A Vatican Minecraft server has been set up by a priest looking to target those who want a less “toxic” community, with the game topping a poll orchestrated by the priest that also included Rust, ARK, and Team Fortress 2. However, the priest has now stated that trolls are repeatedly connecting and disconnecting to the server in an effort to “kill” it.
Father Ballecer, a Catholic priest and former tech consultant, originally pitched the Vatican Minecraft server on Twitter back in August for players “who want to be creative [and] who don’t want to be toxic.” Now he has finally launched the server, which has now become inundated with players. But not all of those players wanted to help Ballecer achieve his vision, with him tweeting that a number of people had tried to take down the server in its infancy:
I'm looking at the logs of the Minecraft test server and it looks like there is a handful of people who are constantly connecting and disconnecting to fill the player slots and kill the server.
Interesting…
— Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) December 2, 2019
Still, Ballecer remains confident that the Minecraft server will become a positive experience. “You create an environment in which people can express themselves and build up a relationship,” he told Rome Reports. “And the relationship thing is the most important part; that’s ultimately what I want to do with the server. It’s not about the technology, it’s not even really about the gaming, it’s about getting people together who can then maybe move those relationships to the real world.”
Ok… I want to spin up a few servers in the Vatican for gamers who want a little less "toxic" and a bit more community.
What should be my first server?
— Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) August 31, 2019
Father Ballecer went on to discuss how a person can be “a son or daughter of faith” along with embracing other fields of interest. “At first, there were a lot of people who were very hesitant, because you see this guy in a collar talking about the latest offerings from Google or how you run fiber optics across the Atlantic and they didn’t understand it,” he told Rome Reports. “But after time people started realizing, ‘he knows what he’s talking about but he just happens to be a priest.’ And ultimately that was the ministry I was trying to do.”
Ballecer has also noted that he is “working on migrating everything to a bigger VM,” so the server should be fully operational soon.
Hey Gamer Tweeps… sorry about the Minecraft server getting completely bogged.
This was a test instance and I didn't expect it to ramp up like this over just a few hours.
I'm working on migrating everything to a bigger VM.
🙂
— Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) December 2, 2019
Watch the interview with Father Ballecer below:
