting to posting sacrifices in #sacrifices_to_our_lord_wollay and adding messages to the end of my number. Then I got to discussing counting in #off-topic where I got into talks with a certain "Count Mod". After a few talks with them, I decided I wanted to become a count mod.

Few weeks passed and counting went well - until I broke the chain and I got cc'd. I was distraught, but I got into talks with a guy over the philosophical truth of getting cc'd. We ended this by calling ourselves the "Can't Count Master Race", then we got into a discussion about flags and we disagreed over which nordic flag looks best. Then I went to bed. The next day, I awoke to an invitation to the CCMR server. The two of us then gathered followers and requested they do the same.

Back to CW stuff. Time passed and I made many friends among the regulars there. After sending an appeal to a mod, I got uncc'd and back to counting.

Eventually, I received the Count Mod role and my goal changed to becoming a moderator. What happened in-between sending an appeal and getting count mod; I don't remember unfortunately. At this time, the original count mod who inspired me to become one wasn't as active anymore. Since I really liked them though, I tried to enforce in the same way they did. I remained a Count Mod all the way until... a certain something happened.

Intermission: The Golden Age
"The Golden Age" is what us CW oldfags call the period before release date. Exactly when it started is unclear but most can agree it ended when CW released. This release was the worst thing to happen to the server. Prior to release, the rules were very loose so you could talk about virtually anything with anyone. Everyone was excited for the game back then.

As for when I consider the Golden Age to have ended... it was when the founder and owner stepped down from admin.

Chapter 2: The Dark Ages
Everything was nice and peaceful, count mods were moderating counting, mods weren't really doing anything and we all just kept talking and fucking about together. Then, wollay announced the release date. The game received a Steam page and there was an official twitter announcement.

Shock overtook us all and we suddenly got more people joining the server. Moderation panicked and quickly started hiring more mods. Then, they started enforcing the rules more than before.

Interestingly, the admin felt overworked so he asked a friend of his to help him out. This was the only time there were two admins.

Admin2 then started fixing up the server. He fixed the ways roles worked, so he came up with a solution - the count mods would use a bot from now on, instead of changing the roles directly. At this point in time, I was the oldest Count Mod around and I usually ended up being the only one actually doing anything. Since I was the oldest, I defined the rules and taught the others how to enforce in the same way. There were a few arguments between me and disgruntled users when I cc'd them, I also think some counters didn't like me for always resetting the chain.

Another interesting development was the addition of "Helpers" to the moderation equation. I have no idea how they came up with the idea. Basically, moderators were each free to choose a few people to help them moderate. Helpers couldn't ban, but they could mute and some other stuff. My friends had "all" gotten helper so I asked the admin for the role as well and well, I got it. Helpers had their own chat, which was like an unfiltered off-topic. They could also talk in the muted channel.

But, as all things, this final part of the golden age ended. Admin2 stepped down and, not long after, so did the original admin. This signaled the end of the golden age. One of the mods became the de-jure administrator. This new guy invited a friend of his to the server, this person is considered by many the one who ruined the server. Release date came and it all fucking went to shit.

With the release two things happened:
 * 1) An influx of new users (We grew from about 12000 to 22000 in a few weeks).
 * 2) Disappointment - the game was "bad" and most of the users were disappointed.

The results were not what you'd expect. The user-count rise led to even stricter moderation. Since people were disappointed, they were criticizing the game.

The combination of these two things led to moderators muting people for not liking the game. Helpers were also sent in to help here, muting people. During this time, I told the other helpers to ignore the off-topic channels and that I'd take care of them. I became the de-facto moderator of all those channels, I maintained this position until a certain something happened.

Confusion also arose surrounding the Helpers. The users themselves thought Helpers were tech support rather than meant to help the moderators. This confusion was rarely cleared up, so the tech support channel had a lot of users pinging Helpers. Also, due to a combination of fears and suggestions from that one person, Helpers gradually began loosing power. This was around the time a lot of my friends left the position and even left the server, they were frustrated with how the Helpers were treated.

Most Helpers didn't really do anything because there was a super hard worker among us. When we did do something a mod that never did anything would come in and criticize that action, saying it was an abuse of power. A lot of Helpers left because of shit like that.

There was "open" hostility between the regulars, users and the mods. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as it sounds - it was more like 5 disgruntled guys yelling at 3 other guys. Well, that's what it was like between the Regulars/Helpers and the Moderators. General CW discussion was a shitstorm and I never went there.

A lot of the regular users started to leave, they had gotten sick of the intensified moderation or become disillusioned with CW. Some of them left for the CCMR, which gained a bad reputation among the Moderators.

Eventually, everything slowed down. At this point even I, who had been pretty loyal to the server up to this point, started expressing dissatisfaction with the state of the server. I had been saying that I wanted to leave and well yeah shit.

Eventually, I got in trouble with the Moderators. What I did was violate the rule about linking other discord servers. Yes, really. I had been doing it since the CCMR was born, but never got in trouble because I abused a loophole. I wasn't allowed to advertise a server but I could advertise a group. A moderator pointed it out and I got into trouble. I claimed I was in the ok since the previous admin allowed it, the new mods didn't like it though. They acknowledged the loophole as "legitimate" but said I shouldn't abuse loopholes as a helper. Logically, I asked if giving up my helper role would allow me to continue advertising - I got no clear answer. I decided to stop the advertisement anyway. Then I lost my Helper role, so I took that as a yes to my previous question. I was pretty mad and it was the first time I went against moderation in the server, so I got banned.

Intermission: Lull
I don't know what happened while I was banned, I was gone from the server for about a year.

I heard from a friend that the admin changed and that he had rejoined. So I decided to rejoin just because.

Now, obviously stuff happened in the CCMR. I won't get into that stuff in detail because I consider the CCMR a private server. Summarized though, I became a dictator and caused a schism. This schism lasts until today. However, I'm on good-ish terms with those from the other server. I hope I can re-unite the two, but that's probably impossible at this point. I've since come to the conclusion that re-uniting is neither feasible nor desirable, the current split is actually much better for both sides.

Chapter 3: Rebirth
After rejoining the server, I was met with a culture that was completely unrecognizable. I still recognized most of the regulars but the way they spoke was different. Moderation is not as strict anymore, you can discuss porn again. Counting is soldiering on. Sacrifices returned. Stuff is generally back to how it was before release. I got back in touch with some of my friends and yeah.

Helpers don't exist anymore, only as a legacy role that barely anyone has.

Stuff is nice.

Trivilinks

 * [|An invite to the server]
 * Again, there's little hostility between myself and the mods and regulars from before.
 * I'll probably rewrite this article, or I'll move it to the Bibliotheca Anonoma so other regulars can edit the history with me. - I would need permission from the guys in charge there first though.
 * I maintained the position of Count mod right up until I got banned. I'm still waiting to get it back btw.
 * Similarly, I remained the de-facto mod of the off-topic channels until I got banned.
 * Thanks to that, the off-topic channels were generally ignored and, as a result, had looser moderation.
 * I forgot to mention this, but post-release a thread about CW appeared on /v/. In that thread, they were all laughing about how shit it was - not unusual. Someone discovered the server though, posted an invite and suggested a raid. The raid might have been successful, but it might not have since everyone was shitposting about the shit game. It's just kinda funny.