The Lifesteal SMP will be coming together on 12th July, on the fourth anniversary of the server, for an invitational event in collaboration with Block Wars.
The organisation of the event was led by Hannahxxrose, who joined the Lifesteal SMP last season, and who has extensive experience playing in competitive Minecraft events such as MC Championship, Block Wars and many others.
Hannah reached out to Block Wars on behalf of the Lifesteal SMP to try and set up an event. “A few months ago I messaged Wolfeei and the Block Wars team and I was like, ‘hey, what do you think about doing a Lifesteal SMP Block Wars event with only members of Lifesteal and maybe some VIPs?’” she tells us. The Block Wars organisers were very receptive and helped set it in motion.
Talks first started around four months ago, but planning stayed between Hannah and the Block Wars organisers at first. “I actually started planning it a month or two before I told most people on the server,” Hannah says, “just because I didn’t want anyone to leak it, and I wasn’t certain that the event was going to happen.”
The main roadblock she encountered while planning this event was scheduling. “It’s so difficult because for the normal Block Wars signups, how it works is Wolfeei says ‘Block Wars is on this day, here’s the signup form’, but he has a pool of a hundred or so people that he can pull from to be in the event,” Hannah explains, “so it’s okay if people can’t make it, because there’s always going to be someone else.”
Lifesteal currently has 36 members – a large portion of whom have never played in a minigame style event before. “I found out that some of the Lifesteal SMP members don’t like to play in events, which is totally fine and normal. They don’t like that sort of competitive environment,” Hannah recounts.
The relatively small pool of players means they had to find a day for the event where almost everyone is available at the same time. “We finally found a day that the most possible people could make it,” Hannah says. “This was the only day that worked, and I’m glad that we figured it out because it was very hard.” The event coincidentally happens to fall on the 12th of July, which is the anniversary of the day the Lifesteal SMP was founded.
Hannah sent out forms to the Lifesteal members to survey who each person wanted to team with, and then got to work with Wolfeei to formulate teams. “We ranked everyone by what we think their placements will be and then based on that, we made the teams as balanced as possible,” Hannah says, “but also as fun as possible so people could be with their friends and be able to make good content and good streams.” She strove to find a balance between making teams with popular dynamics, and ones that would be conducive to a competitive event.
Making teams when there are so many participants who have never played in any sort of Minecraft minigames event before is challenging. “On paper, ClownPierce, Manepear, people like that are the S tiers on the Lifesteal SMP,” Hannah explains, “but in this event, the real S tier are Reddoons, Pangi, PrinceZam, 4CVIT, and Rekrap, because those people have the Block Wars and event experience.”
“Everyone has different skill sets, and we literally have no idea how some of these people are going to perform,” Hannah continues. “Mane’s never played in an event before, and I don’t think Mapicc has ever played in an event before.” This also means the event is likely to be very unpredictable.
Hannah told us about the beginning of her journey organising the event. “When I started thinking about us doing something like this, I talked to a few people on Lifesteal and some of them were like, ‘that’s like an amazing idea, but will they have us? Are we big enough to do something like this?’ And I thought ‘yes! This is what people want to see.’”
Members of the Lifesteal SMP will be streaming the event on their channels this Saturday, 12th July at 9pm BST / 4pm EDT.
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