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Omega

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Omega
Clockwise from top:
O13 Station on the MRT Orange Line, The Trusted Tower in August 2013, Contestants of The Mole 2: The Double Agent Strikes Once Again in the Mole Manor, Lab 4 in Cyan Labs, Bullet train tracks near the MRT Map
Time spanMarch 29, 2013 - October 3, 2014
(1 year, 6 months and 4 days)
World(s)Old World
Ending eventInstallation of the Multiverse plugin
Technical information
Server hostOVH
Minecraft versions1.4.7 - 1.6.2
MRT era chronology
Alpha (2012–2013)
Omega (2013–2014)
Gamma (2014–2016)
Epsilon (2016–2020)
Zeta (2020–2023)
Delta (2023–present)

Omega is the second MRT era, spanning from the switch to OVH as the server host to the introduction of multiple worlds through the installation of the Multiverse plugin, lasting from March 29, 2013, to October 3, 2014. Omega is largely a transitional era as it built upon foundations from Alpha and was the final months of the Old World being the MRT Server's main world.

Omega's most notable events include the creation of the MRT Orange Line and the establishment of rules, policies, and General Staff Meetings. Culture-wise, the era is mostly defined by the continued growth of third-party transit and the success of non-MRT staff-driven events, including the server's game shows. Collaboration between players continued in forms of intracity transit as towns grew to become adjacent to each other and free land to build on became scarce.

As the Old World became more crowded, the MRT staff began discussing at the January 2014 General Staff Meeting whether the world would be expanded or a new world would be added. It was ultimately decided that the Multiverse plugin would be installed and a new city-building world would be created. In October 2014, the server was closed for a day in preparation for the opening of the New World along with four other worlds, marking the end of Omega.

Background

The lack of server disc space in Alpha was one of the reasons Frumple looked into hosting the server on a dedicated machine. This led to Omega being scheduled for launch in early 2013 with a dedicated server.

The MRT's Minecraft Server, website, Dynmap, and Wiki were down for approximately 24 hours from March 28 to March 29, 2013.

Major events

MRT staff

As the server's player base grew in size, the MRT staff team grew as well, with the MRT staff team reaching its largest size of 17 members. During Omega, a nomination process was established, allowing members to send in staff nominations to be considered at General Staff Meetings. On July 12, 2014, the highest number of members promoted to MRT staff at once occurred during Omega, with four players being promoted, a record not broken until August 8, 2021, when six players were promoted.

Beginning in Omega, Moderator candidates' residencies were somewhat taken into consideration on whether or not they should be promoted as the Administrators wanted to be able to have staff members available for different time zones.

Further information: List of MRT staff members

14 players were promoted to Moderator on the MRT staff team during Omega, with their names and dates of promotion listed below:

  1. Tom_Pairs (April 14, 2013)
  2. yeamanator132 (June 30, 2013)
  3. _MajorMagpie_ (August 31, 2013)
  4. colaja953 (August 31, 2013)
  5. Just_robinho (August 31, 2013)
  6. Omricon (August 31, 2013)
  7. _frozen (January 11, 2014)
  8. BaronThamesBank (January 11, 2014)
  9. cal76 (January 11, 2014)
  10. hawksfan1010 (July 12, 2014)
  11. jphgolf4321 (July 12, 2014)
  12. lalaboy67 (July 12, 2014)
  13. mikefishr (July 12, 2014)
  14. Music3_0 (July 12, 2014)

Tom_Pairs was the only Moderator to be promoted to Administrator on the MRT staff team during Omega on March 4, 2014.

Nine players left the MRT staff team during Omega. The following dates listed are when the player left the MRT staff team and the reasoning:

  1. xplayman911 (April 14, 2013; demoted due to inactivity)
  2. Benie (July 29, 2013; resigned due to lack of interest)
  3. kekkomatic (October 5, 2013; resigned due to personal issues)
  4. Omricon (January 4, 2014; resigned)
  5. Miner_Tod (March 29, 2014; demoted due to inactivity)
  6. MinecraftYoshi26 (May 3, 2014; demoted due to maturity issues[a])
  7. BossOfGames (June 8, 2014; demoted due to inactivity)
  8. colaja953 (June 22, 2014; resigned)
  9. hawksfan1010 (September 12, 2014; demoted due to concerns over maturity and abuse of power)

General Staff Meetings

"GSM" redirects here. For the airfield in Gemstride, see Gemstride Melodia Airfield.

A General Staff Meeting (GSM) is a scheduled gathering where members of the MRT staff team come together to discuss and make decisions about community issues, staff promotions, and various other server topics. General Staff Meetings typically have a private and a public portion, with the former including MRT staff only. General Staff Meetings are typically held monthly, with earlier versions being held less frequently. The first General Staff Meeting was held on April 14, 2013, and was originally known as a "Staff Board Meeting".

The first Administrative Staff Meeting (ASM) was held on February 1, 2014, and was exclusively for Admins and Frumple to discuss ban appeals, technical server aspects, and other topics. Decisions made at General Staff Meetings are important as they impact the server's rules, standards, and community.

General Staff Meetings often result in large groups of members joining the server to hear the results of the private portion and discuss the results from the public portion, contributing to an increased sense of community on the server. In future MRT eras, General Staff Meetings grew to become a part of the server's culture, with the meetings becoming a large social occasion. In future MRT eras, players would construct and collaborate on builds behind Frumple during meetings, leading to the creation of a game of 20 questions with Frumple. A parody version of General Staff Meetings was also later created, known as a 'Trusted Meeting' or 'Trustee Meeting', where non-staff MRT members of those ranks would host a meeting featuring non-serious and joke topics.

Rules revamp

External documents
document icon Proposed Rule Changes document

On April 28, 2013, it was announced that following discussion at the first General Staff Meeting, the MRT rules would be overhauled with community involvement as many of the server's rules were "outdated, obsolete, and unclear". Using a page on the MRT Wiki, Members were able to comment and debate the new rules.

On May 10, 2013, the proposed rules came into effect, with rules being removed and many new rules being added to clarify gray areas created as the server grew. Changes with the new rules included the creation of road construction rules, the creation of rail line construction rules, and the removal of MRT rider rules. Some major distinctions were made as a part of this rule revamp, including the designation that all roads were considered to be semi-private builds. While road owners have some control of their roads, they must have been willing to allow any player to make minor changes to their road without prior permission from the road owner. As of 2023, this standard continues to be the construction rule for roads. The rules also officially stated that rail line constructors had to get permission from owners of nearby builds. This was one of the earliest official rules about ownership rights regarding surrounding areas to a build.

Plugins

EasyElevator demonstration outside of Spawn Station in August 2013

On April 28, 2013, the plugin EasyElevator was installed onto the server. The plugin allowed for the creation of elevators. Members enjoyed the addition of elevators onto the server which were then built throughout the server.

The PVPArena plugin was installed on the server near the end of Alpha and became more fully integrated with the PVP arenas near B20 on the MRT Blue Line during Omega. When the PVP arenas were fully set up, games were easier to start and were more accessible as the arenas were able to be run automatically through commands.

The positive reactions from the community to both plugins led to the concept that plugins that add new features could be proposed and added to the server.

Supporter

On November 10, 2013, Frumple announced on the website that Members would be able to donate to the server to gain supporter benefits. The minimum purchase amount for benefits is $10.00 CAD. Supporter benefits are granted permanently and do not need to be renewed. Several restrictions were put in place to make sure that supporters would not cause problems, including rules prohibiting reverting contributions, guests donating, and banned members from donating.

Original perks for donating included a plus symbol appended to the Member's player tag, the ability to use the '/me' command in chat, the ability to use chat colors, and the ability to place signs with colored text. Since then, supporters have been given the ability to use the '/hat' command.

External documents
document icon Public MRT Server Finances document

All contributions are public on an MRT Server Finances Google Sheets document linked on the website. As of August 2023, a total of $8,491.25 CAD has been donated, resulting in 66.46% of the MRT Server's costs being covered by supporters.

Inactive Build Auctions

External documents
document icon Public Inactive Builds up for Auction document

In November 2013, the MRT staff announced an 'Inactive Build Auction'. The MRT staff set up a Google Spreadsheet of inactive builds players could take over. Members were allowed to send emails to staff to request inactive builds to be put up for "auction". Inactive Build Auctions became more relevant as unclaimed areas for new builds became scarce. Four Inactive Build Auctions took place in December 2013, January 2013, April 2014, and May 2014. Development and changes with the builds that were transferred in the auctions were minimal, with the only notable exception being the creation of Fairfax when _frozen acquired the town of Ryzon. After the May 2014 Inactive Build Auction, the system was later changed to have Members send in requests to General Staff Meetings.

Inactive Build Auctions set a precedent that builds could be given away to other players if their owners were inactive for a certain period of time. Despite Inactive Build Auctions only running four times, the term 'auction' continued to be used to refer to inactive build transfers.

Major builds

During Omega, towns were built closer together and the Old World began running out of space. This resulted in towns being connected by local and intercity roads and the Mayors of the towns collaborating on transit and projects between their borders. Some of the areas included Fairfax, Atlanta, and Snowy in the northeast and Treplöw, MineCity, and Amphitheatre in the southeast. Other major towns which existed during this period included Robin's Hill, Cyra, Inchmuir, and Hamanei.

Trusted Tower

Main article: Trusted Tower

The Trusted Tower is an office building located in Spawn City in Greater West Spawn built by ajhoopspro and chiefbozx during the summer of 2013. The building held offices for players who held the Trusted. Only members who were ranked Trusted and above had build permissions inside the tower. The Trusted Tower was created as a Trusted counterpart to the Admod Building.

The Trusted Tower served as a symbol that Trusteds were representatives of the community as they had a dedicated building. With the opening of the New World and a rank overhaul approaching at the end of Omega, the rank of Trusted was given out much more frequently. This resulted in the offices in the Trusted Tower being filled quickly, reflecting the abundance of players holding the rank.

MRT Will Centre

Exterior of the MRT Will Centre in May 2014
Main article: MRT Will Centre

The MRT Will Centre is a building in Spawn City in Greater West Spawn built by godzilltrain in September 2013. The building's main purpose was to store Members' 'wills'. Wills were private, in-game book and quills that specified who would own the player's assets in the event they became banned or left the server. Wills would go to the Admins to ultimately decide how the assets were distributed.

The service fell out of use after players went on to place their unofficial wills on the MRT Wiki or would, after being banned, send the MRT staff an email detailing how they would want their assets to be distributed. The MRT Will Centre popularized the usage of the word 'will' to describe a player's wishes regarding the distribution of their assets if they were to go inactive or get banned.

Transit

The development of transit beyond the original four MRT lines was a large aspect of the server's culture during Omega, with the creation of numerous minecart rail lines and companies.

MRT Orange Line

Main article: MRT Orange Line
The original MRT Orange Line proposal, with the stretch from O16 to O18 being removed in the final version of the line

The MRT Orange Line is the only MRT line on the Old World to be constructed after the server's opening and to not be constructed by Frumple. The line's route was created to serve the northern and western areas of the Old World. The line was constructed on chiefbozx and Just_robinho, with discussion beginning in March 2013 and construction beginning in the coming months. The MRT Orange Line was completed on January 11, 2014. The northern terminus of the line is the MRT International Airport while the southern terminus is Eisitasi. All of the stations were claimed within the first few hours of its opening.

The MRT Orange Line was notable for serving Eisitasi, considered to be one of the largest cities to have not been served by the Old World MRT system. As a result of the creation of the MRT Orange Line, development was also spurred near the stations, including the towns of Department of Defense and Pegasus. Additionally, the MRT Orange Line being allowed to be built set the precedent that new MRT lines did not have to be built by Frumple and could be built after a world's opening.

Bullet trains

Bloomington-Kastlekid Hyperloop bullet train tracks in Alturas

In late 2013, 6687kittycat founded the town of Alturas and wanted to build transportation to the town. In November 2013, 6687kittycat built the first bullet train line to Bloomington: the Bloomington-Kastlekid Hyperloop. Bullet trains used pistons to push minecarts along diagonal, disconnected tracks. The speed of travel was much faster than traditional rail travel only using powered rails.

Bullet train technology continued to be built across the server by 6687kittycat and, later, Just_robinho and megascatterbomb. As more lines were built, complaints arose regarding how the bullet train purportedly caused lag and was a "nuisance" to fix when a rail was accidentally broken.

At the March 2014 General Staff Meeting, topic 4a was a proposal regarding banning the construction of bullet trains. Proponents of banning bullet trains were worried about a frenzy in creating bullet trains when the New World opened and argued that bullet trains were noisy and laggy for some players, took up too much space, and were "eyesore[s]". Proponents also pointed to an incident where computerghost spent 33 minutes fixing one section of a line as a result of one rail being accidentally broken. 6687kittycat later noted that the rail could have been fixed quickly by WorldEdit or by following a tutorial available at the BART lab in Alturas. Opponents of banning bullet trains argued that the lag came from aesthetic lights that were added along some bullet train lines and not the actual technology itself, that banning bullet trains would "limit creativity for members", and that the topic was a 'non-issue'. Opponents of banning bullet trains highlighted how players were able to get across the server quickly. Following a majority vote, bullet trains were banned following the conclusion of the General Staff Meeting.

In the months that followed the ban, the topic of unbanning bullet trains was raised by various players; however, no efforts gained enough traction for a proposal to be made for the coming years until February 2024, when whale1668 proposed to unban bullet trains. whale1668 cited that the problems the proponents had that led to its ban were no longer an issue and its technology had an upgrade after bullet trains were banned. After a test track was built and lag testing of bullet trains on the MRT Beta server was performed, the proposal was considered on the April 2024 General Staff Meeting, where it was rejected due to concerns about WorldEdit and "redstone crashes" caused by a bug with WorldEdit, TrainCarts, and Paper.

Third-party rail and transit hubs

During Omega, third-party rail lines rapidly developed as various companies built minecart rail lines throughout the Old World. Major companies during Omega included the Italian Transit Authority, Pacifica Transit, NORI, and SET Systems.

Cyan Systems and AMR were two major transit technology distributors as they provided technology for many rail companies and city transit, with the former providing technology for Eastern System Transit, the Inchmuir Subway Network, the Robin's Hill Metro, and Spawn City Link.

With the number of rail lines growing at a rapid pace, many major transit hubs were created in towns including Cyra, Zicronia, and Inchmuir. In September 2013, chiefbozx created the Spawn City Transit Centre, a multitransit transportation hub located on the outskirts of the Financial District of Spawn City. Spawn City Transit Centre was one of the largest transit hubs created on the Old World, as it had bus, rail, and helicopter services.

Culture

The MRT Server's culture in Omega included role-play rivalries, member-run events, and the development of the MRT Radio. As the server's community grew in size, more events were held, including Anniversary PVP, the Olympics, the Zicronia World GameZ, and various game shows. Despite some events failing to be completed, a larger number of events were successful and gave entertainment and points of socialization between Members.

Competition and rivalries

The Fairfax Stock Exchange's MarketIndex on July 1, 2014, showing the top 50 companies and their total market share

For-fun, role-play rivalries between franchises and rail lines became more prevalent. Franchise owners raced to construct new locations and increase their brand recognition over their competitors. Rail company owners raced to create the most extensive rail networks and franchises.

During Omega, Cortesi created the MRT Stock, which was a list of franchises and the number of locations for each franchise. This led _frozen to develop the Fairfax Stock Exchange, which kept track of the number of locations and created rankings in seven indexes. These 'stock exchanges' highly influenced rapid franchise and corporate growth. Franchises that participated in this trend well-known during Omega included Music's Gems, CreeperCola, The Leather Emplorium, Kalmar Fried Chicken, BenkGo!, and Prubourne Steak.

After Omega, stock exchanges were attempted to be brought onto the New World, with attempts such as Central Stock Exchange and plugin proposals; however, none of the ideas became popular nor were officially approved.

Game shows and games

Main article: The Mole

In December 2013, MinecraftYoshi26 held The Mole, the server's first game show. The inaugural season was played in 'sessions', each lasting a few hours. The Mole began the trend of MinecraftYoshi26 being associated with games and events. The Mole set the standards for what was expected of future events by being fully planned sessions. During the Omega era, four seasons of The Mole were held.

Main article: The Amazing Race
cal76's perspective at the Starting Line of The Amazing Race 0

Following the second season of The Mole, MinecraftYoshi26 held the first season of The Amazing Race. The season was canceled after its first session as players left. The season was retroactively named The Amazing Race 0. Despite the season not being completed, the test season allowed for problems with translating the show from real life to Minecraft to be identified and fixed for the show's first official season during the Gamma era. This groundwork laid the foundation for The Amazing Race to become the most popular and widely-known game show franchise on the server, even resulting in guests joining the server after hearing about the show.

The success of The Mole led to the concept of game shows being popularized. During Omega, other Members created game shows; however, they failed to be run and were canceled, including a season of The Challenge, two seasons of Survivor, and a season of Big Brother.

Mini-games or one-off games were first popularized during the Omega era, with games often being held on Mumble for fun. Some other popular games during the Omega era included Hunters & Runners, Werewolf, and Cards Against Humanity. These early games aided in making Mumble associated with casual socialization and events.

MRT Radio

Main article: MRT Radio
The MRT Radio on plug.dj in August 2013

The MRT Radio was a community-run room on the website plug.dj. The MRT Radio had people take turns playing music to other connected users. The song would play simultaneously to everyone on the website, with users being able to comment and upvote or downvote what was playing.

The first iteration of the MRT Radio was created by IHG5000. The original MRT Radio was run by the MRT staff. After plug.dj was shut down by its developers, a new iteration was created on dubtrack.fm.

The MRT Radio was one of the social hubs of the Omega era. Players often joined the MRT Radio while being on Mumble to socialize about the MRT Radio or use the MRT Radio as background noise. The MRT Radio allowed players to connect with others with similar music tastes and share aspects of their personalities by showcasing their music tastes.

News

Omega saw the popularization of news organizations such as the MRT Globe and MRT News. Merged to simply become the former, the MRT Globe would publish in-game books containing news about town promotions, franchise spaces, and other various topics and deliver them to P.O. boxes inside the MRT Mail Centre. The MRT Globe disseminated cultural moments and important events on the server and was a predecessor to larger news organizations in future eras.

Shockfest

Prior to changes in the Zeta, the shock command was restricted to only Admins. On April 1, 2013, Members were given the ability to use the shock command for April Fools' celebrations. The event was dubbed as "Shockfest" post hoc. Members had access to the shock command and its three variants. Members enjoyed the event, resulting in "Shockfest 2.0" being held for April Fools' Day in 2015. Although many members enjoyed having the shock command, some had complaints about Members having access to the '-k' flag, as it would kill players, resulting in them losing their items and location on the server.

See also: List of April Fools' events

The success of Shockfest led to the April Fools' events becoming an annual tradition with varying jokes held each year, such as the creation of an airport and the creation of a custom plugin.

List of new Members

At least 193 players became Members during Omega. New countries that have members that were accepted from included Finland, France, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.[b]

The following is a non-comprehensive list of players that became members during Omega, taken from the Member List listed in alphabetical order:[c]

Notes

  1. ↑ Initially announced as a resignation
  2. ↑ Location data was self-reported through member applications.
  3. ↑ Some players' usernames may not reflect their username when they were accepted for Member, as this list was taken from the Member List in August 2023. Alternate accounts are not listed.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Currently banned

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