MC Zone

MC Zone was a Minecraft server network from 2012 to 2013, home to minigames like The Walls, Sky Wars, Hunger Games, Survival Games and Nebula. At its peak, 3,500 people were playing at once.

This archive brings back its old websites from the Wayback Machine, tells its story from the first server in 2011, and remembers the people who made it. The story carries on into what MC Zone became, the Avicus Network.

Put together by Keenan Thompson (funkystudios), who founded MC Zone.

Explore the archive ↓

About this archive

Minecraft is a video game where you build things out of blocks, alone or with others. Anyone can run their own Minecraft server, an online world that other players join over the internet, and in 2012 and 2013 those servers were one of the most creative corners of online gaming. The game didn't come with minigames, short competitive matches like last-one-standing battles or capture the flag, so players invented their own. Players, many of them teenagers, wrote the code, built the maps (the worlds each match is played in) and ran whole networks of servers to host them, years before Roblox and Fortnite made games created by players mainstream.

MC Zone was one of those networks. More than a million people played on it, many of them for hours a day every summer, and for a lot of them it was a central part of growing up. People built identities around their usernames, and found an outlet for their creativity in building maps, inventing game modes and writing code, while volunteer moderators kept the peace and helped run a community of thousands.

Almost all of it has disappeared since. The servers are long gone, the website went offline years ago, and what's left is scattered across the Wayback Machine, old YouTube videos and people's memories. This archive puts it back together in one place so it isn't lost. I also hope it helps people from back then find each other again, whether to share a story, swap memories or just say hello. If you were there, get in touch.

The old websites

Server addresses

What players typed into Minecraft's server list.

Sources"You are using the correct IP, play.mczone.co, right?"Game domainswallsmc.com store (Oct 2012)wallsmc.com (Dec 2012)Plugin source

Timeline

  1. 2011

  2. AugustAt 14, funkystudios opens TerraScape, a Minecraft server for friends, run at first from a computer at home. It starts out as a creative server with "a grand total of 5 dedicated users", then opens to the public as a survival server where players fight monsters rather than each other, and pays its way through players buying higher ranks. Listed on server sites, it grows to as many as 40 players online at once.
    funkystudios at a desk, seen from behind, playing Minecraft Beta 1.8.1 on TerraScape, with a microphone beside the monitor
    funkystudios running TerraScape in September 2011. The chat reads: "it doesnt seem like the shop is working lol".
    A dim monitor showing a permissions file being edited, Minecraft open, and TerraScape's live server map in a browser
    Editing TerraScape's permissions file in September 2011, with the live map at server.terrascape.tk on the right.
    SourcesAbout page (2012)About page (2013)
  3. OctoberTerraScape reinvents itself as a city server. Players take jobs to earn money, buy lots inside cities and arrive at a brand-new spawn, which the website describes as "TSS TerraScape Station. A massive train station where you can take a train to a city, or head out and build in the wild." Factions follow in January 2012, along with VIP, VIP+ and VIP++ donor ranks. Donors keep it running: in 2011 that includes funkystudios' middle school friends, and in January 2012 my0445316 starts paying for TerraScape's server.
    Inside a large stone station with a glass roof and arches, signs and shop stalls along the floor, with server.terrascape.tk written across the bottom
    TerraScape's website banner, most likely showing TSS TerraScape Station, the train-station spawn.
    A giant tree build at night with walkways, platforms and glowing lanterns among its branches, with server.terrascape.tk written across the bottom
    Another TerraScape banner: a giant tree build at night, with walkways and lanterns through its branches.
    TerraScape's spawn town: hedge-lined plots, stone paths and buildings beside a river, with tall rock formations behind
    TerraScape, October 29, 2011.
    Volga, a circular walled spawn city seen from above at night, with roads leading out in four directions
    Volga, a TerraScape spawn city built by sexybanana42.
    A palace with golden onion domes and long staircases on a sandy plain
    Another TerraScape spawn build.
    SourcesTerraScape newsPlugins

  4. 2012

  5. Earlyfunkystudios starts a Hunger Games server. Everyone spawns in a freshly generated world with a small kit, and up to 40 players fight until one is left. When the Hunger Games film arrives in March 2012, players go looking for the real thing in Minecraft. There is no official version, so server owners build it themselves as Bukkit plugins, add-ons that change how a Minecraft server plays, and Hunger Games servers spring up everywhere, MCPVP among the most popular. funkystudios' server, mc-hg.org, starts out on a free plugin by ftbastler, and funkystudios learns to program by decompiling plugins like it and tweaking them, later writing custom ones from scratch. A community grows around it, and it expands to four or five servers, each with its own address like b.mc-hg.org. Game stats are tracked within a week of the move to four servers.
    Banner reading MC Hunger Games: Custom Plugin, Random World, Kits/Classes, over a forest
    The MC Hunger Games banner from its Planet Minecraft listing, 2012.
    A crowd of players in a forest at the start of a Hunger Games match
    Players at the start of a Hunger Games match, June 2, 2012.
    Minecraft multiplayer server list with funkystudios' Hunger Games servers on b.mc-hg.org, c.mc-hg.org and d.mc-hg.org, each with 40 slots, below other saved servers
    funkystudios' Hunger Games servers on b, c and d.mc-hg.org in a player's server list, 2012, each with 40 slots. From JamieCSGO's video.
    SourcesPlanet Minecraft listing
  6. SummerIn June, Hypixel, then a map maker on YouTube, releases The Walls as an adventure map. funkystudios writes a plugin to run it as a multiplayer server game, later described as "the first server to host the walls on an automatic basis without interruptions". Still a separate server from Hunger Games, it grows to three servers and becomes funkystudios' most popular game yet.
    SourcesAbout page (2013)
  7. AugustWith funkystudios busy with other projects, TerraScape dwindles to no players over the summer and shuts down. my0445316 later brings it back.SourcesAbout page (2013)and funkystudios' recollection
  8. NovemberEach new server has its moment before players drift on to the next game, so funkystudios ties them all together. As the 2012 About page puts it: "I realized what I was missing - a link between all of the gaming servers I have developed, so I made MC Zone." MC Zone launches as one site for every game, and TerraScape is handed over to my0445316, who takes on its server costs and later becomes one of MC Zone's administrators. MC Zone is one of the early servers to track detailed player stats: kills, deaths, wins, losses, games played and time online, with a leaderboard for every game, and later profiles showing each player's recent matches, PvP kills and forum activity. Kit PVP and SkyBlock round out the list. By MC Zone's own account, it reaches 500 players online within two months and 1,000 within two and a half.SourcesAbout page (2012)May 2013 staffv1v2
  9. November 30MC Zone passes 300 players online for the first time.
    The MC Zone homepage showing 301 players online, with 88 on Sky Wars, 168 on The Walls and 38 on Hunger Games
    The MC Zone homepage that day: 301 players online, with 168 on The Walls, 88 on Sky Wars and 38 on Hunger Games.
  10. Winter, into 2013Sky Wars arrives: two teams battle it out on floating islands. The concept is JJtCool's, and MC Zone builds the software to run it as a multiplayer server game.
    SourcesPlanet Minecraft listing
  11. Winter, into 2013MC Zone gets its own forum. It becomes the center of the community: players talk about the games, share maps, apply to be moderators and report problems in dedicated sections for team killers, hackers, chat abuse and even unruly staff. The volunteer staff keep it in order the same way they police the servers, deleting spam and offensive posts, stepping in on aggressive language, locking threads and banning repeat offenders, all under a published set of forum rules.SourcesSite without a forum (Nov 2012)Forum announcementProject Ares (2012)ForumForum rules

  12. 2013

  13. FebruaryMC Zone passes 160,000 registered users. So many players pile into Hunger Games, Sky Wars and Volmaria, its factions server, that it moves to a bigger machine with two Xeon E5-2620 processors and 64 GB of RAM. By now the servers are connected: joining Hunger Games, Sky Wars or Volmaria drops players into a central hub with signs for every game, and a contest is held to build a better one. As the network grows it ends up running 20 or more servers for each of its busiest games.SourcesAnnouncementHub contest
  14. February to MarchTwo new games arrive. Nexus, a team deathmatch game, opens in public beta on February 26, and Survival Games launches on March 13. Survival Games is based on the map series Vareide began in April 2012, and unlike Hunger Games it's played on hand-built maps, with around 24 players and no kits: everyone loots chests instead. MC Zone also gets its servers onto Minecraft 1.5 before the server software officially supports it.SourcesMC Zone on TwitterNexus betaSurvival GamesMinecraft 1.5
  15. March 23MC Zone hosts the Sky Wars 2.0 Tournament with three teams of four: one led by JJtCool, one by GameplayerHD and one made up of MC Zone staff, with ExplodingTNT among the players.SourcesAnnouncementVideo (JJtCool)
  16. April 19Nebula joins MC Zone. Originally developed by Haribo98 (also known as ParaPenguin), it pits two to four teams against each other in modes like team deathmatch and capture the monument, modeled on the games of Project Ares (later Overcast Network), one of the most popular servers at the time. Haribo98 joins the staff to keep building it. A new lobby and an in-game credits system follow soon after.
    A Nebula map at night mid-match: floating castle towers and clouds criss-crossed by player-built bridges and walkways across the void
    A Nebula match in 2013. Maps start clean; players build bridges and paths across the void to reach and break the other team's monument.
    SourcesAnnouncementVideo (JJtCool)
  17. SpringThe website is redesigned as Minecraft Zone, and each game's domain now leads to its page on the site: mc-hg.org, the original Hunger Games address, along with skywars.co, nxmc.org and volmaria.com.SourcesAnnouncementv3Source on GitHubDomain redirects
  18. May 2MC Zone's live player counter reads 2,229 online, the highest figure in any archived capture.SourcesArchived page
  19. Mayavicus.net appears for the first time, as Avicus RPG: a planned role-playing game in Minecraft, though it isn't decided yet whether it will be part of MC Zone. The idea is something like RuneScape in first person, with skills and levels, NPCs, mobs, pets and quests.
    Avicus RPG in development: skeletons and NPCs with health bars above them, and a Levels panel listing Attack, Block, Constitution, Stamina and Range
    Avicus RPG in development, April 7, 2013.
    SourcesArchived page
  20. May to JuneMC Zone's game servers are rebuilt on a shared plugin framework, with 114 commits in two months, 89 of them in May. Ghost Squadron, a minigame SethBling released that May with maps by Vechs, arrives as a server game in which every player is invisible to the other team. Pets arrive too: baby animals that follow their owner around, can be renamed and, for sheep, recolored.
    A lime green baby sheep pet named Jackson following its owner across the lobby
    Jackson, a baby sheep pet, in the lobby in 2013.
    SourcesSource on GitHubVideo (SethBling)Video (Mrules 2001)
  21. JuneMC Zone approaches 500,000 users. funkystudios rewrites the website from PHP into Ruby on Rails and relaunches it with forums, player profiles and match statistics.SourcesSummer newsLaunch postv4
  22. JulyMC Zone moves to Minecraft 1.6 on July 1, opens a new shop at shop.mczone.co and opens registration for a Nebula tournament.Sources1.6 updateNew shopRegistration
  23. SummerIn the game's server list one summer day, MC Zone shows 965 players online out of 3,600 slots.
    The Minecraft multiplayer server list showing MC Zone Network at 965 of 3600 players on version 1.6.2, above TerraScape
    The server list in summer 2013, with TerraScape still running below MC Zone.
    SourcesMinecraftServers.org banner (2013)
  24. SummerA creative community grows around the games where the map is the game. funkystudios takes the idea from Halo's Forge mode, where players build their own maps for everyone to play, and brings it to Minecraft at scale. In The Walls, Survival Games, Nexus and Nebula, how a map looks and feels, where the chests sit and where the ores are buried all shape how a match plays out. A whole group of map builders forms around them, each developing their own style and approach. They share their maps on the forum, other players give feedback and vote for their favorites, and the best go into rotation with their builders credited in game and on the website. Builders post their world downloads, and funkystudios sets each chosen map up with a short config file listing its title, teams, spawn points and creators. Here is the Nexus template:
    info:
  world: red_v_blue
  title: Red vs Blue
  version: 1.5.2
  creators:
  - funkystudios
  - Notch
teams:
  red:
    title: Red
    color: red
    spawn: 10,10,10,90,0
  blue:
    title: Blue
    color: blue
    spawn: 0,0,0,270,0
    Nexus/example_map.yml on GitHub Prolific builders include 1Theodore1, KooDaLord, itaity, AdrianG503 and Merlinmaster.SourcesMap Releasesand funkystudios' recollection
  25. August to OctoberTo celebrate 500,000 registered users, MC Zone plans "Battle for Victory", a Nebula tournament across all of its game modes, with teams of eight plus four substitutes and a first date of August 16. Nebula is busy: the morning before, about 20 public matches of 44 to 117 players start within 40 minutes. Teams coordinate over Skype, since MC Zone has no voice server of its own, and players start asking for a TeamSpeak server. Twenty-four teams qualify, but the tournament is postponed several times as the staff take over running it.SourcesNebula pageTournament detailsTournament update (Skype)TeamSpeak request
  26. Late AugustMC Zone passes roughly 1 million recorded games, an estimated half of all games played, since tracking started after some games launched. Survival Games leads with 253,000, followed by Sky Wars with 205,000 and The Walls with 165,000. Every match gets its own stats page, showing who played and how they did, and this turns out to be key to MC Zone's success. With monthly and all-time Top 100 leaderboards for every game, players compete to climb them, study their own kill/death ratios and show off on the forums, where one thread collects seven pages of players' best Nebula kill streaks, topped by G_SKIPPY's 219. The all-time leaders that month are izjust4fun in Hunger Games (523 wins, 6,698 kills), vGuap in The Walls (408 wins at a 15.98 kill/death ratio) and Sezsor in Sky Wars (507 wins).SourcesHunger Games leaderboardWalls leaderboardKill streak threadSky Wars matchHunger Games match
  27. SeptemberStaff announce that MC Zone is being rebuilt under a new name: Avicus. The goal is less lag and fewer bugs, better maps, a new website and a tighter lineup of games, so unpopular modes like Ghost Squadron are likely to go, Nebula and The Walls stay, and new minigames are on the way. A new lobby is commissioned for Avicus from HyperScale, with areas for Nebula, The Walls and Control the Hill, a new game planned for the launch.
    A large stone lobby at night with lit archways leading to areas for Nebula, The Walls and Control the Hill
    The new lobby HyperScale built for Avicus, 2013.
    SourcesAnnouncement threadAvicus on Twitter (Oct 2013)Video (FightToFight, player survey)
  28. NovemberMC Zone becomes the Avicus Network, the same community rebuilt as its next version.Sourcefunkystudios' recollection
  29. December 23Players in Santa outfits gather for a Christmas party in the Avicus lobby, whose game areas now include Avicade, Elimination and Nebula.
    The Avicus lobby decorated for Christmas with ornaments, garlands and a red and white floor, with areas for Avicade, Elimination and Nebula
    The lobby decorated for Christmas, with areas for Avicade, Elimination and Nebula.
    A crowd of players, several in Santa outfits, gathered on a platform in the decorated Avicus lobby
    The Christmas party, December 23, 2013.

  30. 2014

  31. In late May, Avicus relaunches as "Avicus 2.0", the Avicore update, and brings back classic MC Zone games like Nexus. Map making opens up too: map makers now commit their own maps to a public repository, which grows to 275 maps from 78 contributors by 2016.SourcesReview (TRTrident, 2014)Map repositoryAvicore update (wiki)

  32. 2018

  33. January 25The Avicus Network shuts down.SourcesArchived notice

  34. Today

  35. Todayavicus.net now hosts the Avicus Archive, preserving 579,226 user accounts and 14,726 forum discussions from the network MC Zone became.SourcesAvicus Archive

People

MC Zone was never a one-person project. Here are some of the people who were there, from memory and the old pages, so the list is incomplete. If you were there too, get in touch.

TerraScape days

Game ideas

Map builders

Staff

Volunteer moderators and admins banned hackers, dealt with spam and bad language, and logged every ban publicly on the website. These names come from the staff pages of May 2013 and October 2013; the rules and the public ban list are archived too.

Administrators

Moderators

Perspectives

Looking back

Keenan (funkystudios), October 2026

I was 14 when I started TerraScape on a computer at home, mostly so my friends and I would have somewhere to play, and I really didn't know what I was doing. One of the oldest photos I have from that time shows me at my desk typing "it doesnt seem like the shop is working lol" into chat, which sums up those first months pretty well.

That desk is also where I learned to program. I couldn't write a plugin from scratch yet, so I decompiled other people's and changed them until they did what I wanted, usually with players online waiting for me to fix whatever I had just broken. A lot of what I was chasing came from other games, and the biggest idea came from Halo, where my favorite part had always been Forge, with players building their own maps and sharing them for everyone to play. I wanted that in Minecraft, and in the end The Walls, Survival Games and Nexus all ran on maps built by players, with the best of them going into rotation for thousands of people.

None of that would have happened without the people around it. At first it was a few friends from middle school who built with me and chipped in to keep the server running, and before long people I had never met were showing up to build maps, run tournaments, moderate for free and argue on the forums. my0445316 was one of the earliest, and one of TerraScape's first financial supporters, paying for the server when it needed paying for and bringing TerraScape back after I had shut it down. Having someone believe in the idea that much, that early, is a big part of why I kept going.

He was far from the only one, and I still remember every username in the People section above, because each of them is part of this story. Between them, they're the reason I became a software engineer, since keeping MC Zone running is how I learned to code and they gave me a reason to keep learning. I hope it gave them what it gave me: a sense of belonging, and a place to hang out with friends we only ever knew online.

What I'd do differently

The part I think about most is money. The servers ran on ranks, microtransactions and later subscriptions, and a lot of that money came from kids. Parents sometimes emailed asking for refunds, and when we shut a game down, the perks people had paid for went with it, which I'd handle very differently now. I'd also be kinder, because reading old emails I can see I was often hard on people who were helping for free, Haribo98 among them, and they deserved more patience and a lot more thanks.

I'd give more credit, too. Players built many of the maps our games ran on simply because they loved building, and I wish we had recognized them better. The same goes for other servers, especially Project Ares (later Overcast Network), which we took a lot of ideas from, sometimes more than we should have.

What I try to remember is that everyone running MC Zone was a kid. The admins, moderators and developers, me included, did all of this after school for tens of thousands of players every week and more than a million over the years, which is more responsibility than most kids that age ever have, and more than any of us understood at the time.

Mostly, though, I'm grateful to everyone who played, built, moderated, supported the servers financially or just hung out. If you were there, I'd love to hear from you.

Source code