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In the beginning, there was Etho.
On the 3rd of April, 2015, it was announced that Etho was parting ways with Mindcrack, owing to their shift in business strategy. In line with their existing rules, Etho’s typical content was no longer allowed on /r/mindcrack. This led to a significant influx of subscribers to /r/ethoslab as Etho’s reddit fanbase consolidated there.
On the 4th of April 2015, reddit user Kotran posted a thread titled ‘The Unofficial Etho’s Lab Server’, owing to the increase in active subscriber count and several requests from newer members. The server was affectionately nicknamed ‘Slabserver’ by DaUltraMarine, as a play on ‘Ethoslab’, and the subreddit /r/slabserver created to discuss the server while offline.
While Kotran was the owner and sole admin for the duration of Season 1, on April 26th DaUltraMarine was appointed as a moderator in a community vote. Slabserver maintained a dedicated and niche community over the following months, with a number of events hosted such as 24 hour long parties and UHCs.
Kotran became progressively less active in the community due to undergoing multiple surgeries, and Frogperson was appointed by DaUltraMarine as a moderator to ensure a healthy number of trusted staff. In Kotran’s absence, discussions took place about the future of the server and the measures that should be taken to ensure the community's survival. As a result of these discussions, Frogperson used the World Downloader Mod to test saving the main areas on the server as a safety measure, although sadly this would soon become our only copy of the world.
At the start of August 2015, despite assurances that server payments would continue, the server became unavailable. In the months that followed, the community persisted through its snapshot server and other community events. During September 2015, WelshLP approached the community and staff to ask about hosting a second season of Slabserver. Several weeks later on the 21st of September, WelshLP confirmed that he would be hosting the second season once the 1.9 update was released.
What remains of the Season 1 world can be downloaded here: Slabserver Season I
During late November 2015, WelshLP created a Slabserver Discord for the community to interact in the lead up to the start of Season 2, where the community began to consolidate its primary discussion over the subreddit. During this time, Eyadish joined the admin team, as part of preparations for the new season.
On February 9th, WelshLP also created a Etho Discord server in response to a reddit thread created by user benji7425. This led to an increase in Slabserver community members due to the proximity of the two Discord servers, and the Slabserver Discord was shortly merged into the Etho Discord.
##Season 2
Minecraft 1.9 was scheduled for release on the 25th of February 2016, but delayed until the 29th of February. Prior to launch, Slabserver was advertised for the first time since Kotran’s initial post on /r/ethoslab, leading to another small bump in member count and activity prior to the new season’s launch.
Despite the delay in the 1.9 update release, Season 2 continued its planned launch on the 26th of February 2016, using 1.9 Pre-Release 4. For season 2 Slabserver also transitioned to a new server host, Bisecthosting, which marked the first usage of the slabserver.org domain. After 1.9’s full release, and Spigot’s own release of 1.9, the chat integration between the server and Discord were added, on the 8th of March 2016.
Season 2 continued smoothly into the summer, where Slabserver saw its first community modded server, hosted by Rein, as well as another Slabserver Summer Event. On October 20th 2016, WelshLP stepped down as the owner of Slabserver and the Etho Discord, transferring ownership of both to DaUltraMarine.
For much of 2017, life in Slabserver continued very peacefully, with very few major changes to the community, or Minecraft itself.
On the 29th of April, 2017, the Slabserver community was invited to a UHC organised by the VintageBeef community, thanks to a notable overlap of members and mutual friendships between the two servers. VintageBeef himself made a guest appearance here, and uploaded the event to YouTube, which led to a surge of members from viewers who were until then unaware of our existence.
During September 2018, Slabserver, the Etho Discord, and /r/ethoslab united to create a community video for Etho, celebrating ten years of his channel existing. The video consisted of a montage of Etho’s most iconic series, with both community members and well known Minecraft YouTubers thanking him for his content over the years. The milestone was also marked by a community building event on the 15th of September 2018, featuring miscellaneous builds and tributes to Etho, with these various builds also featuring in the video. On his ten year anniversary, September 24th, the video was released, and publicly acknowledged by Etho on Twitter. As of December 2020, the Ten Years of Etho video has over 200,000 views on YouTube, and the anniversary event world can be downloaded here: 10 Years Anniversary World
Later in the month, on the 29th of September, Slabserver updated to Minecraft 1.13. This update was accompanied by MCfineplayer being appointed as an admin, to reflect his involvement with the team over months of updating Slabserver commands into the new datapack feature.
Towards the latter half of 2018, the Slabserver community began to outgrow the opportunities afforded by a single Minecraft server, and discussions took place in November around consolidating to a new, dedicated server, allowing the Slabserver community to host multiple game servers on the same hardware. With no objections, the move to a new server host named ‘SoYouStart’, with OVH remaining the host's parent company, was completed on the 13th of December, 2018.
A poll was undertaken on the 29th of December to see what additional servers the community wanted to see, and the results, published on the 10th of January, included confirmation of Modded (Pixelmon), Terraria, Creative, Minigames, Factorio, and Gmod servers, with the Modded and Terraria servers launching in the following weeks.The Pixelmon server being released alongside Etho’s own Pixelmon series led to submissions on /r/ethoslab inquiring about a community server, which led to another significant increase in members finding their way to Slabserver.
On the 12th of February, 2019, a vote was taken within the Discord about resetting the server for Season 3 with the release of Minecraft 1.14. On the 26th of February 2019, which marked the three year anniversary of Season 2, it was publicly confirmed that the server would reset alongside the update. Minecraft 1.14 was released by Mojang on the 23rd of April 2019, though due to an abundance of significant bugs being introduced, the reset was held until performance and stability improved.
To best utilise the time before Season 3, several servers were launched over the coming weeks, including Factorio, Skyblock, and Creative. For the opening of the Creative server a large banner was placed at spawn, announcing the launch of Slabserver Season 3, for July 6th 2019.
On July 5th, the finale events for Season 2 were held. The end of survival gameplay was marked with a commemorative PvP battle, and short building session on the server. Later that day, the main finale event was held, featuring a tour of the server, as well as ‘The Slabbys’ awards ceremony.
Etho kindly accepted an invitation to join the Season 2 finale on the server, as well as joining our Discord voice channel, to see the player progress and community that had taken place over the past three years. The finale event was bookended by Etho blowing up the iconic Etho statue at the centre of spawn. Footage of Etho joining was recorded by several members.
The Season 2 world can be downloaded here: Slabserver Season II | Download Mirror
On July 6th, 24 hours later, Season 3 of Slabserver launched. Marbou9 and JadeLake were added as moderators for Slabserver alongside the launch, to help manage the influx in community activity from old and new members alike. Eyadish also transferred to this position to better reflect his involvement in the community. Etho also joined again briefly in the first few weeks of the season.
During October 2019, the Etho Discord crossed 1500 members, with a steady number of members continuing to arrive through /r/ethoslab. The Pixelmon server was sunset on the 9th of November due to Etho’s own series ending and increased activity on Season 3, and was replaced with a Project Ozone 2 server on November 16th, after a short community poll.
On February 29th 2020, Etho reached the milestone of 2 Million subscribers. To mark the milestone, a community event was organised for March 13th, where members stood on the ‘You’ve Been Etho’d’ hilltop in his single player world to recreate the classic Coca-Cola ‘Hilltop’ advert from 1971. Community members were also asked to send in submissions of them singing Etho-styled lyrics for the video. The event was attended by over 170 members from across the Etho community, and the video released on March 29th. Etho shared the video on his Twitter account the following day.
On April 4th, 2020, Slabserver celebrated its fifth birthday.