Minecraft is a game where you as a player can delve into a world seven times as large as hearth itself, and experience this world doing whatever you would like. From building structures grander than any egyption pharaoh could ever imagine to delving deeping that any dwarves of moria ever accomplished without a total party wipe or just trying to survive out in this harsh world where creepers lurk around every corner. Within a world as big as it is, it could get a little lonely sometimes, even when friendly villagers accepts you or you force wolves to become your companions. It’s almost as you are the last person on earth, only there is seven of them. That’s why you should look to experience all of this with a friend at hand.
With a friend by your side you never have to experience the first night of digging yourself into a small hole all alone, listening to creepy creepers and other monsters looking for you. Now you’ll have a friend to cuddle up with and tell stories around the torch until the night turns to dawn and you can prepare to exterminate all monsters who managed to survive until daylight. No longer do you have to experience dungeon delving by yourself where you suddenly find yourself without any torches or out of inventory space to bring back that sweet sweet loot you found. Having one or more companions around is always a nice change of pace and together you can always achieve greater things than doing it all by yourself, or atleast the tasks at hand will go a lot faster. Whether or not your friends find the same things at you interesting and might want to build while you’re out looking for diamonds, it’s always nice to have a friend around.
As Minecraft is a pretty slow paced a relaxing game, playing with a friend will always greatly improve the experience, which probably can be said for any games, to chat and talk while creating something together creates fond memories and strengthen friendships. But how do you go about to play with friends? Well, first of you’ll need to find a server and while there is many available online, you’ll go into the hosts world and have to abide by their rules. Many people will enjoy this experience and finding a community you like will greatly improve the longevity of the game as dussins of people work together to create something ambitious. Here you will see the world growing around you, always expanding even if you’re not there and the sheer ambitiousness of some project might seem daunting but with many people there is always something to be built. Of course there’s also people who wouldn’t find this enjoyable and would want their world to be their world shared only with friends, and if your one of these people you might want to start your own server.
To start your own server your going to need a couple of things, the latest version of Java which can be found here, and the official minecraft server software that can be found on their page. Make sure to accept the eula in the eula.txt by rewriting “eula=false” to “eula=true”. You will also need to setup port forwarding on your router with the RCO 25565. Be warned though, as you setup your router to port forwarding, you’ll also open up your network and computer to the outside world, which means that you’re opening up it to potential threats. Next find out your local IP address by typing “ipconfig” as a command prompt to make sure the router can find it. Then open the server as an administrator and type: java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar {server file name} nogui as a command prompt. Finally find you public IP address by googling whats my IP and send it to your friends to connect to your server. While all of this require some tech savviness it’s fairly easy to do, but if you don’t wanna go through the hassle or open up your network to other people you can always rent your own server from companies. If your not sure what servers to rent or from what company, Wombat Servers has a list of potential servers hosted all over the world, and has ranked each one so you know which is the best one for you.
Which way you chose to play with your friends is up to you, and the important part is that all of you, together, share the world and many experiences within it.