Recent (and thanks to Covid19), I have seen some youtube vids related to Minecraft and specifically 2B2T. It is a fascinating virtual world that has run about 10 years with basically no rules and almost no consequences for actions. As such major building projects that most have took typically many players hours to complete (which appears common) are destroyed in minutes by others (typically called grievers) when those structures are found by them.
The place where new players start (called spawn), is a wasteland with basically zero resources and highly trapped to try to stop them. This is done by the ‘veteran player base’, those who have been there for many years. Escaping spawn is the first and major obstacle to making it on 2B2T it appears.
The Nether which on Minecraft is a hell like landscape ‘underworld’ has been made into a superhighway system on 2B2T (as travel in the nether is much faster then the normal ‘overworld’ allowing a star trek like warp shortcut. And even though the afore mentioned grievers have tried to destroy the nether highway system, there is enough players willing to maintain it that it basically stands.
Looking at it (from Youtube vids), it paints a fascinating view of humanity. People coming together for a cause that is good for all, others who come together to destroy it, and others who seek to stop others from entering, and the rare few ‘angels’ who help the recently spawned make it.
I would play it, though I’m not sure I could make it out of spawn which appears to be a hellish wasteland far surpassing that above mentioned Nether, though I would love to explore that world, all the builds and what is left of them. The curious desire to destroy (grief) other’s builds, and ponder what it means for humanity in a place with nearly no rules.
Anyone here play 2B2T who would like to comment, or those who know about it.
Of course, the “angels” who help newbies out of spawn might not actually be acting for the good of the community, if they’re letting griefers get in past the measures designed to keep them out.
And I’m sure that there are “selective angels”, players who don’t help indiscriminately, but only those who they know from elesewhere, who they believe will become maintainers rather than griefers.
You probably also have spontaneously-developed “governments”, with “police forces” or “militaries”, who unite against the griefers.
Certainly, it’s an interesting sociological experiment.
Yikes! I don’t surf YouTube a lot, so I have never seen anything about 2B2T. I’ll just stick with my nice safe Minecraft server world that has a few moderators to boot jerks, and an anti-griefing plugin that lets you protect your projects from destruction! I would rather build things in peace and cooperate with my fellow players, than be part of a social experiment.
It is designed to keep noobs out (called rushers), they already mostly have accepted to live with griefier as part of minecraft life. The reason to keep rushers out is that the server is overloaded, causing lag and sometimes long waits for veterans to join. It appears without buying priority access the wait time can be 7+ hours, priority access lowers it to about 5 minutes, vet status gets you right in.
From what I have seen that is part of it.
Players do unite for causes, some short term, some long term, there are factions, and there is base defenders. I would not call anything I have seen that would qualify as a government with maybe a nod to perhaps a feudal system for a base area. Also there are nomads who go out to the far reaches and don’t make permeant bases but carry everything with them. Very interesting they have a faction that is devoted to spawn defense (preventing rushers from leaving, and living, sometimes trapping and holding them in unbreakable ‘prison’ traps - causing them to log out then wait 7 hours to continue). It seems like a knights templar type of thing.
I’ve never played it, just heard about it in podcasts and whatnot, but it’s basically designed to try to give the playerbase social tests. At it’s base level it sounds like a pretty typical non-combat role playing game where you spend most of your time collecting resources and using them to build things or complete tasks, but the game is designed so that it’s basically impossible to personally have the skills you need so you have to cooperate with other people to get stuff, while at the same time removing things that prevent people from getting in each others’ way. There’s also something like a government that the player-base gets to democratically elect to try to manage things.
The game creators also will test the social cohesion of the group in somewhat extreme ways. They once created an NPC that would trade really valuable goods at a discount, but refused to trade with any female character, to see if players would look out for their own self-interest, agree not to take advantage of the NPC or devolve into infighting.