Stone Zone

Join the Stone Zone SMP Discord @ Discord.gg/StoneZoneSMP

  I've been playing Minecraft for a very long time. I played cracked
for a while until in 2012 or 2013, I convinced my mom to buy me a
legit copy of the game. I’ve grown up in these blocky worlds and
learned so much through them.

  The early days of Minecraft kind of forced you to understand computers to a small
degree. Minecraft was the avenue that lead me to being interested in
computers and IT. I credit this game with my love of the field. I was
the kid always hosting random one-off servers for friends. But ever
since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to host a proper long-term
server, but was never in a position to be able to do that.

  Fast forward to summer of 2020 and I’m out of work during the pandemic, and
everyone is locked inside. I had the time and the spare equipment to
make that childhood dream a reality. So I took a single player world
I had been playing on for a few days and converted it to test server.
I wasn't expecting it to be flooded with people. But during the
pandemic people were on a nostalgia binge, and proto-stonezone had
gotten thousands of unique players in the two days it was online.
This convinced me to make it more official. It was actually my
brother who came up with the name StoneZone. I threw together a
proper server machine, made some shwappy ad banners, and made some
posts online under the StoneZone title. If you were playing during
these times then you must remember my awful spawn that I built. I’m
not a builder, obviously. But was always more interested in making a
server with game play I would have enjoyed as a player. I’m glad so
many others at the time liked it as well.

  Then in 2022 I took a job that had me traveling a lot and I couldn’t keep a close eye
on the server. But I didn’t just want to close the server, so I
contacted the players who had the longest play-time to see if they
where interested in becoming admins. As I could no longer
meaningfully watch over the server. Cutiepsy, Stormatix, Pavillion,
Giraffemans, and Itsautocorrect originally took up the task of
keeping StoneZone operating smoothly. With their help the server
started to be somewhat professional for a stoner server. Though as
time went on, the admin team shrank to just Cutiepsy, Stormatix, and Me.

  In 2024 Mojang released 1.20.5. This broke so much stuff internally with the
StoneZone server it was easier to just rebuild it, so that's what I
had started doing. But while the update project was underway I
started to get very sick. This turned into a mystery chronic gut
issue that I’m still dealing with to this day. Because of this, the
update project slowed to a near-stop. It took almost 6 months just to
get the server online to let Cutiepsy and Stormatrix build the
beautiful spawn area you saw once it was fully open to the public again.

Finally in 2025, on April 7^th the ISP I use implemented a CGNAT. This
effectively prevents clients behind the CGNAT from hosting any kind
of public server. They were the last ISP in my area that did not have
a CGNAT and allowed public hosting, all the others in my area are
also behind CGNATs and are no faster than dial-up anyway. This is
what breaks the camels back. There are work-arounds to get around the
CGNAT, like proxy-ing through a cloud server. But I cant afford them.

  Alas this is the end of StoneZone under my direction. But don’t be sad, I’ve
backed up everything. All the world files, before and after the
reset. All the server operating files and configs. I've also bundled
every single program I’ve made or used to run the server, every
datapack/mod I’ve made or used, and all the notes, files, pictures,
ads, and banners I’ve made. I saved as much as I could.

  So, In theory, Someone could download the files and run their own continuation of
StoneZone and the beautiful ball of duct-tape that it was. I've
included links to the Internet Archive where you can download the
files for yourselves. Like a hydra with many heads, may StoneZone never truly die!


Old World
- archive.org/details/stone-zone-smp-old-world-java-mc-1.20.4


New World + Server Files + Stavy’s Files
- archive.org/details/stonezonefinalbackup


  I want to thank everyone who played and stuck around on this server for the nearly
half-decade it was online. If it wasn’t for you guys, This would
have been just another weekend project but it became so much more.
I've learned and grown so much. I can only hope the same for you all.

Sincerely,
From the bottom of my heart,
Thank You.