Castle Wars [1.9 - 1.16]

Sad I wasn't able to play on this, it looks super fun, hopefully you open this server up again someday

Cross posted review from Minecraft Server Lobby:

Castle War's gameplay is an interesting combination of Skyblock and Factions with defeats being far less punishing than the latter and building far easier than the former. Ophion is an exceptional server run by a stellar administration team and home to a fantastic community of lighthearted friends that can compare to a family.

Castle Wars is designed to be a fusion of Skyblock and Factions. It is meant to give players a process of building yourself up and taking your accomplishments on to a battlefield with defeat not being nearly as punishing. PvP is always enabled on your own plot, blocks can never be broken, and bases can be entirely safe from infiltration so long as you take the necessary steps. Most players, when looking for a fight, will initiate a "raid" that allows them to demand you join them in an arena that forces you and your castle to defend yourselves. This allows players to experience more factions oriented PvP. Upon defeat, however, you will only lose a random few items from your specified raid inventory to prevent total reset. This allows you to defend yourself with whatever gear you choose, but not be punished as hard for being caught with your pants down in a fight you aren't entirely ready for.

The duality of Ophion Castle Wars is a nice blend between peacefully working towards improving your plot of land and preparing yourself for mediumly high stakes raiding that never permanently harms the hard work you put into playing on the server.

One critique of this system is the lack of incentive to engage in PvP. Ophion does a good job of encouraging skyblock style building up and shaping of your castle to make your plot look the best you can make it. However, as it is designed to be a fusion including Factions there is only barely enough reward when initiating PvP with other players. For a social community this is fantastic and helps players stay active in chat and communicate with each other as friendly neighbors, but there isn't quite enough incentive to FIGHT! Which others may consider a major drawback?

Ophion, the community, has been together since the early days of Minecraft's multiplayer boom. The community has risen and fallen in numbers over the years and often times leads people to ask new players who join the question "Are you an OG player?" or "Are you an old member?" and this is always asked with fond remembrance of the days that Ophion could boast 20+ people at any given hour of the day. The community all hold on to nostalgia of how much they enjoyed each other's company "back in the day."

The tightness of the community would most certainly be its only realistic detriment. The Ophion community is very friendly with each other and and often leads to many of them being hesitant to step on each other's toes. This, naturally, does not really work in conjunction with the Factions style of gameplay. Often engaging in combat as a new player is difficult because in the heat of the moment many long-time members of Ophion will call on the aid of the server to back them up in any confrontation they may find themselves in. Be it verbal jousting or actual combat new members will always find themselves "outnumbered" until they earn the respect of the community. While Ophion itself encourages PvPing and friendly competition. The community surrounding Ophion often does not take to it kindly. Many of the players do everything they can to avoid it, focusing instead on the building and social aspect of Ophion - Castle Wars.

The biggest challenge any new player may have when joining Ophion is playing long enough to make themselves comfortable with the community for whatever they wish to fulfil out of playing Ophion Castle Wars. Focusing heavily on PvPing most certainly will make you many enemies very quickly. However, if your goal is to enjoy a unique spin on Skyblock this is an amazing server to experience!

How active is this server?