On this day, 3 years ago, we took our first steps in a very special journey....

I still remember the first month of Downriver. It was alot of familiar faces: Cleggen, Xelcion, Viral, Terran, Faoro, as well as some more. The user count was barely over twenty in the discord. The weeks leading up to this we decided we wanted to start a server that never ended, if we could help it. Our friend group, who had met across various vanilla survival servers over the pandemic, had gone through the waxing, waning, and eventual death of several minecraft communities. As bittersweet as those times were, our group was burnt out on this process. So we said "why don't we just do it ourselves?"

Season 1 began as a private, whitelisted, invite-your-trusted-friends-only kind of season. To call it a season is even sort of deceitful, because to us it was just the first world. We started off in a 500x500 block cube, waiting on some content update that Mojang had yet to drop, and in the meantime we were all playing minecraft in this little box and trying not to get claustrophobic. By the end of the first month, there were maybe thirty of us. And boy was it fun, but it didn't come without it's growing pains.

The biggest growing pain we had to overcome was technical: our host. Lag was really bad, and the service we were using was not meant to handle the amount of players (not to mention the lunacy those players would accomplish). In addition to this, with everyone in such close proximity to each other, that meant that, most of the time, all of our lag-inducing infrastructure was loaded as well. It was a nightmare. I can't recall whether we suffered like this for a couple of days or weeks, but at the time it felt like years. Out of necessity we began shopping around and eventually landed on our current host, which we have continued to use since. Eventually, things mellowed out and everyone began to really enjoy this little community we were building. The day to day interactions, friendly faces, and collaborative projects were the bones that built what this server is today. We built a castle, a sprawling and detailed village, a mushroom forest, a pirate grove mid kraken-siege, the infamous potato farm and associated cult faction, and we did all of it together. Toward the end of our time waiting in the cube for the update, someone said "why don't we make it public?" And so we did.

Now, 3 years later, after many new faces, stories, builds, weekly challenges, competitions, and community projects, we have witnessed this server grow into much more than we ever thought it would. From the very start we have strived to make Downriver the kind of friendly, accepting, welcoming place that we always wanted, and then share that with you. Despite all of it's imperfections, I hope Downriver has become the type of "special" to you that it has always been to us. Your presence here has made Downriver what it is today, and we are so grateful that you've been along for this ride with us.

To celebrate our anniversary, we have a couple of things to share with you.

From <t:1771430434:f> until <t:1772042400:f>, we will be offering a few in-game bonuses:
Players will have a persistent Luck buff.
Players will have increased diamond ore drops and experience orb drops.

In addition to this, we are also hosting two competitions in the background: Most Cakes Crafted and Fireworks Used. Players will have the chance to win a reward shulker and a $10 prize value toward any gaming platform of your choice (ex: Steam). Teams are allowed but only one person may win, automation is not allowed. Thank you for celebrating this special time with us. We will be announcing another event/competition this weekend to continue the celebrations of our anniversary with you. Thank you again for being a part of this journey.