Virtual Eden

When a Roman Catholic priest made a Vatican-themed Minecraft server, he meant for it to be an online haven where people could hang out free from internet toxicity.

Instead, trolls descended, immediately overwhelming the server with a DDOS attack, Business Insider reports. And while internet trolls, especially on Minecraft, are far from new, it’s bizarre to see the Vatican get wrapped up in the mess.

Saintly Intentions

Father Robert Ballecer hoped to create a thriving, wholesome online community. In Minecraft, players explore a blocky world, battle monsters, and create impossible structures — activities Ballecer thought would be a good fit for churchgoers looking to connect online.

“You can invite people who want to be creative, who don’t want to be toxic, and you create an environment in which people can express themselves and build up a relationship,” Ballecer told Rome Reports. “And the relationship thing is the most important part. That’s ultimately what I want to do with the server.”

New Plague

But as soon as the server went up, Ballecer tweeted that it was under attack by trolls launching a DDOS attack, which involves flooding a server with so much activity that it gets overloaded.

The next day, however, he revealed that the first server had been a test. He’d used it to weed out some trolls and ban them from the real server, which is now live.

Truth-time: The MC server we've been running was the test server. It allowed us to build up a ban-list of 100 or so User IDs and IPs and see where we would be attacked. Tomorrow we launch the production server. 😄 It will still get attacked, but now we've got a head start. pic.twitter.com/XvuLkvB0MA — Fr. Robert R. Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) December 4, 2019

READ MORE: The Vatican started a ‘Minecraft’ server and it was immediately attacked, according to the priest that set it up [Business Insider]

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