How Running a Minecraft Server Launched My Tech Career
Some of you may know me as 0xBit online, but to everyone else, I’m Austin. About five years ago, I launched a geopolitical Minecraft server called EarthPol. What started as a passion project quickly grew into something much larger, thanks to a mix of timing, skill, and a bit of luck—especially as the world turned to online communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the story of how I built and ran EarthPol, the challenges I faced, the lessons I learned, and how the experience shaped both my technical skills and personal growth.
In September 2020, I registered the domain earthpol.com after spending a few hours brainstorming potential server names. This wasn’t my first attempt at launching a geopolitical Minecraft server—back in April 2019, I had registered geopolmc.com, but life had other plans, and I let the project fall through. By the time I returned to the idea, the domain had expired, and someone else had picked it up to start their own server. With my original name no longer an option, I started writing down dozens of alternatives until I landed on “EarthPol.” It had a nice ring to it, and, surprisingly, no one else had claimed it yet. It was a perfect fit.
The server officially launched in October 2020, just after I had moved from Oregon to Washington. At the time, I had already rented an OVH Bare Metal server, paid in full for a year, for a different online project that never took off. With about 11 months left on the rental, I decided to use it for EarthPol. My focus in the early days was branding—I designed the logo, website, and Discord server. I even paid $20 for a Discord advertisement a month prior, which gave the illusion of an active community before the server even launched.
As for the gameplay itself, EarthPol started with a basic Towny and Economy setup. I spent some time tweaking configurations and even created a custom Earth map using Minecraft Earth Tiles. After setting up some advertising on PlanetMinecraft, I more or less left the server alone. Occasionally, I would hop on using my alt account “Bolshebricks”, but for the most part, I was absent during the first month.
Unknown to me, the server was growing exponentially. One morning, I woke up to 16+ Discord pings from players begging me to fix the lag. Confused, I logged in to investigate and was immediately hit with Minecraft’s infamous “falling behind” server warning. Checking the system usage, I found that the Xeon processor from 2014—which was built for handling web traffic, not Minecraft—was maxed out. Logging into the game, I finally understood the issue: 86+ players were online, and the TPS was at a miserable 5.
To handle the growing demand, I purchased new hardware from OVH with better single-core performance and spent a week setting up a proxy system with a lobby queue. By early November 2020, we had successfully migrated to the new setup with a 100-player cap. The community kept growing, and soon we had a queue just to get online.
Due to a misconfiguration on my part, I unknowingly left a backdoor vulnerability commonly exploited by Minecraft griefers. One evening while I was out, hackers logged in as me, granted themselves operator permissions, and completely wiped the server. Being so new, we had no backups. It was devastating. I thought my chance at running a successful server was over.
But I wasn’t ready to give up. I promised the community that we would come back stronger—and that was exactly what we did.
By the end of November 2020, we relaunched the server. The old world was preserved as "EarthPol Classic", allowing players to explore their past builds, while the new server launched as "EarthPol Version 2.0." From day one, it was an immediate hit—nearly 300+ players joined at launch, and the queue remained active for over 120 hours straight.
At its peak, EarthPol consistently held 150 players at its lowest and up to 300 at its highest—outpacing our primary competitor, EarthMC. What truly set us apart was our ability to optimize performance in ways no other server had managed at the time.
EarthPol was a true innovator in the geopolitical Minecraft genre. We helped pioneer what is now a widely recognized Towny plugin, SiegeWar, becoming one of the first three servers to implement it—specifically on an Earth map server. We also set records twice for hosting the largest multiplayer Earth map in existence.
Beyond technical achievements, EarthPol played a crucial role in fostering talent. Many members of our team, who initially had little to no coding experience, went on to become Java programmers, developing plugins and server enhancements that pushed the boundaries of the genre.
For me personally, running EarthPol provided invaluable experience in Linux system administration, managing a complex network with thousands of users, programming in multiple languages, load balancing multiple servers, and troubleshooting intricate routing issues.
I firmly believe that the experience I gained from managing EarthPol is what enabled me to earn three internal promotions at the company I started working for during Version 3. I moved through two tiers of technical support before ultimately landing a software development role with a high salary.
EarthPol continued for another two versions before I eventually handed over the reins to some new friends. One of them, interestingly enough, I later recruited into the company I work for.
The new owner, MrTytanic, is a bright young guy, nearly the same age I was when I first started EarthPol. He has taken on the responsibility of running the community and managing the server on a seasonal schedule. It’s a strange feeling watching something you built transition into someone else’s hands, but as I approach 28 years old, it’s time for me to shift my focus to other aspects of my life—advancing my career, starting a family, and building a great life with my wife.
EarthPol wasn’t just a Minecraft server; it was a proving ground that shaped my career, challenged me as a leader, and pushed me beyond my limits. While my time running the server is over, I’m still creating Earth Maps because it’s something I truly enjoy. You can check them out at https://earthmc.org. EarthPol may be in my past, but its legacy—and everything it taught me—will stay with me forever.