World War 1
The battlefield east of Paris

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Launch date	15 January 2021
Historical era	1900-1918
Map	Stongduke Earth (Old world crop)
Host	Xethyr
Length	4 weeks
Peak playercount	251
Plugin	Nodes
Map download

Iteration chronology
i33	i34	i35

Not to be confused with 16.0 or 25.0.

World War 1, officially called The Great War and often referred to as i34, was an iteration hosted from 15 January to 6 February 2021 by Xethyr, in his first time hosting. The server is notable for its “Scramble for Africa” event, as well as for its intense warfare that nonetheless resulted in no clear victor. The fighting lasted for a cumulative 24 hours across three war weekends, through which each of the server's six Great Powers survived to the end.

i34 held the record for highest player count on /int/craft, 251, for over two years (until finally beaten by Xeth's succeeding server, World War 2). It also holds the record, tied with World War 2, for being the longest-lasting modern iteration – 4 weeks, including five days of war. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest iterations of all time.¹⁾

Xeth had previously been the lead developer of the Nodes plugin, as used on i32. The end of i32 marked the end of the Onions adminship, and afterwards there was some uncertainty as to the future (or end) of /int/craft, as there was no clear host to take charge. It was initially debated whether to sell Nodes to the public, but this did not come to be.

In early September 2020, a full four months before the eventual launch, Xeth revealed to his circle of confidants that he had begun development on a new /int/craft iteration, that it was to have a 1900s theme, and that it would be launched around Christmas. He gained the tentative support of Jonathan after the latter failed to convince Xeth to drop the project. By October, the initial build of the guns plugin was already being alpha-tested by in-the-know PvPfags like Falklands and numried. News of the upcoming iteration spread slowly, by word of mouth. A public announcement was deliberately delayed until only 3 weeks before the launch, which was scheduled for 15th January of 2021.²⁾

In addition to new custom guns based on the Quality Armory plugin, other development tasks included updating Nodes to Minecraft 1.16 and adding more features to it, creating a new “ports” plugin that worked with Nodes, creating a new vehicles plugin that was to be both more functional and better-balanced than Onions' vehicles, and making an ambitious new map. Most server config was done by Xeth.

In the midst of development, uhFiliate launched a separate project, i32.5. Some groups chose to skip this server to avoid burnout for the upcoming WW1.

Chien's world map had been traditionally used by /int/craft iterations with a global theme, but that map was becoming outdated by 2020, having been made in 2015 or 2016. Xeth had hoped to enlist a mapmaker to make a new, updated world map for the upcoming server, as well as for reusability on future servers. Chien was initially contacted by Xeth for this project, but he declined, citing lack of time. Stongduke, map painter for i30 and i31, was then contacted instead, and he eagerly accepted.

Early picture of the map in development.

Stongduke put a high level of autism into making the map, completing it in just a few days despite the many hours of work. Progress was supervised by Xeth and Jonathan as well as checked by others knowledgeable in geography, such as Dab and LeiteArts. This insight from many contributors, and pre-processing work on the heightmap by Xeth and Jonathan, greatly helped the map be more accurate than previous Earth maps.

The map was published by Stongduke on PlanetMinecraft, where it became very popular and has since been used on many other servers. The PMC version of the map differs from the /int/craft version, however, as it has ores and other survival necessities that the /int/craft version omits.

The map was cropped for use on i34, limited to just the Old World (Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania west of the international date line). The Nodes province map was made by Jonathan, Itsame, and Dab.

The server was announced to the public only 3 weeks before launch, and the Discord created just 2 weeks before. As a result, there was a lot less e-drama compared to previous iterations, a big improvement from i32.

Some in-the-know nation leaders had claimed their upcoming nations for months in advance, such as Strykergang on France, Leite on Germany, and the British on.. Britain. Others put in their claims after the public announcement, like WoopWooper on China, Norse on Sweden-Norway and Denmark, and TrenchByte on Russia. There were many large nations, with none emerging a head above the others, again unlike the Onions iterations. Perhaps the most-feared power was the resurgent Norse, who had increased their number by a merger with 4craft's /a/ group.

Overall, the months since Onionscraft seemed to have done good for the community; the people were eager to play a new server, and WW1 attracted unprecedented interest, including huge turnout from almost all the contemporary metagroups. Absent were only really Brogrammer's and manslay3r's groups, and polandcrafters. There were two relevant newfag nations in Morocco and Japan.

The test server for i34 was very popular, and had many mock battles. A structure on the test server, “Fort Nigger”, gained fame.³⁾ There was also a special test server event on January 6th, when about 40 players reenacted the Capitol siege with Nodes war and teams called “Q” and “FBI”.

Peak player count during the launch spike was 155, a fair bit less than the 200+ of i32. In the initial few days, there was much seething over resource generation rates, especially mining rates. A poll was held on Discord in which the players voted, practically unanimously, to buff the mining rates. However, Xeth ignored the results of this poll.

Unlike previous servers, the political situation manifested roughly as expected from pre-launch interest numbers; there were no surprise major nations.

On the first Saturday, the day after launch, a special janny-organized war was held between factions in North and South Italy. This was an ahistorical war meant to settle the dispute over two rival groups who wanted to play as Italy, one led by PhantomGuy and GavinGoodman, and the other by WarcorpTM and Wendell09. South Italy had a legion of many foreign volunteers come in from various other countries; North Italy only had the support of the Kalmar Union (the merged Norse faction). After a short battle, South Italy won and annexed most of North Italy's territory; Switzerland kept a part as reward for their assistance.

A pre-claimed town called “Africa” (with black color) occupied much of the African continent from the server launch, except for the northern and southern coasts, where some player towns were established. On 1pm EST on Sunday, Nodes war was enabled with the Africa town on a whitelist; annexation was disabled but occupations could be contested by enemies and neutrals.

When a claim flag was placed in Africa, a swarm of “Zulus” (reskinned Minecraft skeletons) would spawn in. The wh*Tes found themselves much inferior to the Afrikangs at fighting, and so the claiming meta regressed into underhanded strategies like placing flags from inside shelter and placing flags from horseback. All the major and mid-tier European nations, as well as Morocco, took part in the Scramble.

On Monday night, a conference was finally held to settle African borders. In the conference, three “disputed zones” were established, that allowed players to keep fighting over areas where borders could not be agreed, while the rest of the land was removed from the whitelist. The Kalmar-Moroccan zone (in West Africa) and the British-Serbian zone (in Egypt and Sudan) were extensively fought over for the rest of the week. By the Africa meme's end on Friday, the eastern zone was annexed to the British, and the western zone was split between Kalmar and Morocco.

The server had five days of general war across 3 war weekends (six war days if the Italian civil war on the second day is counted as another). The second-to-last war day was whitelisted, dedicated to claiming some inactive nations and a special janny-sanctioned war. The other four had no restrictions. The three Saturday war windows (on 1/23, 1/30, and 2/6) were 6 hours long; the two Sunday war windows (on 1/24 and 1/31) were 3 hours long.

The Norse and Moroccans held an enmity due to their rivalry over western Africa during the Scramble. The Norse thus made the Moroccans their first target in proper war. The Norse were superior in skill, number, and equipment, but it still took 4 hours of the first war day to capture all the Moroccan core territory.⁴⁾ With the fall of Safi, Moroccan players fled to Japan.

Kalmar had previously provided military support to the North Italians, the opposing claimant to the eventually victorious South Italians. In the midst of the Norse-Moroccan War, some Italians had made an attempt to sneakily claim some backwater territory in northern Norway and Finland. After the fall of Safi, a reduced Norse force landed on Sicily to deliver retribution. By the end of time, they held a commanding position over the Italian capital Palermo.

Afterwards, the Italians chose to delete their nation, unclaiming their land for free, rather than surrender to humiliating Norse terms or continuing the fight. This left Norse and Switzerland splitting the peninsula, and Kalmar committing to the Franco-German battle for their Sunday's war.

China, under WoopWooper, and Japan, under o_Dannyboy, had memeraided each other throughout the week. On the first war day, the Japanese launched an invasion of mainland China. They were aided by Mongolia and hired Swiss mercenaries. The Japanese were just chunks away from capturing the Qing capital Lanzhou before the first war day ended. On the second war day, the Swiss were not present, but the Japanese had the help of the exiled Moroccans instead. Lanzhou was finally captured near the end of the 3 hours' window. After the battle, the Qing began the long march, moving their capital to western China and constructing a new base there.

During the second week, many reports surfaced of Moroccans using hacks, and so they were banned by Xeth, and Japan harshly punished for harboring them; roughly 2/3 of the Japanese national stockpile was destroyed as collective punishment. After this, the Japanese ragequit the server, leaving China the default winner of the war despite their defeats in battle. In later war days, the Chinese took back some of the lost land from the now-inactive Japanese, and conquered Mongolia.

The British Empire, led by Jonathan, and the “Balkan Sovereignty” (Serbia+Greece), led by TheSpookyBone, had fought over African claims. The Serbians had early superiority, but the British owned the disputed zone by the end. The two parties were in truce talks on Friday, but it failed, and so the British planned to fight Serbia during the first war day.

Just prior to the first war window, the Ottomans joined nations with Serbia, creating the “Byzantine Sovereignty”. The war began with the British capture of Paraitonion, the Serbian fort on the Egyptian coast, and the seizure of remaining Serbian African lands. The British then attacked Ottoman Syria, overwhelming the small town of Damascus, but failed in an amphibious landing against Constantinople via Gallipoli. The second war day was fought over Syria and Lebanon, but the Byzantines were unable to retake Damascus, even with Swiss mercenary and Iranian help.

On the third war day, the Byzantines had also convinced Spain to join the war on their side, but their overland assault on Gibraltar failed and Spain was instead captured by the British. British troops simultaneously fought off the Ottomans in Syria and invaded Iran. The Serbians resorted to using an exploit in the ports plugin to teleport to British ports in an attempt to win, but all their meme attacks failed. The war ended with British in control of Gibraltar, Spain, Iran, Cyprus, Syria and Lebanon, and even a corridor in Turkey right up to Constantinople's wall.

In the next week, the British and Byzantines finally signed a truce. However, both sent troops to fight on opposing sides during the final chapter of the Franco-German War.

On the second war day, as British were busy in Syria, the Dutch colony of Batavia (Indonesia) launched a war against the neighboring British colony of Singapore. Singapore was defended by just 2 soldiers, VivianJames and Xethyr (on an alt), but they somehow withstood the Dutch siege for 3 hours. Afterwards, a truce was signed by British and Dutch leadership.

On the fourth war day, which was originally supposed to be only for mutual-consent whitelist wars, admin Xeth authorized the undesired addition of Byzantium onto the whitelist, as punishment for their mass exploiting in the war against the British the day before. Kalmar and Germany (though notably not the British) invaded Serbia. In the beginning, only the enemy could claim, so the Serbs were unable to reverse any losses. However, this was fixed, and many volunteers arrived from France and Russia, and so Belgrade was successfully defended. Afterwards, the German/Kalmar-captured land was transferred back to Serbia.

A large European coalition had formed against the Norse due to their hostile actions against many nations throughout the week. Among the Norse enemies were Russia, Germany, France, the Dutch, Serbia, and the Ottomans. The night before the war was to take place, Germany abruptly switched sides, and truce locked itself with its now former allies. The rest of the coalition viewed this as a grave betrayal, assuming that they were now the targets of Neo-Norse invasion with German support. With the Norse opting to noob stomp Morocco instead, this left 3 of the largest factions –France, Germany, and Russia– with nothing to do on war day. Shortly before war was enabled, a discord call with relevant nation leaders and jannies was organized and Stryker demanded to have the French-German truce broken, as the ultimate goal of the iteration for France was a long-planned 1v1 brotherwar with Germany. Leite agreed, and the battle had begun.

At the beginning of the first war day, France and Germany went to blows in the largely unfortified rhineland. France lacked it's typical large defense systems, assuming that they'd be invading Scandinavia and years of never being properly invaded. Germany had a slight advantage in numbers and pvp skill, and inched towards the outskirts of Paris. Although not much ground had been lost, it nonetheless greatly worried the high command of France. Facing defeat and feeling personally betrayed by both Stongduke and Leitearts, Stryker abandoned the foreplanned 'honorable brother war' notion and called upon all allies for help. The byzantines aided France briefly before having to attend to their own wars in the near east against Britain. Russia, still trucelocked, joined in full force against Germany as infantry. This allowed the French to focus entirely on claiming land, and drastically tipped the scales in total army size in France's favour. The new 'Coalition' was able to conquer Frankfurt, and claimed practically to the gates of Berlin. Kaiser LeiteArts abdicated and FireRest125 took over as Führer.

On the second day, with Norse help, Germany was able to completely reverse their disastrous territorial losses from the previously, and the frontline moved back into France. Kalmar also fought off Russia in Finland, and, in the last hour, launched a naval invasion against the French port of Brest. By the war's end, Kalmar occupied all of Brittany. Despite the daunting shift in advantage, the French refused to back down and prepared for what would become the largest siege in /int/craft history.

The next Saturday, it was widely expected that the fall of France was imminent. This was not to be the case. Boosted by an unprecedented turnout, Stryker's tenacious leadership, Swiss mercenaries, and Russian help, the French pulled off a miraculous victory and pushed back into Germany. Fighting in the main fronts of the European theater did not take place on the 4th war day. On the 5th, the final Saturday, Germany had a huge turnout and once again fought up to the walls of Paris, while Kalmar attacked Estonia and Russia. However, the eastern front against Russia collapsed, France fought back, and the war ended with the frontlines roughly on the modern German borders.

Post-war, jannies created a town of “Hyperborea” in Denmark. They flew around and killed many players with their advanced weapons. Then, the serb died.

Major engagements during the war were the Siege of Frankfurt in the first day, and the Battle of Paris on the third.

World War 1 has been retroactively seen as a high water mark for /int/craft, and the culmination of the Fili-Onions era of servers. Subsequent servers failed to live up to its level of success, arguably until Xeth's second iteration, i38, by which time, 2 years later, the playerbase had dramatically changed.

World War 1 saw the last appearance of many famous metagroups, including the British, Trenchgang, WoopWooper's group, the united TaP/Voltz groups, and the united Strykergang. It also arguably saw the peak strength of the neo-Norse, Spookygang, and Domsquad (the Swiss), and was the most powerful showing from Strykergang ever, peaking at around 35-40 players online in Paris, making it arguably the largest army fielded by a native /int/craft-born faction of all time. One of the few groups on i34 to go on to greater success was Morocco, who became known as the Fleepers and became a major power on i35, i36, and Epochcrafts 3 and 4.

The Western Front of World War 1 is generally agreed by most notable players to have been the largest and most competitive series of battles ever in /int/craft history. In many ways it was the culmination of /int/craft's development as community and as a server, seeing Total War between the community's strongest factions at their absolute military peaks. The determination on both sides to fight at full capacity and to never back down even while facing certain defeat was legendary. The magnitude of this war will most likely never be imitated, and is still passionately discussed by reminiscent veterans.

Pre-war dynmap.

Post-war dynmap.

Note: This may not be an exhaustive list.

• Afghanistan
  • ★ Kabul
• Baltic Confederacy
  • ★ Veliky
• British Empire
  • ★ London
  • Aden
  • Delhi
  • Dunedin
  • Gibraltar
  • Judea
  • Melbourne
  • Singapore
  • Suez
• Byzantine Sovereignty
  • Serbia
    • ★★ Belgrade
    • Paraitonion
  • Austria
    • ★ Vienna
  • Greece
    • ★ Athens
  • Ottomans
    • ★ Constantinople
    • Damascus
    • Erzurum
• China
  • ★ Lanzhou
• France
  • ★ Paris
  • Algiers
  • Dijon
  • Marseilles
  • Pondicherry
• German Empire
  • ★ Berlin
  • Augusta
  • Frankfurt
  • Konigsberg
  • Strassburg
• Italy (North)
  • ★ Florence
• Italy (South, Unified)
  • ★ Palermo
  • Benghazi
  • Sardinia
  • Tripoli
• Japan
  • ★ Tokyo
  • Firipin
  • Korea
  • Sakata
  • Siberia
  • Taiwan
• Kalmar Union
  • ★ Christiania
  • Christiansborg
  • Copenhagen
  • Reykjavik
  • Stockholm
  • Tarrafalborg
• Mongolia
  • ★ Urga
• Morocco
  • ★ Safi
  • Dubai
  • Lisboa
  • Macau
  • Rabat
• Netherlands
  • ★ Cape Town
  • Amsterdam
  • Batavia
  • Neueschwabenland
• Persia
  • ★ Tehran
  • Yazd
• Romania
  • ★ Targoviste
  • Tulcea
• Russian Empire
  • ★ Moscow
  • Chelyabinsk
  • Kazan
  • Leningrad
  • Minsk
  • Penza
  • Srikakulam
  • Yakutsk
• Siam
  • ★ Bangkok
• Spain
  • ★ Sevilla
• St. Pantaleon
  • ★ St. Pantaleon
• Switzerland
  • ★ Bern
• Tibet
  • ★ Deng
  • Brunei
  • Pogland
  • Shardu
• United States
  • ★ Basilan

• ★ Siege of Frankfurt
• ★ Battle of Paris
• ★ Switzerland
• Mogadishu
• Long Island Iced Tea