I am retiring soon IRL! So, with that comes some difficult budget constraints and expense decisions. In a nutshell, Pixelfish has been online since 2018 and has since moved hosting providers twice (currently on the second one) with the hosting cost continually increasing to where it is now, which is roughly $70 USD per month. I know what you're thinking, but not to worry: I do not have any plans on shutting it down any time soon! I do, however, plan on moving the entire Pixelfish operation to a self-hosted BSD-based server. The pros of the move is a complete removal of the monthly out of pocket expenses on my end and complete control over space, memory, OS, and CPU tuning. The machine the new server will be running on has a clock speed of 3.8 gHz, 128GB of memory, and over 15TB of space. The only real “con” will likely be the bandwidth.

So, what can you expect from this? Hopefully nothing bad! I will slowly move all the assets, scripts, and server files to the new server over the next few months. I expect it to be fully live around November 2023. My United States based players will also appreciate the ping time increase as we move from Frankfurt to the eastern U.S. I've been considering moving both servers to a private, whitelisted offering. Nothing is set in stone, but as of right now I'm leaning this way for numerous reasons. The player count on both servers has dwindled to near nothing lately anyway. I will push out a notification on Discord if, and when, this takes place so old players aren't shocked when they try to logon.

I'm still full steam ahead with MoreLore pack development. Hopefully the next release will bring the first server pack so you can host it on your own server! I've been working on a usable solution over the last few months that's easy for “non-tech folk.” I've been trying to take the best ideas from other large packs and apply the lessons learned to our pack. As of now, it has 388 downloads on Curseforge, but I would love to see it take off and bring in some more - I think we nailed the Enhanced Vanilla out the gate. With a few more tweaks, I think the pack even beats out BetterMC (by leaps and bounds). However, I could really use some coverage, and it won't blast off without some PR! If you're a streamer and like the pack, please share it with your viewers!