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The server has now been transfered.
Hello everybody, I am happy to announce that Stormcraft is once again improving its hardware to better serve you. This upgrade is by far, our biggest yet. We will be moving from a medium sized virtual server to a full dedicated server with two processors, 32GB of Ram, a solid state drive for maximum speed and a hard drive for frequent backups. The new dedicated server really expands the potentital of Stormcraft. We are no longer limited to just running our main server. We now have the capacity to run multiple servers at once which means possible expansions such as a creative server or an adventure server are now possible. The new server also allows us the flexibility to run a seperate event server for times like Christmas, this means a lot more is possible.
In order to make the transission to our new server, we will need some time make the transfer. We currently plan on shutting down the server for 1-2 hours on Monday March 17th starting at around 4PM EST. Please stay tuned to this post as we will be updating it with new details on the transfer. We may be running a temporary survival server while we make the swap so check this page often.
I would like to take a moment to thank all of the donors who made this update possible. We really apreciate all the support you have all given us over the past few months. This upgrade was made possible by all of your ongoing support. Thank you very much!
It is my pleasure to announce to you what we are calling the magic update. As its name entails, the magic update was mainly focused on the creation of our brand new magic system. This update has seen the removal of the old wizardry system which had become too PvP focused and had some breaking bugs develop. The new magic system will avoid many of the issues we had with the old system and allow us much more room to grow with a layer of customizability that just was not possible before. I will get back to some of the specific of magic shortly.
In addition to the new magic spells system there have been a few smaller updates. First and likely the most noticeable is our new spawn area! We have also enabled TNT on the resources world, this means miners can now use their blast mining skill at last. In an effort to be more fair, we reduced the price of protection stones greatly (they are available on the market world).
Another noteworthy addition is the return of a horse protection plugin. Users can now use /nh claim (horse name) to claim a horse for their own. They can then use /nh list to see all their claimed horses. Additionally players can use /nh unclaim (horse name) to unclaim a horse they no longer want, this is useful as players can only claim 8 horses in total. If you want to share a horse with your friends you can use /nh trust (user) (horse name). Untrust will allow you to remove a players rights to your horse.
Now back to magic! All things magic are centered around the alchemy store. To access the alchemy store head to the spawn island and walk towards the resources world bridge, on the left you should see the purple portal to the alchemy store. It is behind you when you use /spawn.
Currently there are 12 spells to learn. To learn a new spell you must visit the store and right click the [SPELL SHOP] signs. There is information on each of the spells bellow their buy signs. For example the geyser spell can target hostile mobs and will deal 4 damage then fling the enemy in the air on a magical geyser of water. Two hits from this spell and most mobs will have died. The geyser spell in particular uses 25 mana and has a 2 second cooldown. Of course this is just one example the details on the other 11 spells can be found in the alchemy store.
Magic spells cost either XP_Bottles or Levels. An XP bottle can be obtained by botteling the XP in your XP bar. Simply click on any enchanting table with a stick to convert your XP. Please note that it costs a glass bottle per XP bottle created. Each XP bottle holds 5 orbs and will provide 5 orbs when smashed. The average spell will cost at least 200 XP bottles, this is roughly equivalent 30 levels in your XP bar. Alternatively some spells have a cost in levels and do not require conversion to bottles, these are the more expensive of the spells some of which cost 50 levels.
Once you obtain some spells you will likely want to bind them to an item. Use the bind spell /cast bind (spell) to bind your spells to a casting item, like a stick! You can bind multiple spells and cycle through them by right clicking and cast them by left clicking. By default all spells are bound to the book.
Mana, the cost of most spells regenerates at a rate of 5 every 5 seconds. All users but the paladin have 100 mana in total. The paladin can have up to 150 mana! TO regain mana simply wait or use a mana potion. A plain waterbottle will regain 50 mana and a lapis lazuli will regain 5 but can be stacked for transport.
Overall the new magic system features much better and more useful spells on a PvE server. In addition the new system will allow for a lot more in the way of expansion, we are able to modify spells to create new ones and combine them too! With around 90 base spells available there will be many expansion updates to come. Expect a new pack of 3-4 spells every few months! (Pssst, we are working on a heat seeking missile!).
With the magic update done work has now begun on "The Minigames Update", we plan on implementing use for the rewards in the minigames world and a whole bunch of new maps. Stay tuned for more information!
Happy New Year! 2014 has arrived with the expected barrage of fireworks across the world and on Stormcraft! The new year marks the end of a very productive 2013 for Stormcraft, we saw the introduction of Stormcraft 3.0 at the end of the summer and a large growth in our community over the course of the year.
This day also marks the end of our Holiday events! Double XP has just been turned off too! I would like to thanks everyone who participated in the holiday events ranging from pixel art to PvP, the outstanding support and participation of the community made the events the best we have ever run. Special thanks to Surfcash and KrissyGH who along side me spent countless hours both preparing, constructing and running the events this year.
2013 has been a great year for Stormcraft seeing both the launch of Stormcraft 3.0 and a large growth in our community. 2014 promises to be just as wonderful a year with plans for Stormcraft 3.1 being compiled on the forums, work on the server wiki and new mini games being worked on now to be released a few weeks into 2014. If you are interested in participating in the decision making process or suggesting new features hop over to the forums and join the discussion.
On behalf of myself, the staff and the community happy new year and have a wonderful 2014 with may fun filled days to come.
In celebration of the holiday season, like in past years this year Stormcraft is running special Christmas events over the next few days. We have a bunch of amazing stuff planned that promises to top everything we have done so far. For the entire span of the events we also have double class XP for all skills. Additionally spawn has been redone in the spirit of the season. As you play events you will earn special Holiday Event Tokens which can be used at spawn with the villager to get special holiday items. For information on the scheduled events please read on. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
The Cube PvP - Back better an ever the cube PvP is a multi level arena where competitors fight to the death. With obstacles, item chests and a special gold trade system the cube provides tons of PvP fun!
Horse and Pig Racing - Race on either a pig or horse around the brand new racing track at the holiday events hub.
Spleef Games - A minecraft classic, traditional spleef in our new multi level arena.
Building Contests - Compete to create the best build in the time provided with materials and a lot given to you.
Archery - Shoot a few rounds at the long range archery course.
Mini Golf - Play a round of mini golf and try to beat your friends. The course is always open and will be used for some tournaments.
Survival Games - Last one standing wins in the PvP based hunger games!
Ãœber Mob Arena - Participate in the largest organized play through of the Mobarena to date. How long can we last?
Listed are the approximate event times, if an event is running late this list will be modified. Please show up 15-20m before your event is to start to reserve a spot.
Events marked with (Unlimited Spots) do not require a sign up. We request that you are online the server around 15-20m before the event is to start. Late comers may not be able to join late. Many of the events are marked with a slot count, those events require a sign up on the forums due to limited space! Please CLICK ME to visit the signup page.
Be sure to stay tuned to the website as we may update / change the information here regularly. Hope to see many of you on the server for the events. Even if you are not signed up pop online as there may be free spots that have opened up if the slots were not full or someone does not show up. Happy holidays!
Hey guys, we are in the process of updating the server to 1.7. We are also taking time to improve and fix a few things on the server.
We will update you with the status of the server later, for now assume you will be unable to login.
So the server is now properly running 1.7 we have updated everything and it seems to be running quite well. Due to the available build of spigot not all 1.7 features will be working properly. We will be working on fixing the bugs from before 1.7 (some class selection things ect) and working on the server update tomorrow.
The server has been transfered to a new box with out host. We have a few things to sort out and are working very hard to get it online ASAP. I will update you here when service has been restored. Thanks for your patience.
In other (more fun) news we just got back from minecon, I had a great time meeting a ton of new people and hope to see you all on the server at some point.
In regards to the 1.7.2 update, I will be working on it in the next few days. We have yet to have a release of bukkit for 1.7.2 so we are waiting for that.
Currently waiting for host to get server set up properly they seem to be having a few troubles with that. I will be hopefully able to turn the server on in the morning (I need to sleep).
The server is running properly now, sorry for the disturbances. We will begin looking into the 1.7.2 update tomorrow (Tuesday) evening.
The teamspeak server is back! The IP is ts.stormcraft.ca. See you there!
On September 9, 2013 Stormcraft was hacked due to a craftbukkit problem that has now been fixed. The available exploit allowed hackers to log onto any sever with any account. On our server they used this to ban and ip ban players, this was done by logging on as baffu the owner. The map was also filled with lava, the changes were all reversed due to our core protect logs. There should not be any damage done to properties on the Survival world, so all your belongings our safe. If you find anything wrong open a moderator ticket and we will deal with it promptly.
We assure you steps are being taken to prevent any such problem from arising again in the future. A two step login procedure has been put in place to protect our staffs accounts from such a breach again.
On a slight side note, stormcraft was just one of many large servers that have been and are still being affected by this exploit. We are no longer vulnerable to the exploit now due to our updated build of craft bukkit.
Please take a time to thank these people for there cooperation in bringing the server back as soon as possible; KrissyGH, Flameonbaby, Sloril, Tntxt1234, Mine434, Surfcash, and of course the awesome server owner baffu (the real one). I'm sorry for the inconvenience and hope this all didn't affect you too much.
Happy birthday stormcraft. Two years ago today you were founded. To celebrate this wondrous day we have decided to give everyone a little boost in their skills. Any class skill can be levelled 50% faster today, so get going! We will also be playing a lot of minigames later tonight (and psst there might be fireworks). Hope to see you all online!
There comes a time in all endeavours, when the past must shed to make way for a brighter future. When the server started August 12th 2011 I never dreamt the it would be as it is today. To date we have welcomed over 14,000 unique users to Stormcraft. These users have experienced 2 different survival maps. The first, started when the server was founded was home to a small spawn building and nothing else but user creations. When it was taken down last summer the world was absolutely full of buildings and in need of some fresh terrain for new users. So the second map was created and announced, and when it was released, after the initial shock everyone was happy to have a lot more to do on the server. Old players who had become tired in their immense wealth felt as they did when they first joined the server, read to begin. Fast forward to today, this time has come again. But this time there is more than a mere map reset in store for stormcraft. There is a new stormcraft ready for you.
It is my pleasure to finally announce to you Stormcraft 3.0, the update you have all been waiting for. You will find when you first log on a more refined server experience with much of what you know stormcraft for today but with many new features. The remainder of this post will outline the features of SC 3.0. Please note that this post is not the full documentation for the server and detailed guides and information will be posted in the coming days as it is created.
The server is being completely reset. This includes money, experience, and the worlds. The only exception to this is the donor ranks which will persist through the upgrade. Class levels are not able to be maintained due to changes with the class system that will be outlined shortly. The map reset allows everyone to enjoy the full survival experience of stormcraft once again.
The most striking change you will notice when you connect to the server is the lack of world around spawn. When you spawn you arrive to the tutorial section of the spawn in a world known as the nexus. This tutorial is much like the one at the spawn on stormcraft today however much more in-depth and informative. Once you complete the starting tutorial you are teleported to the servers main spawn. The main spawn, a floating island is surrounded by four smaller islands that link to the other sections of the server. Stormcraft now runs 8 different worlds that encompass all aspects of the server. I will review them each in further detail bellow. The world is divided between The Nexus, The Survival World (world, end and nether), The Market, The Minigames World (+ sky block world) and The Resources World. Each worlds island at the nexus contains a large portal that teleports you to the specific world. You are able to return to the nexus through either the portals or by using /spawn.
The survival world much like the current world is traversed by the use of minispawns. However on SC 3.0 your method of access to the survival world is solely through minispawn portals. Currently there are 8 open portals to various biomes. As the areas around these minispawns fill in more will be added to accept new players.
Like before stormcraft is home to mini games to pass your non survival minutes on the server. However mini games on the server are bigger and better than ever. We have added the popular mini game paintball. The server is home to four unique maps that are rotated through. Users can join the pinball lobby and enjoy hours of fun. Survival games is back, join the massive survival games arena and battle to the death! May the odd be ever in your favour. Users can now experience sky block on the sky block mini game world. Unlike other mini games sky block can be left and returned to at any time. Users can survive on their own islands and even invite friends to play with and complete challenges. An all new mob arena with new classes and waves has been created. There is also the ever popular war hub which allows the use of various pvp maps in either capture the flag, team death match or bomb mode games. Finally an all new mini game will be added in the coming weeks: Infection!
In an effort to continue to improve and expand our mini games world we are accepting user made maps. Simply email the map file to baffu@stormcraft.ca and we will try to put it in the server! Expect an email response if your map is being used and credit for making the map on the server! In the future a forum thread may accept the maps.
The market world is home to 120 brand new ready to be used shops situated in our brand new shopping complex. In an effort to reduce the quantity of abandoned shops a weekly tax for holding a shop lot has been introduced. Players who are inactive and eventually run out of money for tax will have their shops automatically removed and restored to fresh shops ready for purchase. Also on the market world is the bank of stormcraft that allows you to trade diamonds iron and gold.
The resources world exists for one simple reason. To preserve this survival world for a much longer time period. The resources world is a separate world intended to house all mining and gathering operations! Feel like harvesting 20,000 sand no problem, because the resources world is free to be completely and utterly torn apart. Whats more, when it becomes depleted it can be reset easily without affecting the survival world at all!
The stormcraft classes system is much the same as it was before but has a key addition. Class achievements. As you level each skill you near various milestones. Every few levels you gain will grant you a moderate sized reward in bolts. When you reach the "milestone" levels of 250 500 750 or 1000 in any level special rewards are given. For levels 250 and 750 larger rewards in bolts are given. For levels 500 and 1000 special custom items are given out as achievement items. For example the adventurer can unlock a special "battle brick" at level 1000 that has a very high knock back enchantment. This is just one example of the many custom items that are distributed.
The server has switched to a better economy plugin so be sure to read the signs at spawn for the new commands.
One of the more interesting additions to stormcraft is the new boss mobs. Throughout the normal world boss mobs have the possibility of spawning. They are recognizable by the fire particle effect around them. Boss mobs like those in the mob arena have special abilities to use and are more difficult to kill then regular mobs. They add more diversity to exploring the wilderness.
Magic is bigger and better than ever. Users can choose from one of 5 wizard paths and level their path to unlock further spells and larger mana reserves. Killing mobs on the server drops a special magic xp that looks like a nether star. In addition to these drops mobs have a chance of dropping various mana potions. The magic system is now as large as the classes system. Full information on magic will be available on the magic page of our website shortly.
Users are able to buy the brand new protection stones to protect their land. Although expensive they allow full control over your land. You can even use them to enable PvP in your home if you wish to. Protection stones can be purchased on the market world. They are very useful to town owners and allow them to control building permissions in their town!
- Horses can be protected and stored in a virtual stable.
- Donors have brand new abilities. Check out the donors page for more info.
- Trees automatically replant a sapling when destroyed to help keep our forests populated.
- The end resets when it is beat allowing for endless fun!
- Users spawn with a server info book to reference at any time.
- Brand new punishment handling system brings major improvements to how the staff do their jobs.
But we are not doneâ€¦.
We are currently working on the stormcraft adventure map that will be playable on the server in the future, if you are interested in helping please stay tuned to this site, we will be posting more details soon. Additional mini games will begin to pop up as time progresses, and remember you can submit your own mini game maps to be used on the server to baffu@stormcraft.ca.
Full documentation on all the changes that have come to stormcraft will be updated across our website and soon to be existent wiki over the next few days.
Special mentions go out to FireW0lf and Dantheawesome for the consistent efforts that helped make 3.0 a reality.
The server is now running 1.6.2 so update away!
In other news work on the server update is going swimingly and we expect to be ready in just under two weeks, remember thats just a rough estimate!
The server is now running Minecraft 1.6. You will need to download the new client from minecraft.net to connect to the server.
In other news, work on the exiting Stormcraft 3.0 Update is now underway! After a long wait (mostly due to exams) we are finally testing new features for stormcraft! I do not want to give too much away so soon but I can tell you we are working on a more meaningful and complete minigames world with goals and uses for items, the world will feature a separate inventory. The general gameplay experience in the wild and cities is also being enhanced. Work on the RP world will resume once we have completed the 3.0 update.
As we are already adding a lot to the server, now is the best time to make any serious suggestions to the ideas and suggestions thread of the forum, referencing specific plugins (http://plugins.bukkit.org/) is appreciated and encouraged. Existing posts will be looked through, but feel free to bump the thread of any old posts that you wish to bring attention to, or update your old posts.
I do not like setting firm time lines for updates but we anticipate the update to be ready in about 2-3 weeks. Following that the RP world work will be kicked into full swing, as it is a large project we are unsure as to the time frame, but mid to late summer will be our goal.
Personally I am really exited about the 3.0 update and the adventure world, I can not wait to release them and we are all working as hard as we can to get the new content released in a timely fashion.
The server is now running the latest version of minecraft. So upgrade all you like. We have noticed that the spawn rates of animals are a little high and will be looking to fix that soon, for now enjoy the extra pork!
Our community and apetite for heavy plugins have grown. So as is always the case with these two factors we are upgrading the server. Now what does this mean for you? Funny you should ask, this means a more powerful server that should be noticeably faster! The upgrade is underway as I am writing this update. In a little while we will have to shut the server down for about 2-3 hours to transfer everything. After this process is complete we will be up and running on the new server. We will post further details as the transfers progress as it is available to us, so stay tuned!
Now looking forward. I thought I would let you all know (again) what we have planned for this summer. As some of you may know stormcraft will be celebrating its 2 year anniversary mid summer during August! By this time we hope to have the RP/Adventure world open! The Adventure world (formerly known as the RP world) will be played like most adventure maps for minecraft. However due to this map being hosted on a server, amazing plugins and cool stuff can be done. Leading to a really awesome map with fun stuff. I don't want to give a lot away now, but trust me, its gonna be really fun! Those interested in helping build or with the story line can apply on the forums. Secondly, we will be expanding our reach on minigames. Currently warhub mob arena spleef and hunger games arenas are here to occupy our players, but we hope to be expanding on warhub, hunger games and adding about 3-4 new games to our array-o-fun! Finally we will be working on building areas around spawns, and promoting the use of user made cities.
Alright, stay tuned for server updates regarding the transfer. They will be posed soon (hopefully). Thats all for now folks!
Edit: The server is now transfered and running. You may not be able to connect with mc.stormcraft.ca for a day or so. If you can not use 208.117.11.115 for now!
Edit2: The server has been having a few issues on the new box. It is running better than ever but does seem to sometimes crash for a few mins. There is minimal loss in the crashes ad the map saves every few mins and plugins save instantly on changes. So it should not be terrible. Sadly the final solution to this which is a detailed look through all the plugins can not take place until sunday at the earliest. For now just deal with it :P (sorry). And email me if you were doing anything specific when it crashed. That may help. Thanks guys!
Server is currently offline. We are working on fixing the recent lag issues we have been having. This post will be updated when the server is back online.
EDIT: Server is now online again. We are aware the poor performance is still present. We have identified the problem however the solution is not available until monday. We apologize for the inconvenience but at the moment its out of my hands. We need to wait for monday.
EDIT2: Server will be offline for around 5mins at around 5:30 EST. This downtime is to fix the problems we have been having.
EDIT3: And the sever is now online, I believe the lag problems should be better now.
If you are interested in learning about the plethora of things that have been added and changed watch this video!
As you may already know 1.5 has been released. This new update brings a whole bunch of new functionality to mine craft. Sadly however when many new things are added the time it takes bukkit to update grows.
The server will be updated when bukkit is, this means that we need to wait for a stable release of bukkit to arrive. Until then you will need to connect with a 1.4.7 client. If you have upgraded google "downgrading minecraft to 1.4.7" there should be some instructions out there to help you.
In other news, we have been rebuilding spawn. Expect teleporters to the minispawns to replace the commands, the removal of old and abandoned buildings and a new look!
Track bukkits progress HERE. Please note that we may not be able to update until a beta build or a recommended build exists.
The coming two weeks will be of much progress. Our focus currently is maintaining the server. Spawn city and the surroundings have become tired. Information posted on the server needs updating. But mainly townships need to come to be. We are currently working on cleaning up the terrain and are already making amazing progress! Over the next few days you may notice the beginnings of some new buildings, we will be working to bring more user made content like shops right into the heart of spawn. In the following weeks work on the new minigames and the RP world will be more prominent, but that is for another post. Right now our focus is on polishing what we do have (already a ton!) and promoting the server a bit, we hope to strengthen the core of the server so we may expand confidently expand from there.
Hello everyone, I thought it was about time I posted some information on what we have planned for the server!
Recently there have been quite a few more players online than we previously had. This is great in terms of popularity but has made clear a few things we need to work on, and we intend to work on improving a few things.
Over the last few months we have been building and writing a story for stormcraft's own adventure map. It is a large undertaking but it will be well worth it. It is currently no where near finished so we have no estimate to when it will be read. Currently we plan on running the map on the main server as a second map people will access with a balloon! It is possible MCMMO will be disabled for the world and certain items will not be transferred between worlds. Magic spells will be gained as you complete the world.
Again due to the higher quantities of players online we have been forced to consider a clean method of managing where and how people build and gather items. Firstly we plan on adding some method of players finding free land that is a distance from spawn and being able to bring their friends there. This may be completed with a small minispawns around the world with warping to them or possible with balloons. The details have yet to decided fully. We are also considering a way to encourage players to work together on cities and towns without forcing them to. We are considering adding some sort of light weight town management system to the server where users would be able to protect their towns and add members themselves. Benefits of owning a town may include as mentioned above land protection, a balloon to their town, ability to request regeneration of city mines or forests, town purchases of a livestock farm ect. Towns would possibly cost some count of bolts to hold. The details have yet to be worked out.
We will be working too weed out the inactive balloons from the world to free then up for new cities that will be springing up soon (hopefully).
There are areas around spawn with a multitude of abandoned homes and areas striped of their resources. We will be working to regenerate and refresh these areas so that they may accept new users!
Pig Racing - Race pigs around the brand new pig racing track built just for the holidays!
Sky Block - Participate in a game of sky block with the other members of stormcraft. If you are unsure what sky block is, google it!
Team PvP Events - Participate in a game of team PvP, four teams, weapons provided in our brand new 4 fort PvP arena.
Unarmed Battles - Battle in the brand new gladiator arena with nothing but your fists, only warriors and adventurers permuted due to the unarmed skill. Anything goes, last one standing.
Last one Standing PvP - Four people are let lose in the gladiator arena, the last one alive wins.
Mob Arena - Participate in the largest organized play through of Mob Arena to date, how far can we make it?
Warhub Battles - PvP within the warhub, capture the flag and team death match.
Build Contest - Build a creation with given supplies in a set time, best as voted by our judges wins!
Please visit the signups forum thread for the most up to date information!
1.4.6 is live. In its current state we are unable to update the server to it just yet. For now we will leave the server running 1.4.5 (1.4.4), just until bukkit has a stable enough build for us to run available.
If you wish to play 1.4.5 but you do not have a 1.4.5 client.
When you download the launcher, click options, then click jar downloader. Scroll through the list of versions and select Final 1.4.4, then click add download. You can now select that jar file on the main screen and log in.
After a long while without magic spells we are bringing it back. Each class has been given one spell, however the paladin class has two. Your can learn more about each spell ok the classes page. Remember /cast list shows the list of spells you know and /cast bind (spell) will bind a spell to the item in your hand.
In other news we are very close to launching our brand new server forums. Stay tuned for details of when we are launching the new forums!
The server has been having a few issues today and is currently offline until the hosting company is able to fix the disk permission errors.
Standby here and on twitter.com/baffu_ for more information.
Server has been shut of by host for some hardware maintenance, talk about bad timing.
Bukkit has not released any development builds, we are looking into running a vanilla temporary server.
When you download the launcher, click options, then click jar downloader. Scroll through the list of versions and select Final 1.3.2, then click add download. You can now select that jar file on the main screen and log in. Its as simple as that!
The server has been shut off at 8PM EST and will remain down for about 2-4 hours.
We are transferring to a larger server, yay!
I will post here when the server is up.
This cool video was made by hotpost.
Todays feature spotlight is focussed on the Mob Arena!
For those of you who do not know, the mob arena consists of a large space with a few obstacles. At a set interval mobs are spawned at random location! Your goal is to survive as many waves as possible in the mob arena. With each passing wave the loot you will collect at the end grows!
1. Run /ma j to teleport into the arena, your inventory is saved and returned after, don't worry!
2. Select your class, there are many to chose from with many different rolls. for example the tanks roll is to own mobs, but the roll of the wizard is to buff your team mates.
3. Click the sign with the class name you want.
4. Punch the iron block to say you are ready. When all players have clicked the iron block, the game begins. Use /ma notready to see who has not clicked it yet!
This is the first of a line of new segments on the stormcraft website! We will be spotlighting things like cities people and homes! So here we go!
Todays build spotlight is dantheawesome's "The Mystic Spyre"
We look forward to seeing dan's city when it is done, if it is anything like his home we are in for an amazing city!
The server is currently down for maintenance and it is taking longer than expected.
It has been down since 10 PM EST and will probably be another 5 or more hours.
Sorry for the inconvenience this has caused but it was necessary.
I will post here when the server is online again.
The server is now online again thanks for your time. Note however that using any IP other than mc.stormcraft.ca to connect will not work.
The new server is now ready for you!
Along with the new map we have tweaked the classes system! The class adventurer has been added. Read more about it on the classes page!
Take time to re-read the rules again as many have been changed.
Our server domains mc.stormcraft.ca and stormcraft.alti.in will take anywhere from 1 hour to 1 day to register the change of ip's. So you may need to connect with the server ip until then. Use: 23.29.115.3 to connect to the new server!
Most of you by now know that we are getting a new map and moving to a brand new server (same host) in a few days. The new server has more ram and seems to be running much faster than the old server.
As it stands right now, the new server has about 2/3 of the plugins installed. I am currently working on getting all the plugins installed.
Once bukkit releases a build of craftbukkit for 1.3 we will need to generate our new map, bring over the spawn and arenas and finally make sure everything is set up and functioning. When all that is done we will change mc.stormcraft.ca to point to our new server! Until then you can still play on the old server.
Along with the new map, we are restarting our staffing and will be moving to a new forums with 0 ads! More information on that to come.
We hope bukkit will have a dev build by tommorow and if all goes well we may move over to the new server by the 2nd or 3rd.
The server is now 90% set up, we plan to open it up either tonight, or tomorrow night.
The new map is now live, all the work is done and now, you can play!
I hope you enjoy the fresh map!
So to recap the server will be whitelisted for work June 25th -26th. If the work takes longer than expected I will post that here and tell you, if it does take longer it would only be around 1 day more.
Edit: Most features for moving to the new map have been copied to a flat map for now, most have been rebuilt together! They look great. We are only waiting on mojang to release the 1.3 update then we are going forward with the new map.
The 1.3 Update is coming, and with it many changes to the server and the game!
New content to minecraft including emeralds, trading with villagers, writing books and much more will be coming in the 1.3 patch. Currently the date of release for 1.3 is not known.
Stormcraft will be undergoing some changes very soon. From June 14th - 20th We will be making many changes to the server and how it is run. Expect much of the same stuff to stay but many tweaks to the way things work.
We are currently discussing a map reset as well. It has been almost a year with our current map and reseting it to, first of all get new 1.3 content near spawn and second of all give many people a fresh start and re spark their interest in playing. Also having a fresh map for the new players being brought in during the summer is preferable.
No matter when the 1.3 update is released, provided it is in the next 2 weeks, we will be updating the server to 1.3 on June 14th the same date we are starting to add the new things and tweaks to the server.
We look forward to what looks like an amazing summer on Storm Craft.
We have had a steam group for a while. But we have not really announced it still! Stormcraft has a steam group! Go ahead and join it! It is open to anyone joining, for now.
We plan on hosting TF2 and other game nights.
More information on the upcoming TF2 Night will be announced soon.
Here is a link to The Steam Group.
Sorry for the short notice. The server will be undergoing some maintenance soon. The purpose of this is to correct some server errors that have been arising. The server will experience around 10 to 20 minutes of downtimes anywhere between 9 PM EDT and 12 AM EDT. Please bear with us as the server will be unavailable at times tonight. (May 8th) The website and teamspeak server should still be operational though.
The long awaited 2.0 update is done!
New features more staff and lots of work has gone into this update!
Here is a list of what was added.
- Factions PvP map with separate inventories. /pvpworld will teleport you to the land devoted to PvP!
- Spleef Arena /joinspleef takes you to the newly automated spleef arena!
- Quests have been added! Fight and think your way through the 4 quest lines. See the guides page for more information.
- Hunger Games map is ready to go, just waiting on a few things to launch it!
- Mod Ticket System! /modreq will file a ticket so moderators can always fix your problems.
- Texture Pack - We are posting the texture pack that is recommended as we designed much of the content on the server with it. You can download it here.
Note that credits for all the textures are enclosed in the pack.
Read the guides page for more info.
Full post will be made tomorrow!
RIght now we are all going to play factions!
I hope to see you all on around then. Look back to this blog for more info when 2.0 is released!
Sorry I forgot to post but we have been running 1.2.5 for a few days.
I would also like to say the Factions map is implemented but not released yet.
All that is left is a few small things and then we are ready for 2.0!
We would also like to welcome AConlon as our new Head Moderator as well as Didag and Blitzer515 as our new Administrators!
Its a new month! Remember to vote for us on.
Were are now running 1.2.4!
Notch has just released an update and you will need to not update.
The update is mainly a load of bug fixes and "Enhanced Chat" I haven't had a chance to test the chat but I hope it will be like the Improved Chat mod.
Dont update! See the post bellow for downgrade details.
Everything is working, well for the most part.
I am sure we will discover bugs as time goes on so if you do please email me.
I have set the border to be much bigger so we should find a jungle biome somewhere.
Currently classes are a bit bugged so take that into mind and note exploiting this will cause you to be banned or jailed.
Report bugs directly to me at baffu@stormcraft.ca.
Currently we are without the voxel port plugin and a few others, they will be added when they are updated.
Hello everyone. Thought I would just keep you posted.
So today I looked into updating the server but many of the plugins were still out dated. We do not have a recommended build for bukkit yet and the changes for the 1.2.3 dev build do break all plugins. So updating will not be as speedy as usual. Sorry!
Here is the status on the updates.
Mob Arena - 80% Done need to finish more classes.
Automation of class selection - 98% done, just need to open it.
Automation of magic levels - Still need to set up and re add more dungeons.
New PvP arena - Not yet started.
Casino - Waiting for updates on the plugin.
Various minor edits - Underway constantly.
Hope the tool helps some of you get on now.
Work on 2.0 is still happening, we were planning on adding the Mob Arena later but it just looked too fun so we added it, you can play right now by typing /ma join or /ma spectate to watch the fight!
Note you must type /ma leave to exit!
Here are a few photos of a Mob Arena game in session and of the arena.
Note that the mob arena classes are not finished and we plan to add some more fun ones soon!
On a side note the quests are mostly built and we are just adding some more puzzles to them now.
Work on the factions map has not yet started.
Thanks to you, the community. We have the needed donations to upgrade the server to a larger box. We now can support at least 30 players with no lag!
On a side note work on our long awaited 2.0 update is going faster than ever and we are looking at adding the new features very soon!
We just bought a Teamspeak 3 server to see how popular it is! We are running a small one now but if it is used a lot then it will be upgraded!
Teamspeak, if you do not already know will allow you to speak to people from the server without typing so much!
Once done set your username to your in game username and chat away!
The next version of minecraft is out!
So the server is waiting for a stable dev build of bukkit to update that may be anywhere from 2-7 days from now but as it is a small update it may not be too long. For now click do not update or keep a copy of your jar!
Thank you everyone who donated recently we reached our goal. If donations keep up at this rate we will upgrade the server to a larger box.
We will be finishing work soon on our guild halls, they are a place for a class to meet and practice their craft together!
Accounts on the stormcraft.ca website with tons of cool features.
We are thinking of looking into some factions, not for the main server but possibly a second one or other map.
An arena to battle mobs may be coming to stormcraft soon.
Engineer class is almost done, please email baffu@stormcraft.ca with any plugins or ideas of additions to this class.
Possibly a creative space, either other server or different map.
Additions to the magic system.
Some sort of questing system with puzzles and travel.
One secret event is planed to be released after all the above if completed.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in the christmas events! We handed out a ton of prizes and worked out the bugs in our events. Lots of people liked the events so it is very likely we will do another set of events like this soon!
We are also crossing some milestones this month we made it above rank 100 on minestatus for a while and have settled in at around 130 out of 4000+ servers! Help us stay above 100th place by voting (button on left).
We also welcomed almost 600 new people to our server this month. We are now boasting a total of 1597 separate users that have logged in to stormcraft since we started around 3-4 months ago this summer.
Of course that count of players came with a due amount of bad players, we have banned 388 players now.
We also just got some new staff welcome surfcash and kittendaddy to the moderation team!
Thanks to everyone who has helped us get this far, we know thing only go up from here.
Note these are the proposed times and if signups are low they may be changed.
Events are as follows and spread throughout the day.
These events take place December 22nd.
Note Times are in Eastern Standard Time.
Go here to find what that time means to you.
Each match will have a reward for the winner.
Come empty handed and ready to spleef!
Up to 12 slots for this event.
Winner is decided on by baffu, considering how much the user has completed and what they have built.
The last man living in it wins!
Handout of prizes from the betting.
You can bet money on what box you think has the best items in it.
Winners will get their items at this time.
No sign up needed just ask to be tped while you are on.
The highest donation to Stormcraft in the month of December will receive an @stormcraft.ca email account! Only 3 of these are going to be given away!
We are always looking to improve StormCraft. A quick 10 question survey will help us to improve the server. Answer it when you can it should take no more than 5 minutes.
Thanks to all of you who have been voting on MineStatus We have reached rank 200 out of nearly 6000 servers for this month!
For those of you who don't know voting for us on MineStatus every 24 hours gets you $100 in game money. This servers as a daily pay cheque to you all so we have some more money floating around.
Thanks for all the votes and keep up the great work. Our goal for next month (when the votes reset) is to get into the top 100.
We are looking to put out an official server texture pack. We will be compiling the best of the texture packs we can find for the StormPack.
The server is waiting on bukkit to release a recommended build to update to! Then we need about 2 days for vital plugins to be updated and functional. This is a big update so bukkit may take about 4-5 days. I hope to have the server running 1.0.0 by Saturday.
After weeks of planning and programming we are happy to announce the storm craft 2.0 is almost done!! We have changed the class system around to be more interesting. Added new content like magic. Also a Spleef arena. I would like to thank Didag, MrJakeRolls and BboyXfro for helping test the new content and keeping what they saw a secret. Here is what we have added so far.
-A balloon system to like all the major cities with an easy to use transport system.
I hope you have fun playing on the new update, mostly mastering the art of magic!
Download Teamspeak HERE to talk to the other members of stormcraft.


Moses Malone jumped straight to the pros from high school and became one of the most dominate rebounders ever.
This story originally ran in the Feb. 19, 1979 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Anybody can shoot a jump shot.
Moses Malone is an original. He not only cut a new path to glory, but he also performs as no one else ever has. He was the first basketball player to go directly from high school to the pros, and he is the first to make a name in the craft of offensive rebounding. The game is a different one with him on the floor.
There are no tricks to the way he plays it. "Basically, I just goes to the rack," he says. Rack is a rather obscure colloquialism, meaning the rim of the basket, but the way Malone gives voice to it, the rack takes on the aspect of a specific territory, demarcated as surely as the lane or the crease or the mezzanine or the city limits: you'll know just where to find him.
Malone is not particularly articulate about all this. Indeed, in his heavy bass voice, speaking in the argot of his impoverished Southern subculture, he sometimes seems obtuse. He grew up in a tumbledown frame house with only his mother, who had left school after the fifth grade: the only literature on the premises was a worn Bible and, later, newspaper clippings of his exploits. But syntax and structure are not everything; young Moses Malone has always had the most express vision of these two places: the rack and the future. And that, for him, has been quite enough.
Although he is one of the leading candidates for Most Valuable Player in the NBA, to most fans he is famous only for one thing--for having had the brass to pass up that great linoleum dream, a college education. In 1974 Malone chose to go directly from Petersburg High in Virginia to the ABA, taking the money instead of what he calls "the big pub," the stacks of publicity invariably accruing to a championship college player, which immediately he would have been at almost any school. Because he has played with a succession of generally undistinguished professional teams--five in his first three seasons--in generally out-of-the-way cities, Malone's swift emergence this season as probably the best center and the most dominating figure in basketball has taken place without most people knowing what he looks like, or even whom he plays for, which now happens to be the Houston Rockets. Moreover, because Moses is shy and reticent--"I sit around, watch the scene, be quiet; I don't run my mouth off"--he only fuels the backfires of the one image he does possess: that of the goon who didn't have the brains to go to college.
As Terry Bradshaw would explain, if, you know, he only could, the hardest knock an athlete has to live down today is that of deficient intelligence; even the choker can get off the hook more easily. If he is big and black, it's twice as hard. A quarter of a century ago, Willie Mays, overwhelmed and untutored, was generously accepted by newspaper reporters who turned his intellectual shortcomings around, using them to create a happy-go-lucky myth, our own Say Hey Kid. But Moses Malone, who comes from the same sort of black Dixie background, was publicly mocked as "Mumbles" Malone by a Salt Lake City disc jockey. Nowadays, any athlete who cannot express himself capably is fair game. Now that the TV microphones are on all the time, there can never be another Pygmalion.
Those who know Malone make it a point to protest allegations of ignorance. Moses himself, though, stays above the fray, refusing to discuss almost anything he deems "personal." If people insist upon dwelling on how he talks instead of on what he has attained, then that is their dumb fault. He grows increasingly more confident socially, more witty, more outgoing all the time, but he cannot be bothered with enrolling in speech classes, as his lawyers have suggested. What's the point? His friends understand him--"When you're alone with Mo, you can't shut him up," says John Lucas of the Warriors--and he knows that no matter how carefully he enunciates, nobody is ever going to hire him to fill in for Bruce Jenner.
No, Malone realizes today, as he always has, that his fortune is to be found around the rack. Charles Moses, a pharmacist who helped advise the Malones when the teenager was being recruited by hundreds of colleges, says, "If you can't express yourself correctly, it doesn't mean you're a stupid kid. Stupid? Listen, he was the first one to understand that he was a franchise. Moses was the one who figured it out."
"I was very homesick, but I kept my eyes open. I kept a cool head about things. Peoples could say things about me, but I didn't pay no attention. I didn't wants to know what they was saying because I was the only one knew what's true."
Malone is keeping tabs. "He don't forget anything," says Lucas, a former teammate as well as a close friend. "Mo's like a book."
Pro Hayes was an assistant coach at Petersburg High, but he was even closer to Malone as a counselor and father figure. "Moses was always very independent, very proud," Hayes says. "Never ask for money--and Lord, he could use it. Never brag either. His mother did a wonderful job with him. But I've known a lot of kids like Moses, and a good mother sacrificing is not necessarily enough. It's tough. These kind of kids get depressed. No matter what they might tell you, they want a mother and a father, both, so much. That kind of kid can go either way. There's no in-between. Moses became strong, independent.
"He likes to do his job and go off by himself, just be alone and play his music. And people misunderstood. They would decide he was ignorant or arrogant. But they were wrong.
"When he started to consider the pros, I was concerned for him. I was afraid that if he was defeated then, he could be destroyed. And so much more has happened than we ever feared--his team folding, then the league, being traded all around, so much--and he's still Moses. The same Moses. He's not Billy Showboat. No, sir. You see, Moses had a lot more faith in himself than we did."
Sometime next year, when his contract comes up for renewal, Moses Malone, Petersburg H.S. '74, will almost surely sign as the first million-dollar-a-year player in any team sport. "Well, now he can buy himself some Ph.Ds," says Pro Hayes, Shoot, he can endow some chairs.
Malone is now a month short of his 24th birthday and after four seasons in the pros--"my school years," he calls them--still in the spring of his career. He is 6' 10", wears 39-inch sleeves, and weighs 235, having added about 15 pounds since last season. He looks, in many respects, like a sale-price Wilt Chamberlain, for both have the same dark complexion, both are lithe, lean-muscled, cut high, with long legs, the rump jutting out. And, like the vintage Wilt, Moses has added a goatee, which his mother calls "a mess." But whereas Chamberlain's face always bore an El Greco sort of torment and grievance, Malone's countenance displays a certain serenity. Just about everybody likes Moses a lot.
In a game a couple of weeks ago, George McGinnis of the Denver Nuggets, who was going out socializing with Malone afterward, had been driving on the Rockets pretty successfully. At one point, on the side, McGinnis passed back to a guard and cleared the area, just minding his own business, casually cutting across the free-throw line. Very purposefully Malone left his own man, moved out and belted the unsuspecting McGinnis with a hip, almost knocking the strong man off his feet. The first expression on McGinnis' face was utter fury. Then he looked and saw that it was Malone who had done the deed, and all anger instantly passed, to be replaced by wonder that it could be the kid who had wrought such an act.
Moses moves at a controlled lope until he reaches the rack, but once there he immediately goes into a series of purposeful darts and dashes. Curiously, what most attracts attention are his hands, which are disproportionately small. Malone is genetically inexplicable; his father is 5' 6", his mother 5' 2". Only his hands seem a result of that union. During a game they hang altogether loose, but they are never lazy. Instead, they appear to possess some sort of kinetic quality. No doubt this is because, unlike other men his size, Moses cannot take his hands for granted. He says he can palm the ball, but he can't manhandle it, toy with it. Tom Nissalke, the Rockets' coach, has given him a series of hand-stretching exercises, like those for a pianist. "If Moses just had normal hands for a man his size, he'd have to be outlawed," says teammate Rick Barry.
It is unusual, too, that his specialty should be offensive rebounding, because that craft is usually reserved for the cagey forwards who squeeze through the cracks while the bull centers are blocking one another out. Centers are supposed to be selfless purveyors of the ball, clearing it (a wonderful euphemism, obviously invented by a guard, meaning, you give me the ball). But at Petersburg High, Malone was so overwhelming, so powerful, the games so lopsided, that the other players didn't bother to work the ball in to the big man: if Malone wanted to score, he had to learn to get the ball off the boards himself. "Got 45 rebounds one time," he recalls, chuckling at the memory. "Back door, back door, back door."
Once he understood how naturally proficient he was at offensive rebounding, he began to work even harder on that specialty, in the same way, say, as the young Bill Russell did on shot blocking. Malone has carefully studied how his teammates shoot, what sort of spin and trajectory they employ, so that he knows exactly where he should be on every play. A lofty Calvin Murphy miss, for example, is liable to bounce higher and farther out than a Rudy Tomjanovich line drive.
By now there is little or no argument that Moses Malone is the prepotent offensive rebounder of all time. Neither is there much argument as to why. First of all, there is the matter of simple mathematics; Moses tries for every rebound since he assumes every shot will be missed.
Second, there is the matter of execution and determination. Rich Kelley, the New Orleans center, who is a distant third in the league to Malone in offensive rebounding, says, "He has quickness, timing, all the things you would expect, but the main thing is his tenacity. Eighty percent of Malone's game is on the offensive board. It changes everything. You play the Rockets, it's something entirely different, because I'd say a third of their game is Moses on the offensive board, keeping the ball in play. And that's completely unique to any team.
"What goes through your mind is that you have to box him out every damn time, every time the ball goes up. It just wears on you, mind and body. The other good centers learn to cruise for a quarter. They pick their spots. Not Moses. By the end of every game against him, you're whipped." Malone's best rebounding quarter is often the fourth. The Rockets have never lost an overtime game since he joined the team; they have won nine in a row, one short of the league record.
To his effort and instincts, Malone has added guile. He knows how to gain leverage by using an opponent against himself. He knows how to avoid drawing fouls. Indeed, because he tires and frustrates his rivals so often, he is himself fouled far more than any other center in the league.
While neither Malone nor his teammates fear that his exertions will wear him out over the long haul, opponents are skeptical. Even before the season started, Elvin Hayes of the Washington Bullets offered the observation that Malone would be through by Jan. 1, and while he has breezed by that deadline, whether he will be able to survive the remainder of the long season and then go head-to-head against a monster center in a couple of seven-game playoff series is still moot.
"But you can't change him," Nissalke says. "The last time he played Jabbar, he hung around practice for an extra half hour, having a ball, playing one-on-one. Then he goes out that night, plays 50 minutes in overtime, gets 25 rebounds and 34 points. I've told Mo, if he ever decides to be a study in cool, like some of the stars in this league, he could lose it all."
"I know how to pace myself," Malone says. "And alls I know is, after two or three quarters they're tired, and I just keeps on coming. The bigger they are the more I be a greyhound."
In Houston, Malone lives alone in a town house in the southwest section of that booming, sprawling, crawling, ugly city. He usually tools about in a Lincoln Continental, only occasionally taking a spin in his two-tone Rolls. He makes something like $300,000 a year, but the Rolls is his only extravagance. He spends judiciously, eating many of his meals at cafeterias, leaving the bulk of his income for conservative investments. When Malone retires from basketball at 35 or so, he should be in a position to live comfortably off his income for the rest of his life.
His house was robbed not so long ago, so now it is chained and chock-full of electronic watchdogs. Inside, at his leisure, Moses watches television and listens to music simultaneously. The rooms are bright, filled with plants and some original art. One painting is a portrait of Moses in the uniform of the Petersburg Crimson Wave, which was presented to him on Moses Malone Day. But the centerpiece of the living room is a larger painting, which shows, to all appearances, the rear view of a naked woman. However, looked at just the right way, under instructions of the owner, lo and behold, what is revealed is the profile of Abraham Lincoln. It is impossible to describe this phenomenon in any clearer fashion, and the failure to do so is not indicative of this correspondent's stupidity.
The portraits in the rickety old house in Petersburg, where the coaches came to see Moses and his mother, were somewhat more commonplace; they were of Martin Luther King Jr., President and Mrs. Kennedy, Jesus Christ. When he signed with the Stars, Moses got enough of a bonus to allow him to buy a new house for Mary Malone. It is a trim ranch in the suburb of Ettrick, right on the route where Lee's army fell back the last time, defaulting Petersburg to Grant and retreating at last to Appomattox.
Mary Malone, a small, happy woman with a gold front tooth, occasionally leaves her new house in Ettrick and drives back to stare at the ramshackle place on St. Matthews Street. "Sometimes I likes just to come back and look," she explains, smiling. Very few people have dreams come true, and fewer still can return to see their sad past so vividly, but the house was condemned after the Malones left, and it remains exactly as before, an everyday Brigadoon. "Look, they's still even got the curtains up," Mrs. Malone exclaims. Seeing what was makes what is all the better.
At the old house on St. Matthews, the plumbing often didn't work, and for a long time there was a big hole in a wall where a window was supposed to be. When the house would become overrun with recruiters (on soft nights some would sleep on the porch), Moses would climb out a window, get onto the roof and take off. "I did a lot of ducking and hiding," he says. This would leave his mother to entertain the recruiters; the experience eventually left her with bleeding ulcers that not even Oral Roberts could cure in his desperate effort to attract her son to his college.
Moses is an only child. His mother, says she, threw his father out of the house when Moses was two, because he had taken to drinking, and he disappeared, surfacing only when he understood his son had struck it rich. Advised by Donald Dell and Lee Fentress, his lawyers, Moses made his mother get divorced then, to protect herself.
She hasn't remarried, devoting herself to her son, whom she called "Teeny," because he was such a skinny baby. Mary Malone, a Hudgins from out in Chesterfield County, was the oldest of nine children and was forced to drop out of grade school to help support the family, so she never could get any but the most menial of jobs. When her son signed for six figures, she was a packer at the local Safeway, making about $100 a week. Still, she spoiled Moses something awful. The Christmas he was six she gave him a fancy organ, which is still in his room in Ettrick. Mary Malone had been raised in a very limited world; she had no reason to believe her son would have an easy life as an adult (who did, that she knew?), and so she was determined to give him the one thing she could, which was a free-and-easy childhood. "I didn't like him to do no work at all," she says. "I know how hard I come up, so I didn't want him to."
The idea that her son might be a college man thrilled her, and she held out for that right up to the time the Stars' representatives spread real $100 bills across the bed, and for the first time she could visualize a house with a toilet that worked and no holes in the walls. Even now, with the living room studded with Moses' trophies, his high school diploma still occupies the place of honor on the television console.
So Moses' childhood, though deprived, was not a sad one, and he filled it playing games--first football, then basketball--up Harding Street, from Byrd's Confectionery to the Virginia Avenue Playground at the top of the hill. On summer nights he would play till one or two in the morning, often by himself. "Yes, he do that," Mrs. Malone says. "He always loves his basketball, and that what give that boy his courage."
When Moses was about 14 or so and began to appreciate how very good he was, he wrote out a message to himself and placed it in the family Bible, which was worn and dog-eared and had no cover, that Mrs. Malone's father had passed on to her. A great many people close to Moses know about this note. Apparently, it was a promise from Moses to himself that he would become the best high school player in the country by the time he finished his junior year. Then, that accomplished, it seems he sat down and wrote another note for the Bible, this one to the effect that he would become the first high school player to go directly into the pros.
Malone knows he cannot deny the existence of these notes, but, guarding his privacy, as ever, he is as evasive about them as he possibly can be. He says he does not remember what the notes said. However, still tucked into his Bible, at Isaiah 64, are clippings Moses put there after his first varsity game, when he was called up from the jayvees as a freshman and went for 30 in an upset victory: WAVE GETS REVENGE FROM MIDLOTHIAN.
He only got better, and for his last two seasons Petersburg was undefeated, state champs, 50-0. Meanwhile, in the classroom Malone was present and accounted for, but never involved or particularly proficient. A great part of his problem was psychological. Schoolwork was both alien and intimidating to him. "He'd say nothing, even if he knew something," Pro Hayes says. "He didn't want to risk being embarrassed." It is also true that Moses had bad teeth, and so he refrained from talking, keeping his head down when he had to speak.
He just scraped by, trading in algebra for art to make it. "It was a matter of goals," says Lefty Driesell, the Maryland coach. "I firmly believe that if Mo had put it in his Bible to be a B student, then he would have become one."
Almost from the beginning Malone had decided to play for Driesell at Maryland. "Lefty was the type of fellow who would tell you things right," Malone says. But he kept this decision to himself, for he enjoyed all the fuss, the foolish attention of grown men, and he listened courteously to all the recruiters' lies and supplications. It was a game, and he became a cottage industry in Petersburg, with doltish recruiters getting conned out of all sorts of front money by hustlers who promised that they could deliver Moses.
In the end he signed a letter of intent with Maryland, and it was only a matter of days before he started matriculating at College Park that the Utah Stars showed up with a "multimillion-dollar contract." In fact, it guaranteed very little, being studded with one-year, one-way options. Malone made the Stars show the contract to Driesell, and as soon as the coach took one look at the document, he called in Dell, the Washington lawyer and former Davis Cup captain who had made a formidable reputation representing tennis players, notably Arthur Ashe.
Dell was caught in a tricky situation. He had been summoned to help Malone by Driesell, who was obviously a rival of the Stars. Furthermore, it was one of the more Draconian of the NCAA rules that a kid who took on counsel to help him decide between pro and college ball was automatically deemed a pro and thus denied the choice for which he sought counsel in the first place. Dell had to gingerly position himself as no more than a friendly adviser.
He and one of his law partners, Lee Fentress, read the contract and then went into a room in their offices where Driesell, John Lucas and Moses and his mother were assembled. "As soon as I entered the room." Dell says, "Moses dropped his head. At that time, that was his natural reponse to any stranger. I wanted to catch his attention, and so I walked right over to him, and even before I said hello. I said, `You ever hear of slavery, Moses?' His head came up like that. He stared straight at me, and he listened to every word I said."
Dell explained the contract's loopholes, but because he was sure that Utah would be back, raising the ante, he told Malone that he was welcome to call him for advice. "But understand this, Moses," Dell told him. "The minute you sign one thing, one scrap of paper, forget it, because then I can't help you." The next day, from Petersburg, Malone called Dell constantly. "Eighteen calls--18." Dell says. "Every time Utah made a new move, Moses called me. I knew then that he was a hell of a lot smarter than he was given credit for."
By now the Malone saga was sharing front-page headlines in Washington with the final days of Watergate. But as the Utah offer firmed up, Maryland's chances began to fade. Moses kept talking about his dreams, about his note in the Bible. "He knew what he was doing," Lucas says. "He wanted the pro atmosphere, all the looseness. Mo's nothing like he appears to be. He was already an extraordinary way ahead of his time."
Again Dell assembled all the principals in his offices. The Utah envoys were put on hold in one room while Dell and Fentress met with the Malones, Driesell and one of his assistants, Dave Pritchett. It was an emotional encounter, and as Lefty perceived that the kid's mind really was made up, that his certified national championship was drifting away, he grew anguished and distraught. He talked about the promise in the Bible. "The Good Lord won't mind you waiting for a year or two," he said. Moses did not budge. Pritchett began to cry, and Driesell, despairing all the more, became melodramatic.
Suddenly, Malone looked up and glared at his friend. "Stop jivin' me, Coach," he snapped. Driesell froze. School was out. Dell and Fentress then gathered up the Malones and went into the other room to strike the final deal with Utah, whose emissaries still did not know that they had won the battle. But hardly had the negotiations started than the door flew open and Driesell burst into the room, ablaze. He came at the Utah people, and they cowered. Lefty is a big man. "You better take care of him," he shouted. "You better take care of Mo." And then, satisfied and cooled, he shook hands and was gone again.
Unfortunately, this outburst, however genuine, however affectionate, served foremost to erode Malone's bargaining leverage. But Dell and Fentress kept pressing, and hours later, past midnight, the parties agreed. Then Dell suddenly remembered that Malone was under 21 and could not sign a document such as a professional basketball contract in the District of Columbia, and so the whole entourage had to troop across the Potomac to a Ramada Inn in Virginia, where 18 is the legal age. It was there, early in the morning in a motel room, that Moses Malone answered the second promise to himself and his mother's Bible.
College baseball doesn't make any money, so baseball players have been turning pro out of high school for generations, without athletic Pharisees getting agitated, but Malone's decision was greeted as nearly unholy. Dell himself could not fall asleep for three nights, being plagued by thoughts "that I really might be a flesh peddler."
Michael Jordan graced the cover of SI 49 times. This was his first and Sam Perkins' third. The North Carolina duo led the Tar Heels to the 1982 NCAA Championship, where the young Jordan, who was named ACC Freshman of the Year, hit the winning bucket against Georgetown. It was a no-brainer that the two were the most dominant pair entering the 1983 season.
In February 1989, Pete Rose, who seemed to be a then-shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, vehemently denied ever betting on a Major League game. However, after lawyer John Dowd interviewed many of Rose's associates, the truth came out. And it wasn't pretty.
As this cover boldly proclaims, Tony Mandarich was the best offensive line prospect of all time. Unfortunately, he never lived up to the hype and lasted only seven mediocre seasons. He later revealed that his incredible bulk wasn't only due to countless hours in the gym, but also because of steroid use.
Her inspiration was Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast who, as a teenager, landed the first perfect 10 in gymnastics history. But at the 1984 Olympics, Mary Lou Retton cemented her own legacy as she earned perfect scores in both the vault and floor exercise to win the all-around title by a mere five-hundredths of a point.
Even before his first nationally-televised bout, Mike Tyson was already making headlines, and gracing the cover of SI. In his first two years as a professional, "Kid Dynamite" won 26 of his first 28 fights by knockout -- 16 in the first round.
Like they are with the Subway Series between the Mets and Yankees, New Yorkers are torn between the Giants and Jets. And in 1986, the two defensive-minded squads put on a show for fans, thanks to Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor and the Jets' Mark Gastineau.
Four years after winning two bronze medals at Los Angeles, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson became the face of doping in sports when he was stripped of both his 100M world record and 100M gold medal at the Seoul Games.
While at Navy, David Robinson was named the John Wooden and James Naismith award winner. He was also selected by the San Antonio Spurs as the first pick in the NBA Draft. But he would have to wait a couple years before making the leap to the pros, as he had to serve two years in the Navy -- three years short of the norm -- before he could take center court in Texas.
Elle Macpherson rode appearances on the covers of Elle and Sports Illustrated to international fame in the '80s. In all, she appeared on the cover of SI five times, including three consecutive years beginning in 1986.
After losing an epic five-set championship match to Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon -- a match that included an 18-16 tie-breaker -- McEnroe exacted revenge on the Swede at the U.S. Open, beating Borg in five sets to win his second Slam at Flushing.
Joe Theismann had a penchant for making big plays. After the Redskins acquired him in 1974, the star QB led Washington to two Super Bowls, setting several franchise records in the process. Unfortunately, Theismann also had a penchant for running his mouth.
With the new additions (through the draft) of Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish, Larry Bird led the Celtics to a championship in just his second season in the league. Bird won three titles in his career -- not quite as impressive as the 11 Bill Russell managed during his days in Boston.
Just two seasons into his NHL career when this issue ran, Wayne Gretzky had already won two Hart Memorial Trophies (MVP), broken Bobby Orr's record for assists in a season, and broken Phil Esposito's record for points in a campaign. Gretzky started the '81-82 season on a tear, too, scoring 50 goals in his first 39 games.
It had been four years since the NBA's hardship draft rule had been eliminated and players had free reign to enter the draft after graduating from high school. Yet, more and more college players decided to reject the pros and stay on campus anyway. Among them were Maryland senior Albert King, Virginia sophomore Ralph Sampson and DePaul junior Mark Aguirre -- three reasons why the 1980-81 college hoops season was projected to be one of the most exciting yet.
In the mid 80s, professional wrestling took the nation by storm and few athletes were as recognizable as 6-foot-8, 300 pound Hulk Hogan. This shot marks the only time a pro wrestler has graced the cover of SI.
Just the fifth player to jump from high school to pro basketball, Moses Malone grew into one of the NBA's best big men as a Houston Rocket. After winning his second MVP award with the Rockets, Malone was traded to Philadelphia, where he joined Dr. J and Maurice Cheeks on a squad that went on to win the 1983 Finals. Malone won his third MVP that season, becoming the first player to win back-to-back MVPs with different teams.
By the summer of 1989, Michael Jordan was already on top of the basketball universe. But as this cover demonstrates, M.J. also had an affinity for golf and contemplated a post-NBA career on the links.
Rocco and Tony Perla thought they had it in the bag -- literally. The two small-time gamblers thought they could use Boston College as the vehicle for a massive point-shaving scheme that would land them thousands of dollars from bettors. However, one of their accomplices, Henry Hill, spilled the beans to SI in an exclusive tell-all.
How the times have changed! In March 1985, Mike Schmidt topped the list of baseball moneymakers with an annual salary of $2.13 million. Nearly a quarter-century later, the average annual salary of an MLB player is over $3 million.
In 1985, the NBA instituted the draft lottery, knowing teams would be jockeying for that year's No. 1 pick and the chance to draft Georgetown center Patrick Ewing. Although he never won a championship, Ewing was an 11-time All-Star and was selected as one of the league's 50 greatest players.
After winning the Heisman Trophy, sports fans were wondering whether Georgia RB Herschel Walker would remain in Athens for his senior year or leave early and play professionally in the upstart USFL, which didn't require players to complete four years of college as the NFL did. Walker answered by joining the New Jersey Generals, where he stayed for three seasons before joining the Dallas Cowboys.
Inside pitching is often a handy tool for a pitcher, brushing back a batter who hovers over the plate. Unfortunately, when those high and tight, 90-mile--per-hour fastballs go off track, the results can be brutal. Just ask Andre Dawson.
By the summer of 1988, Mike Tyson was the world's best boxer. However, he was making more headlines for his marriage to actress Robin Givens. The couple barely lasted two years, but thanks to this cover and a memorable interview with Barbara Walters, the couple's marriage remains one of the most memorable unions between a sports figure and an actor.
Flashy as he was, Deion Sanders was a sports anomaly, competing in three sports at Florida State and playing professionally in two. In 1989, he was drafted by the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. He played in both leagues, hitting a homerun and scoring a touchdown in the same week -- the only man to do so. Sanders went on to become the first to play in both a World Series and Super Bowl. Now, if that's not "Prime Time," what is?
After his squad beat the Celtics in the 1987 NBA Finals, Lakers' coach Pat Riley guaranteed a repeat in 1988. Led by James Worthy and Magic Johnson, the Lakers edged Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas and the Pistons in seven games.
College kids may be brats, college professors may be pinkos, college coaches may be brutes, but don't ever rap college. College enjoys a unique place in our society; it's about the only institution left that is sacrosanct, above criticism. The reason is that college is where you have to go to get a college degree. Thus, anybody like Malone, who would actually pass up a chance to go to college, is suspect as un-American. When you think about it, today college is prized about as dearly as marriage used to be.
But for anyone who knew Malone well, it was difficult to dispute his rationale. "To take four years to learn the social sciences may be approved, but is it best for everybody?" Fentress asks. And while Driesell suggests that college play would have improved Malone "fundamentally" and the experience would have helped "to bring out his personality," he believes that the young man would have profited primarily as a marketable item. In this respect, Malone still suffers a lack of identity for not having been showcased with an NCAA contender. It has hurt him in several ways. Because Malone doesn't sell tickets, Houston had to bring in a name. Rick Barry, for this season, a transaction that cost the Rockets their playmaker, John Lucas.
Of course, it is easy to say that Malone should have stuck out college for a year or two if your mother isn't living in a shanty without a toilet and with a big hole in the wall. "Look," says Spencer Haywood of the Jazz, who was Malone's teen-age idol, an offensive rebounder and the first player ever to leave college-the University of Detroit--for the pros. "The colleges are just there to use you. If you're black and haven't a nice, rich mommy and daddy--and now, with the Bakke decision, you haven't even the government on your side--then you have no choice. You take advantage of what you have as soon as you can."
Malone himself never had any doubts. "I'd seen the pros on TV, and I figured I was quicker," he says. "Peoples talked about experience, but I never thought experience meant that much under the rack. So I told my momma, let me decide. If I'm going to lose, let me lose myself. So my momma said all right."
Oddly, Malone's rookie year came off without trauma and was a great deal happier than those that followed. He averaged 18.8 points and 14.6 rebounds a game, and when Nissalke was brought in midway through the season, the teenager found a coach he cared for and respected. Nissalke did not baby Moses. In the huddle sometimes, during time-outs, the coach would stop everything, halt all talk until the kid would raise his head to listen, looking Nissalke in the eye like a grown man.
Salt Lake City was unique, too, for it is Mormon, with a tiny black population. But that didn't faze Malone, either. It has often been assumed, and written (most likely by some righteous Yankees), that Malone came from an all-black environment, but in fact, Malone was probably more at home with whites than a comparable Northern ghetto star would have been. Petersburg High School was only about 60% black when Malone attended it, and perhaps the single most important peer influence upon the bashful black youngster was a white classmate named Tim Antozzi.
The only time that Malone has ever been in any sort of trouble came two summers ago when on a visit back home, he and a group of friends dropped by Virginia State University, which is predominantly black. In the frivolous, sophomoric episode that ensued, Moses concluded a desultory flirting session by snatching up a coed's $35 chess set. Before he could return it, she had blown the silly incident up into theft and pressed charges, which have since been dismissed.
The lesson Malone has learned is that he is a marked man and therefore must stay out of crowded situations he can't control. "I be alone and be happier than with a lot of peoples," he says. "You can't get in no trouble then." His mother, who has been beset by hustlers and bunco artists ever since she came into money, is bitter about the jealousy and exploitation she has seen.
The Malones' relationship with Fentress, the white lawyer, is especially fetching. He is the last thing you would expect in a basketball agent: a Dixie patrician, sandy-haired, with old-fashioned tortoiseshell eyeglasses and herringbone suits. He went to Tulane and Virginia Law, and when he curses, the best he can manage is "sugar." Fentress' prime client is the Government of Mexico, and last month, when he flew down to Houston to touch base with Malone, he had spent much of the previous day sequestered with Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, discussing matters somewhat more consequential than option years and zone defenses.
So, unlike a lot of the grubby 10-percenters. Fentress keeps his basketball clients in perspective, no matter how much the fool owners pay them. He is interested in Malone, not chummy; he is firm, not patronizing; he tells Malone flat out to find a better way to get off his ego than tying up so much cash in a Rolls. It is not a slice of white man's burden, either; Fentress lived with Charles Evers for a year in Mississippi in the 1960s and lost most of his old friends in Baton Rouge for it.
It was Fentress who was instrumental in getting Malone to Houston. This hegira began when the Utah Stars folded in Moses' second year, while he was out with a broken fibula. He was consigned by lot to St. Louis, but at the end of the season the ABA went out of business, and Malone was put in the dispersal draft. His lawyers tried to get the Knicks to take him, but they had just gotten burned trying to pirate George McGinnis from Indiana and were gun shy. Instead, he was picked fifth by Portland--but strictly as a piece of merchandise. Denver almost bought him from Portland, but at the last minute the Nuggets decided they would be better off adding a proven NBA veteran and picked up Paul Silas instead. Nissalke pressed Ray Patterson, the Houston president, to buy Malone, but the Rockets were shaky financially, and Portland didn't like the color of the Houston money. Finally, Portland passed Malone along to Buffalo for cash and a draft pick.
He reported to his new team and found that nobody really wanted him. In the two games he played the week he was with Buffalo, he was used for six minutes, total. Malone was a forward then, and Tates Locke, the Buffalo coach, figured he was solid in the corners with John Shumate and Tom McMillen. The scuttlebutt filtered out that Buffalo had pegged Malone as a dummy, too large a reclamation project. It is also a fact that Locke was the coach at Clemson when the Tigers tried to recruit Malone and ended up in dutch with the NCAA because Mrs. Malone turned Clemson in for giving cash to a relative to buy Moses a car. "A lot of things went down in Buffalo," Moses says, dispensing with that bizarre interlude.
Fentress immediately started putting the heat on Buffalo to play the kid or move him. Finally Ray Patterson got lucky, but only because Buffalo had two owners--Paul Snyder and John Y. Brown--who were more in competition with each other than in concert. Brown was an old ABA man, and Malone was an old ABA player. Brown was also out of the country for a few days. When Patterson offered a deal to Snyder that gave him a quick turnaround profit, he took the cash and a couple of draft picks so he could wave them in Brown's face when he cleared customs.
McMillen was traded six weeks later and is now hanging on with Atlanta. Poor Shumate, who has a lung condition, hasn't played this season for Detroit. Locke was bounced in the middle of the season, and the whole franchise floundered until finally they backed a truck up to the door and took it to San Diego last summer.
"Moses made our franchise," Patterson says. "We were going down the tubes, and we wouldn't be in Houston today if Tom hadn't kept after me to make that deal."
At Houston in 1976-77, his first NBA season, Malone played forward opposite Rudy Tomjanovich, and the franchise had its first winning record ever. Last season, though, Tomjanovich was brutalized by an opponent's sucker punch, Malone broke his foot and missed 23 games, and the Rockets tumbled to last place. This forced Patterson to pay out $1 million to use Barry's name at the box office for two years. Unfortunately, Barry is 34 now, and he left his legs in San Francisco, and because Tomjanovich is also primarily a shooter, the whole burden of rebounding has fallen upon Malone. Says Slick Watts, one of the team's point guards, "Everybody be shooting, but the big guy, he just be roaming underneath."
Malone has also become the Rockets' leading scorer, averaging more than 23 a game. The book on him used to be, back off when he got the ball, because he liked to use his little hands to dribble, and he was easy prey for steals. This year, however, Malone goes right up and punches it at the rack. He has a nice little jump hook, too.
What Malone longs for is a chance to play on a running team, and that is the issue the Rockets are going to have to confront after the 1979-80 season, when his contract is up for renewal. Moses likes Houston well enough; he likes the coaches and the team, but he is also, as we know, the sort of fellow who makes up his own mind. The Rockets will have no choice but to ply him with great sums. If not, the franchise will lose its credibility in Houston, which is a gumdrop city, where there is no professional basketball heritage and just about everybody rolled into town the day before yesterday, all sweet and sure. Pro basketball and hockey clubs have gone under, but the wide-eyed still pay to see the Astrodome in repose.
The floor for Malone has got to be seven figures because David Thompson, a backcourt man, went for $800,000. By then Patterson will be off the hook for Barry, however, and at least he won't have to battle the whole league; Moses says he'll only play in Washington, near his old home, or for a Sun Belt franchise. "You live in a cold city, you got to get married," he explains. At his best, there is a certain Confucius-say quality to Malone.
For the next season and a half, though, he belongs to the Rockets, and he will not be diverted by thoughts of running teams or anything else. Malone is a very devoted person. After he signed with the Stars, it was two or three weeks before he returned to Washington and Dell and Fentress became his permanent management. In the meantime, all manner of agents, honest and bloodsucker alike, had beaten a path to his door. He had refused even to consider a single one, waiting for Dell and Fentress to return. He still stays in touch with Driesell and considers Maryland his old team. When the Stars folded and he was dished off to some other club, he was genuinely hurt. "I'm a Utah Star, man," he said. "I want to stay here."
But mostly, what Malone is, he is loyal to basketball. Most stars are not. They think they are, but they are not, because after a while they have deals and hypes and diversions (some of this stuff you learn in college), and all of this chips away at what they thought they were growing up to be, which is a player. It's very subtle. It's like you look at a naked woman, and pretty soon what are you seeing but Abraham Lincoln.
Moses hasn't even got much of a name to get in the way of his basketball. "You know what, he's just a blue-collar worker," John Lucas says. "That's what Mo is, a blue-collar worker." No one has ever been so pure around the rack. There is an eloquence to Moses Malone, the basketball player.