Happy Easter Autcrafters!

Join us today for the 5th Annual Egg Hunt! Can you find all 12 "eggs" around spawn? The prizes are the eggs, which will make great decorative items in your Minecraft home. Good luck and happy hunting!

~MMGH

Hey everyone!

As I do every year, I'll be holding a live stream on April 2nd to raise awareness for autism and the bullying that autistic people face online, particularly in the Minecraft community. However this year, instead of going for 24 hours, I'll be doing 36!

The reason that I'll be going for 36 hours is that the current Guinness World Record for the longest live stream marathon in Minecraft is 35 hours, 40 minutes and 2 seconds. I hope to break that and set a whole new world record!

This is the record that I'm trying to beat:
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/95929-longest-videogame-marathon-on-minecraft

There is some bad news however.

To compete and have a shot at breaking this record, GWR guidelines state that I must play vanilla Minecraft in it's current version. That means that Autcraft is not elligible because it has plugins that alter the game.

I'm sorry but I will not be on Autcraft for the live stream this year.

Next year I will be going back to my regular 24 hour live streams and you can be certain that those will be on Autcraft like normal. And I will do my best to continue to bring special guests to meet you all.

This year, I have set up a special server with vanilla Minecraft on it where I will play for the entire 36 hours straight. I will still have special guests come and visit and join me there. I will also invite those special guests to stop in on the Autcraft server to see you all. I can't make any promises though since I won't be there myself.

For those of you who do visit the Autcraft server during the hours that I am doing my live stream, you will receive a special in game item that you can only get during that time. Just like the Christmas Sword, it will appear in your inventory once you join the server.

I hope that you all can understand that the message that I'm trying to send by breaking this world record is what makes this so important... that this is bigger than all of us.

What is my message?

That autistic people are bullied at a hugely disproportionate rate compared to people without autism.

That having one Minecraft server out of millions where autistic people can feel safe simply isn't enough.

That people with autism aren't the anti-social, lacking empathy, troubled and disabled kids that so many people still think we are.

But more importantly, I'm doing this to remind autistic people everywhere that we're just as capable of being the very best in the world as anyone else, given the proper support and the right opportunities.

Next year I'll get back to doing my live streams on the server and I'll still be bringing special guests and I will do my best to include everyone. But for right now, I have to do this according to the rule book.

For anyone wanting to watch my live stream, you can do so at
https://www.twitch.tv/autismfather

Also, I will be including Patreon rank players at some point onto the new server to participate. To get the Patreon rank, you must be a supporter of the server at the $10/m level or higher at:
https://www.patreon.com/autismfather

If you want to know when the live stream starts where you are, use this link:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20180402T040000&p1=1201&p2=136&p3=240

Again, I'm sorry I won't be on Autcraft this time but this is important to me and to everyone else. The world is watching. This could change a lot.

- AF

When Autcraft started, we created 3 main ranks to help keep the server safe and make sure everyone had the help they needed: JrHelper, SrHelper and Admin.

The main differences between JrHelper and SrHelper were the person's age... under 18 were JrHelper while 18 and up were SrHelper.

This presented a problem.

What we found were that some JrHelpers, once turning 18, either weren't ready to be SrHelpers or had no interest in becoming a SrHelper. This meant that those players would lose their rank. And why? Because it's their birthday?

So we (all the staff) got together and talked about possible solutions to this and found that the simplest and possibly best way to deal with it is to remove the age restriction on JrHelpers. We renamed JrHelper to Helper and made it so that any player of any age can become or stay a Helper even if they're over 18.

If a Helper is ready and willing to become a SrHelper after they turn 18, that option is open to them as well.

This will take some time to adjust to for some players, I'm sure, as we've had JrHelpers for over 4.5 years now but we feel that this is for the best going forward. We don't want a player's 18th birthday to be a cause for stress. It's supposed to be a happy time.

For those wondering why some JrHelpers might not want to become SrHelpers, the biggest differences are that SrHelpers can "jail" a player if they're causing problems, which can be stressful, and that players deal with big life problems often turn to SrHelpers to talk. Often SrHelpers hear about problems at home, or school or players dealing with depression... this can be a bit much for some people and they might not feel ready to have those conversations just because they turned 18.

So anyway, going forward... JrHelper is now Helper and players will no longer lose this rank once they turn 18. Also, adults can now earn Helper as well. All of the permissions and responsibilities of the rank will remain the same as it ever was.

Thank you!