A lot of people like to ask “how old is this server?” and the answer to that is quite difficult and manifold as it's gone through many different revisions and recreations but I want to give an overview over the entire history by putting it in this wiki. If you just came to read about our history or because you want to know all the details doesn't matter, I just hope you enjoy the little ride through time.
…or probably some time around then, is when I first started playing Minecraft. An old Swiss friend of mine called Sahne and my brother Deromer got me into the game, I at first didn't like it at all really. I thought it was dull, boring and nothing special and wanted something with more action, fast pace and some strategy. While those aspects mostly do not describe Minecraft, I would soon fall in love as they kept pushing me onto this game and wanted me to play even though I told them I didn't like it.
I think there even were a few weeks I did not play it until I really got hooked. We were obviously playing on the most basic of servers back then with just a whitelist and these two other people on a server, might have been a few more people too but it's been too long to recall for certain.
Around this time we had all familiarized with Minecraft, at least the gameplay. Sahne was running the server back then, I had nothing to do with it. We were playing around with all your regular Minecraft things, got redstone explained to me, made huge Minecart tracks, houses, bases and basic farms back then… but at some point I also started looking into the server part and what they had to offer as Sahne kept playing around with some cool sounding plugins. The only really properly working server platform with support for any kind of modification was hMod back then and Sahne swore on it.
But it was around this time a new contestant came along, called Bukkit. I was instantly in love and wanted to try it myself, especially because it offered plugins too and it was super easy to work with! Sahne did not like Bukkit's approach and deemed it a failure… little did he know Bukkit was about to dominate hMod not too long after.
It wasn't long after that time my first Minecraft server was born, still far from being called MetaUnion but it got me interested. I was also still running a Counter-Strike: Source server back then I think or at least not long before that, so I kind of switched focus slowly. Once again, it's been too long to recall those details.
The events following here are not in order and might thus not make as much sense, they are just things I remember but can't quite put them in the right order anymore. All servers I ever had had their main focus on survival, anything else was always just a gimmick or an afterthought at best.
After having run this Bukkit server for a while I wanted to have a 24/7 server, hosted somewhere else, and in Germany a provider called Nitrado was really popular for that. I rented one there for the little money I had, combined with Sahne and potentially my brother Deromer. I also remember a name, to this day, of a guy that was also with us for some time as kind of an admin: kcpkid - I don't know what he's doing these days but we lost contact after our Minecraft paths separated.
The Nitrado server was mostly trash, probably due to my lack of optimization, knowledge about Minecraft servers and just throwing a bunch of plugins onto it for fun. It was basically an experiment and I just wanted to know how things work and what I could do with them. It was a messy time and it obviously didn't really grow or gain any popularity but it certainly taught me a thing or two, I believe. We also obviously struggled with griefers and hacked clients which back then you could do almost nothing about. Nodus is a hacked client's name that still stands out to me for some reason, probably because almost everyone was using it back then.
Another valuable lesson was learnt during this time, to never trust anyone, to get some kind of anti cheat (if available) and how easy it was to exploit things in Minecraft back then. People were just flying all over the place, placing random blocks and TNT and writing Nodus on signs and on the floor - wild times were had.
I also went through some more revisions of that server though I think, some resets here, corrupted maps and what not there, plugins that just basically destroyed the entire server and the likes, though I started to get a little more experienced with things.
Another person I only vaguely remember appeared around this time: Lemon, a German guy that allowed me to use a server they owned to host my Minecraft server on. So basically it was Lemon as the owner, me as the administrator and another German guy called Exist as the builder. We created some really basic servers with plugins and even though things got a little more professional I was still far from anything really good… but neither were other servers as things evolved so quickly around Minecraft. I think that server also had several revisions and resets but once again, no details.
I even found forum entries of this old server when it was still called MineVisionCraft back then and I think it was around the end of 2011 when I started advertising the server on any Minecraft server lists and even though I can't recall any numbers I think it was doing alright.
The Counter-Strike: Source servers I mentioned earlier also kind of started out the same way as I stumbled into this other Swiss person called Martin that offered me their server they had for whatever reason but after I changed focus to Minecraft he also kind of went along with it and so we changed the server from a Counter-Strike: Source server to a Minecraft one. 2012 was also the year the name MetaUnion was founded, I basically just thought Meta sounded really nice and Union is supposed to resemble that we are one community and all stand as one.
I got into how economies work in Minecraft and how you can set them up, how to give permissions, ranks, format chat and all of these things. I also remember to this day blaming Mojang for my crashing server as I thought the randomly changing characters (&k) were the reason… lord was I stupid. I still blame Mojang for just allowing anyone to use color formatting though, that was annoying me to no end.
Somewhere around this time I must have also met HeirTuffelhunden and NStalker, some names I thought I'd mention - HeirTuffelhunden was the same he is today, not very talkative, mostly does his own stuff and NStalker's always been the amazing builder I remember to this day.
Oh also, TNT Olympics was made in 2012, thought I'd mention that too. There are even videos of it on YouTube though some changes were also made to it throughout the years. It must have also been the year NStalker started creating Metapolis, not sure if he even finished it the same year. A lot of game modes were also tested within 2012 such as Survival Games, PvP arenas and probably also creative as I used to have a world for that pretty much at all times.
And now it might be time to reveal that I've been running all the servers mentioned until now as cracked servers which explains their popularity but also how things got so messy in a lot of instances. Eventually I had to go from cracked to premium, though I still remember NStalker complaining to me that he'd be losing his friends if I went premium because they couldn't afford it (I don't know if back then he was talking about SixerFTW and Hazzard_Genji or other people). It made me feel bad but I knew it had to be done :( I think he still stuck around whenever I needed something cool built but not much more.
Probably around 2013, not too sure about it but we'll just say it was 2013
Finally I had broken out of this mess of cracked servers. There are plenty of players out there that will thankfully take a well done, cracked server but I had to break up with that idea eventually as I said… and now that time had come! I also must have recreated the server once more here and made it English speaking only (like the current version) because a lot of people I knew didn't speak German so English was obviously the best choice.
NStalker built many spawns for me and other things I needed, kcpkid probably left around this time but once again can't really remember exactly, Lemon also was no more and it was either in 2013 or 2014 when we changed to yet another Swiss person that owned a server called Cassiopeia.
I can't really find any videos of MetaUnion from around this time, more progress was made figuring out how things ran, how you can have multiple worlds running on one server and trying to avoid any misbehavior of plugins. BungeeCord was theoretically already present in 2013 but I never really grasped it nor really saw the necessity of using it at all. Spigot was also created in 2013 and I probably switched to it after hearing it would offer better performance - I like to just try out new things and experiment, even though sometimes it ends up being a terrible idea.
Another fun story I remember was how we left Cassiopeia… I do not remember if it was in 2013 we did this but now is a good time to tell the story. We had rather strict rules against cheating back then and at some point found out Cassiopeia was having hidden chests where she kept some of her cheated items (fully enchanted swords and all kinds of things that she never could have gotten in survival). We were upset and generally annoyed but how the server was run with her as the head so we came up with a plan.
TeamSpeak by the way was still the way of communication back then, so it was on TeamSpeak we (that's Sahne, Deromer and me once again) made our plans and what we wanted to do was basically in parallel rent another server, transfer all data onto the new one and then basically just leave without telling her anything. Not exactly the nicest plan I've ever had and certainly not nice towards her but we were really fed up.
The day came and we copied everything in a rush, verified it was all working and then left… there was just one problem, she apparently knew about this plan already and since the new server was also public she followed us and joined our new TeamSpeak server as well, confronting us and asking why we did what we did. She also told us she found a recording we apparently put on TeamSpeak where our plan was discussed which is how she knew… we really were dumb little kids.
We explained to her how we thought she was a tyrant and didn't want to have anything to do with her anymore. I think I remember her being very pissed but we got rid of her after that somehow (probably banned her I'm guessing).
So now we were on our own, probably moving into 2014. Things luckily get a little clearer from here as I also started streaming (in German) and also uploading a lot of footage onto YouTube. I found signs of mcMMO being used on the server, the server was also now made German, things in general became more professional and stable and I had a good understanding of Minecraft, how it worked and how to operate a server.
I was still testing out plugins every now and then but knew the most basic ones you needed, especially for survival and creative: Essentials, WorldEdit, WorldGuard, NoCheatPlus, MultiVerse, GriefPrevention and probably a dozen more. I pretty much checked for new Minecraft plugins every day and looked for interesting approaches and things I could include on the server. Hopefully I also tested plugins (at least locally) before throwing them onto the server.
I must have also started a really long lasting German server around this time, late 2014, early 2015 which had a proper spawn (once again built by NStalker), shops, ranks, a way to randomly teleport to a location, all the things you'd probably also want from a survival server these days. Some things I actually overlooked that I only much later got to know about, such as selling villager spawn eggs that were then used on spawners or other ways of exploiting the shops because you could buy something for cheaper than you could sell it, in return generating an infinite money source. In general I strongly advise against any kind of manually set up admin shop, especially when it becomes extensive. So much thought, work and maintenance has to be put into just setting up this shop and keeping it exploit free it's insane (especially when you're a one man show like me, which is why I try and avoid doing that again to this day).
Now this server I mentioned probably also had some changes throughout the years but if I'm not mistaken I think it stood for around 5 years. I had to shut it down after that for financial reasons and also having lost interest in Minecraft due to changes in real life (new girlfriend, moving to another place and so on). I kept a backup of the old world though as I knew a lot of people probably had many memories on it and I wouldn't dare destroy them.
Now we're getting close to today (2022-04-12) and this is actually the current version of MetaUnion though once again, that one also had many revisions and changes but we'll get to those. Also I decided to change the language to English again to just be a little more international and appeal to more people than just the ones in Germany. I had watched some RLCraft on YouTube before and loved the idea of Minecraft being much more difficult, potentially because I was so experienced and thought it was what made the game boring for me.
It all began with a small VPS (virtual private server) that I rented at another German server host called Contabo. The server was cheap as I didn't have as much money to spend (still due to changes in life as mentioned before) but it worked quite well. The first message on Discord dates back to July 8th 2019 but I know the server had been up before that, the synced messages to Discord came after its initial release. We are talking Minecraft Java version 1.14 right now which is what it started out with. I also think I remember using Docker (a container software) from the start and learning a lot about it as the project moved on.
Once again it was just a single server, no BungeeCord still or other game modes. It was survival only and my first idea was to mainly focus on a plugin called Kingdoms for PvP and ExtraHardMode which made the game more challenging. Kingdoms sounded really promising back then and I thought it would be cool to have something based on PvP that isn't factions but just a few months later I realized that the project was abandoned, then picked up by another team and nothing has ever really been done with it, it was a real shame to see. ExtraHardMode made it so that dirt would fall, you took more damage from pretty much everything, mobs were really deadly and had special abilities, I also had some other strict rules and plugins that prevented trading with villagers and a lot of other vanilla functionality. It was really tough and looking back I think it is what drove some people away from MetaUnion.
With Kingdoms being abandoned I had to go back to something I knew was trustworthy, GriefPrevention (where you claim with the famous golden shovel) and I had to pretty much migrate everything that had already been done up until then. I think this was also the last time I contacted NStalker to build anything for MetaUnion, he accepted and built an awesome looking spawn and also a little arena where we had planned for PvP. PvP never really caught on even though I tried several plugins but since I was never really interested in it myself I guess it just kind of existed without real use.
The game was already challenging as I mentioned but I was searching for something even more difficult and something where I could advance even more. That was when I found a plugin called EliteMobs which spawned mobs depending on your gear and you could level up which in turn spawned more mobs around you, leading to an infinite fight of being on top.
The problem was how I integrated it at first, these super tough mobs spawned everywhere and if a high level player wanted to play with a low level player they simply couldn't due to their difference in mob levels and so a newbie would just be shred to pieces from these super high level mobs which was a bad experience.
A solution had to be found which was moving EliteMobs to a seperate world. I was still running on a single server and EliteMobs luckily allowed you to disable the special mobs in worlds, so that's what I did. It had some issues every now and then but in general it worked alright. The gear could now also be used in the regular world and it allowed for more experienced people and the ones who were willing to grind to progress more and have more of an advantage even in the regular game.
According to announcements I wrote on Discord I tested 1.14.4 in mid 2019 but wasn't really happy with the performance which is why I quickly reverted to 1.14. In hindsight it maybe wasn't just 1.14.4 but also a plugin I thought was a good idea back then, DeathChests. I even bought the pro version of it which might have been the first premium plugin I ever bought but support was really bad and sometimes it wouldn't work as it should. Quick review: 1/10, worst plugin I ever bought, to this day.
Exactly one month later I bought a new server, MetaUnion2 (still in use today, 2022-04-12) - I apparently had quite some issues migrating things but after a few days got everything running, so much about professional…
People demanded for more game modes, especially creative and I thought it would be great to have yet another world where it's creative mode with plots as you know it today. So I installed yet more plugins, created another world for the plots and made things work somehow.
Then I mentioned SkyBlock and that it would be cool to play and people agreed… so I also created another world where you could play skyblock but everything had to be done manually. I later also added another world where PvP was enabled but I think nobody ever really actively played on that. Parkour was also added as an extra world or at least as part of a certain world.
Updates to 1.15 were also made and later on 1.15.1 of course, lots more small changes here and there but nothing really worth mentioning.
Custom buildings suddenly became super awesome to me, like massive creations people have made on the internet and I thought I could spice up survival by pasting them through the lands and giving people achievements and loot for finding it. It was really cool for people who liked to explore and I still like the idea behind it, it's just difficult to maintain on a survival server, claiming everything and setting all these buildings up.
Lena should also have a special mention here, she was made moderator on March 2020 - big part of the community to this day (2022-04-12)! 1.15.2 also followed in the same month.
An online map (dynmap at the time) was also added so you could see all game modes and worlds and where everyone was!
It soon became clear that people wanted more game modes and having all on one server was just not a viable option anymore as whenever one plugin just had some kind of hiccup it would just affect the entire server and it was getting quite complex already. July 2020 finally was the month I started considering using a Minecraft proxy (BungeeCord).
I don't know the exact order of when and how I migrated what game mode but after a while we had a small hub/lobby and 5 servers: survival, elitemobs, creative, skyblock and parkour
It used to be that you had the same inventory on survival as on EliteMobs which obviously was a challenge to make happen on seperate servers but I made it work by installing a plugin that synced the inventories through a database. It acted up sometimes and people suddenly had things they shouldn't have etc. so overall I can't recommend this but for the most part it worked at least.
A roleplay server was also added at some point but never really got much attention which also lead to it being closed again not too long after.
1.17 was announced as the cave update at first and I quickly made plans on how to approach these huge changes on survival. Basically the whole community wanted a map reset and so I started planning towards that. I also started experimenting with more survival worlds on the survival server, one that had flying islands (skylands) and one that was generated with a custom world generator called Dregora were most notable. They also weren't as popular as I thought even though they were cool to look at.
Unfortunately a little later it turned out that Mojang couldn't make 1.17 the cave update and instead delayed it for 1.18. It put me in a rather annoying situation though as I had already set up a new survival server for people to test new features (Towny, Jobs, basically the survival server after 1.18) on but we also still had the old survival server. The plan was to let everyone take a double chest of things from the old survival server (now called claims) to the new survival server but now I also had this temporary survival server called towny. Planswere thus changed and I allowed a double chest from claims as well as towny for the upcoming 1.18 survival server. In the meantime I tried to convince everyone of the new survival server and told them to play on there instead.
Skyblock also had to be shut down due to some issues with the main plugin and someone else called XDav1d offered to create a new one and so they did. After a few months though their interest faded and so this new skyblock server was just left in an unmaintained state and I eventually shut down that one too. Demand for skyblock was high though so I created a new one, once again maintained by myself.
The lobby has been revamped a few times here, mostly thanks to SixerFTW and his incredible builds, permissions were changed/maintained as everything else of course and the creative server has also been hacked (someone had gained op but it was only on creative and nowhere else) in the meantime - no big deal really as all I had to do was install a backup, more precautions followed due to that incident.
Build battles by FosterFam were also hosted along the way, also Geyser and compatibility for more client versions were also installed quite some time before that but I don't know where to mention it other than here.
1.18 eventually came and it was finally time for the big reset everyone was waiting for. It was a huge success, things worked well, I even added more plans were users had to unlock plugins and other features before getting their chests, it was a really great time!
In January 2022 I had decided to move to velocity as a Minecraft proxy as it was just more modern, had better performance and I am certain it will eventually be used more than BungeeCord though this change might take longer than the one we had from hMod to Bukkit (it has already taken longer, Velocity has been around for over a year by now I'm quite sure).
EliteMobs was also shut down in the same month as I just didn't see anyone playing it, sad to see considering where I came from but still a sacrifice I was willing to make. In its place I put the builders server which was a server for all the builders we had gathered on the creative server throughout the years. I just realized after a while that their demands were very different from what creative offered and eventually I knew I had to get a server just for them.
At the end of March 2022 I bought a new server called MetaUnion3. I migrated the creative and builders server there, even though it took much longer than I'd like to admit to get everything working but more details can be found here: https://wiki.meta-union.com/en/blog/2022-03-31
And that is where we are right now, as of writing this it is April 12th 2022 and it's been a huge blast from the past to write all of this down. Whoever actually reads all of this is an absolute legend and I hope we'll continue this journey for several more years to come.