I'm not a blogger. I am throwing that out there right now. I plan on this series of articles to be about my opinion on playing Minecraft, how things should be, how things shouldn't be, and so on and so forth.

I, like many others, am a player. I play to entertain myself, I play to socialize with friends, and I play to get some wicked good PvP skills. From when I wake up, to when I can barely keep my eyes open, I play. I dig, I mine, I jump, I climb, (see how I did that little rhyming thing there?) I explore, and I die. I play Minecraft because Minecraft is so simple, yet so utterly complex.

I haven't played Minecraft that long compared to other people. I started just after 1.2 came out in March 2012. But ever since I first saw a video of it on YouTube, I was hooked. I bought it straight away and explored my way around endless geometrical worlds, and I still do.

But enough about my history, more about what I think.

First off, I hate multiplayer servers. I can never EVER find a good one that meets all of my expectations. Every time I do, the server does one of two things: A) Shuts down because of lack of popularity/funds, or B) Grows exponentially large and I am just a person in the background.

You see, I like playing on brand new servers. I like to be able to make friendships with the staff so when I get on, everyone can say, "Hey Jonah!!!" I like to have somewhat of a little popularity, and to have people respect me. I also like to be able to give the owner personal suggestions without them being shrugged off, which is another reason I like to become friends with the staff. Being pals with staff members almost always helps out in the long run.

I have been playing on a server called Cryptic PvP for quite some time now; probably about three or four months. When I first started out, I immediately scrambled a hidden base together and made friends with the staff. The server was pretty old, but there wasn't too much traffic, so I stayed. I brought some friends from school on, and we made our Faction known throughout the server. We got raided once, so we relocated and have been in that spot since. I played on this server all summer being happy that it wasn't too big, that we had friends, and that our faction was set.

Just so you all know, by set, I mean MY definition of set. "Set" to me means not overwhelmingly rich, but not dirt poor. I don't need a vault full of Prot. IV armor and a stack of TNT to make myself feel safe. Our faction had a little money, enough armor to get us by, and a small farm for food. That's all we needed. I'm not the kind of person that takes more than what I need.

Anyways, for a while, my two other faction members and I were doing good. We had everything we needed, and not a lot more. That's when things got complicated. The faction admin, DAVISXTREME, decided he would start donating. Now, I wasn't too fond of that because we didn't really need the extra perks, but I shrugged it off and went ahead and donated as well. So we were all three donors, and we were living life a little better We started selling more stuff for profit, and eventually, we all had a combined amount of money of over $1 million. Now that may not seem like a lot, but this server economy is VERY expensive, and just $20 can get you a long way sometimes.

Now, sadly we made all that money by cheating. We x-ray mined. We would do it for hours on end without getting caught and resell over half of what we mined. I wasn't thinking morally at the time, I was just being greedy and wanted money. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Our faction got really big. We were selling, mining, and living the good life. But WHAM, things hit me like a brick one day.

I realized everything we had we got by cheating. Every block in my room in the faction home was basically stolen. None of the things in my ores chest was legit. My heart dropped, and I looked back on what we had done for weeks. We were greedy, self-righteous cheaters. I couldn't believe what our simple little faction had turned into. Our three members had grown apart. We only talked about once a week, and when we did, it was only for about fifteen minutes. I knew that stuff was bad.

This is how the faction is now. DAVISXTREME invited another random person to the faction, and I have no clue why. All he is going to do is steal from us. We rarely talk and discuss things we need to get done. We are disorganized and just.... sad. I want to quit the server. I hate what we have become, and what we represent to everyone. I have people who respect me, and the fact that I lie to them and cheat is just sickening.

This my friends, is a lesson on why you should never let things get too big. Keep everything simple and you'll be alright.