Exploring Forgotten Minecraft Servers

I was actually one of Mr. Borneman's students, the guy behind Grig's quest, It's so baffling seeing his server on some YouTube vid I found while scrolling. this was around the 2019-2020 school year as a senior and I'm currently close to graduating college. He had us do different quests for extra credit points that related to whatever we were learning about at the time. I'd log on with some friends every couple times a week to exploit the guild system just to b-line straight to whatever gave us EC that week, so I'm close to the end of the main quest and have zero clue what the lore is about. Borneman was such a genuine and passionate teacher and really opened me to critical thinking. When he passed away I went back to the server just to walk around and take it all in, the memories feel so distant yet remind me of that last year of high school. Thank you for reminding me of this server and thank you for your kind words about his passing, This server relfects him in some ways and I hope people get to experience it while its still around

i logged onto Grig's Quest just to check it out- there's a steady handful amount of players exploring the lands now. I expected to stay around for 15 minutes or so, yet i ended up playing for over 4 hours. The world is so vast and jam-packed with content. Borneman did good. May he rest in peace.

Just read from an article that Mr. Borneman created Grig's Quest to deal with the passing of his sister and his own irl stresses. It was his way of dealing with the grief, it was a world where he had control, opposite to how he felt at the time in his real world life. He worked on it for 7+ years and introduced it to his students. Rest in peace Mr. Borneman.

I was one of Mr. Borneman's students, and I thought I'd just thought I'd leave a comment here about him. Besides my parents, no one has had a greater influence on my life than Mr. Borneman. I was a bad student, 2.7 gpa in highschool, had no passion about learning, etc. But then I stumbled across his class senior year, and was introduced to philosophy. For the first time I felt passionate about learning and school, he was such a great mentor, and he was a great friend. We kept in contact after I graduated, up until the very end. Meeting him and taking his class completely changed the path of my life as I've nowjust graduated with a degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley, and am looking to enroll in a graduate program. I genuinely have no idea what I would be doing with my life right now if I had not taken Mr. Borneman's class, there is nothing I would rather be doing that what I'm doing right now, and I can only owe that to Mr. Borneman's guidance. Please do play on Grig's Quest, he loved working on it and making it. Some other former students are now maintaining the server in his honor. If ya'll have any questions about it you can ask, I've beaten the whole thing.

I really felt bad at the end of the Grig's quest part, may his soul rest in peace

I pray that someone - anyone - preserves Grig's Quest. Its clear that map was made by someone not driven by profit or fame, but driven by the fuel which we call passion. God rest the creator's soul and let this video be the one to tell us all what we've been missing in the world of Grig's Quest.

For anyone wondering about the preservation of Grig's Quest: We've managed to contact some admins including the person who did all of the backend server stuff for it! Grig's Quest is now in a pretty good spot in terms of preservation(though there's still some unknowns). Btw, the video barely begins to scratch the surface of what this server has to offer. I'd absolutely recommend checking the server out when you get a chance!

Just wanted to let you know that this video resulted in a bit of a resurgence for the Runsafe server. A handful of old staff members have started getting online again, and regular players are coming on daily as of the last month or so. There are new survival bases, new creative builds, and there is a fully playable Halloween adventure event created by one of the admins, running through October. You basically reignited interest in the server, and it was about a week away from being permanently shut down when all of this happened. The question now is whether or not it'll stick.

It’s honestly pretty crazy how much history some of these servers can have. They really are time capsules.

The ability to look back at servers long abandoned is beautiful in a sorrowful way. It’s like finding your old doodles from a decade ago

"Brauhaus der Hoffnung" was my very first server I ever played on back in 2011 I believe. The server was started very early when Minecraft was still in Beta even. In typical German fashion, it was one of the most professional and well organised servers I've ever played on. Every few months the entire server would wipe and the owners would try out a new concept, way earning money, new cities, a new map and so much more. For example from Map 7 to Map 8 the server went from obsidian being the most valuable item (because its effort to get it and doesn't depend on the rarity that diamond have) to a fully in house developed dynamic economy system. Items would change in value depending on people demanding those items, so it always felt exciting. The concept overall was citybuild. People would gather items, earn money by selling the items in a shop or to other players and then would be able to buy themselves a plot. There also was a freebuild map, which was nice, but personally I preferred building on plots. As shown in the video, the people on the server were so good at building, so the cities were always built around a theme (medieval times, big cities, jungle tree houses, underwater cities, european style cities, venice, florence etc.) and it was expected that you sort of try to keep up that style. The map shown in the video already was supposed to be the "Reloaded" server. The server was meant to shutdown after Map 9, but several people from the team tried to take over the server and start a new concept, but it never really stuck. Talking about how the server was back then. The team was nice, even a helper role and the owner was a developer himself and was able to develop plugins for the server back then already. Everything was so polished, well designed and thought out. Lots of little details were so well thought out that it just made a better experience so early on. Stuff like proximity chat, a report system, global bans, a train network etc. Back then those things were incredible. In order to be able to play on the sever you needed to go through some (for the times quite big) verification, which turned out amazing because most of the players were mature and wanted to collaborate. I believe the owner had some sort of connection to a big server hoster, so the server never relied on donations or selling out to their players, it was all entirely free-to-play, which was amazing. There were no special ranks that you could buy, no cosmetics, nothing. All the benefits you could get by simply playing on the server and doing things. I remember visiting peoples houses after talking to them in chat. And since there weren't any big teleports you needed to take trains to actually visit people. It just added another layer of immersion that you usually don't get nowadays where its all about optimising numbers instead of just having a cozy time together building and collaborating. Those days were so innocent, free of the fast paced developments we have now. Things were meant to be optimised for the player and not for the business. I long so much for a similar experience as this server was, but it seems like that style of server is just not popular anymore. (Maybe there is some similar server still out there and I just havent discovered it yet?) To me this server was something very special and will remain a large part of my early childhood. It was like a second home to me. I will miss you BdH and the entire team ♥

I really like the chill down to earth vibe this vid has, doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be “liminal ooo spooky” or faux philosophical, just revisiting old stuff in a very warm and nostalgic way

That part about Grig's Quest really hit hard. From what I read, Robert Borneman (the creator/host of Grig's) was a pure and genuine soul that everyone he met seemed to love. All of the articles written about his passing have stories shared from his previous students that truly loved and appreciated his presence in their lives. Rest in Peace Mr. Borneman

Griefing takes a new grotesque meaning when it’s done to these servers with such nostalgia for people.

holy shit, those statues at 1:50 really date it. those were all really big MC youtubers back in the day, but what really shows its age is the inclusion of Dawnables (the one with the blue shirt and pink/purple hair). she was at one point SkyDoesMinecraft’s girlfriend, but didn’t appear too often and wasn’t really in anything past like 2012. wild to see those old skins again, brought back a major hit of nostalgia for me

Seeing how much love was put into Grig's Quest by the teacher solely to create memories for his students reminded me of why I chose to be a teacher in the first place. I felt my heart melt. I wasn't expecting this going into the video. Thank you.

Thanks for checking out our graveyard of a server! What you said is exactly right: why would anyone jump onto a minigame server with no players rather than one with thousands already playing? It turns out building the server is the easy part. Getting anyone on to come and play one of your original games is the real challenge, and it's a big one. The parkour mode was actually added late to at least give minimal players something to do. You're correct in that we found a cheaper way to keep the server open. We worked on it for many years and so it makes it difficult to even consider taking it down, even if it's empty most of the time. We still have the occasional regulars come on to play a few games every now and then and keeping it up is worth it just for them. We wish you would have had the opportunity to play some of the real games. A great amount of care, time thought was put into them to make them the best they could be. We're proud of what we made, even if it does rest dormant for years to come. It'll still be there for people, like yourself, to stumble upon and discover our little corner of Minecraft...

Hey! I am the owner of the Dexouille server ^^ It's very surprising to see that you made a video in which you talk about my Minecraft server. I can provide more information if you wish or answer any questions ^^ Just to clarify, the server is not French, but Belgian ;) Yes we speak French too, but it's a small nuance ^^ There are a lot of French on the server, it's true. Technically, my server is not forgotten, it is just community, and practically people from my community come to play on my server. Which explains the presence of "How to train your dragon" because I have a community very much linked to the universe of these films. And the server has almost no players lately because I myself am quite inactive on it. Generally, people in my community become active when there is something new, which is rare in this period. But there are still a few longtime regulars that drop by the server from time to time, and I'm happy to keep records of everything that's been done on it ^^ (With the /menu command there is a way to see more server content, but this menu bugs half the time, because it is supposed to be given in the inventory.) I am therefore very curious to know how you found this server given that apart from my community, it is complicated to succeed in finding it ^^ If you want to contact me more easily, you will find my Discord server in the description of my videos. But be careful, I specify that my English is far from being good x) But thank you for having made this small visit on my server :)

One time, out of boredom, I joined a survival world based from a bigger server, I can’t really remember what server it was though, but it had maybe 50 people online. I spawned in a random place and the first thing I saw was a long path/bridge in the air extending as far as I could see. I checked it out and started walking it. It went on for thousands and thousands of blocks, and on the way, there were houses, structures, and signs dating years earlier. It was such an amazing and fun experience communicating with people I’d never and will never actually talk to through wooden signs on a path. It turns out that so many people like me had found the path and continued building on it. I found chests with food left for travelers, houses to rest in, and just so many great things. It was so weird seeing things that had been there for ages without being touched. I reached the end and continued building the path for a few hundred blocks before leaving a sign of my own and logging off. I’d love to revisit it, but I cannot remember what server or where this path was.

The "Adventurers Guild" section is my favorite. It feels so comfy and touching to visit a huge virtual world, and see little notes here and there, mementos of strangers visiting this corner of the map; it really makes you feel like the server's world is a little universe in its own right, almost like an actual physical space.