EsoTalk Minecraft server

The esoTalk server was a Minecraft server for version 1.3.2 (protocol 39) of the game, used by members of the Esoteric Chat forum. It was a cracked anarchy server.

The server was created on May 9 2021 by admin after the topic of a potential server was discussed in the Suggestions thread. Version 1.3.2 was chosen because it was the stable release of 1.3.2, and 1.3 was the first game version to support SRV records. The physical server was (and still is) hosted at admin's house, and so an SRV record was necessary to connect with the domain "geteso.org" (the domain at the time) instead of a subdomain.

Early usage

At first, the spawnpoint floated around x0y0 before it was blown up with so much TNT that the spawnpoint had to be moved to a protected location.

After the server was first brought online, players such as Chan quickly discovered client-side mods for the appropriate version, and eventually a so-called hacked client which was used to duplicate items. Players with the hacked client were also able to fly and noclip, among other things, which became problematic enough that CraftBukkit, a fork of the original Minecraft server software, was used in order to mitigate cheating. After the server software was changed, no further known exploits were used.

Stalin drama

On the server, Joseph Stalin exchanged private messages with Adolf Hitler which led to some speculation on behalf of the community that he had discovered a backdoor in the forum software. He also told this to Akefu who believed him until it became evident that he was just fucking around by samefagging on another account the whole time. Because of the drama, he took a brief hiatus from the forum (claiming to be leaving forever) and continued to return on alts every now and then.

Shutdown

One downside of abandoning the vanilla server software is that CraftBukkit included many safeguards against griefing which detracted from the anarchy part of the server. Despite this, the server remained popular for a couple more weeks. It eventually stagnated in its player count and was shut down on June 13. The server ran for a good month.