Disaster!

So after hours of building up the spawning tower and protecting it with the plugin WorldGuard, the hour had come. The kids filed in and the whitelisting began.

They jumped on the server and the noise level began to rise. A good sign. There they were, all moving about with their user names floating over heads. It was cool to see.

Then the noise level rose higher and laughter ensued. Something seemed wrong. Someone had escaped. “How could this be? It was protected!” But the protection wasn’t working and the kids were mining the floor and falling through. Oh no! The room became suddenly warm and I began to perspire. All my work being destroyed.

My student assistant turned the spawn platform into a bedrock chamber and he began to teleport the students back to the chamber. But they continued to escape. A new kind of challenge, one not planned, revealed itself. Kids were fist bumping, laughing, exulting with each other when they escaped and teleported each other out of the “protected” spawn area. Some were upset that their classmates were griefing and they began trying to police each other.

I relaxed and watched it happen. It actually turned out to be pretty cool. Some fixes will be in order for next time.