Team Avolition Last edited: 2019-11-26 MAIN | BLOGS | VIDEOS | FUN | WRITING aVo: Intro | Spacemonkey | Doridian | Reddit | MCBans | Reddit 2 | Challenges

Team Avolition

Introduction

So, an ongoing theme I'm discovering with my various nostalgia kicks where I actually go back and read/watch $Thing from beginning to end: the pop-culture impression of $Thing is completely wrong, and anyone who actually bothered to check the source material rather than throwing around anecdotes and out-of-context snippets would discover that immediately. Today, I bring you the story of Team Avolition (aVo), the (in)famous griefing team from the days of Minecraft Beta. Depending on who you ask, they were either a bunch of no-skill shithead trolls who went looking for puppies to stomp on, or a godlike team of `1337 haxxors` who acted like Godzilla crossed with Robin Hood. Neither was true.

Spacemonkey and Lion's Bay

aVo joins the early Reddit-founded Spacemonkey server, builds up some infrastructure, becomes known around town, then decides to burn Dell's house down with lava. Mods log in and see the chaos. aVo claims ignorance of what's going on, and helps to rebuild. The admin decides they clearly need more mods online. Because aVo member Storm_Surge helped with the reconstruction, he was made a mod.

aVo finds the tree fort made by r/Trees members and burns it down on a whim. They flee right past fort-builder Sugarfree as he watches the fort burn. He immediately calls them out, but they claim innocence. Sugarfree retaliates against what he sees as a crooked mod by griefing the server, including (again!) Dell's house. He is blamed for all of aVo's griefing as well and banned.

aVo plans to block out the sun over the spawn area (where everyone is placed the first time they join and any time they die after that), which would lead to a monster infestation and repeatedly kill most players. Unfortunately, due to bugs in the lighting engine in this version, it doesn't work. They instead use the cobblestone structure as a frame to pour water out of, flooding spawn. They then spread out and grief more areas, including (you guessed it) Dell's house while everyone else is distracted at spawn.

The admin installed anti-griefer logging utilities, and caught aVo member Sirenfal using fire. Sirenfal was banned, but Storm_Surge convinced the admin to unban him, as fire doesn't cause flooding. Dell begins to suspect Storm_Surge and the rest of aVo are behind the griefing.

aVo stops trying to be sneaky and goes on a full rampage. They make bridges impassable by exploiting a bug with fence blocks underneath the roadbed, then set the spawn area permanently on fire so everyone will die immediately on respawning. This is recorded in the new logging system, so there's no talking their way out of it. They also cover several structures (including Dell's house) in lava again, start killing other players, and use TNT to blow up stone walls.

Note that at this point all they've used is basic social engineering (entirely by accident), an xray texture pack to see through walls and gather resources quickly, and basic gameplay features to accomplish their griefing.

aVo starts using their xray pack to find and steal resources and equipment, as well as hunt or hide from other players. Storm_Surge uses his moderator powers to teleport to players and kill them, stealing their inventory contents and finding their bases. They then start building various "offensive" structures around the map. The admin and senior mods eventually log in and discover the ongoing chaos. aVo starts targeting them too, and the admin starts banning people. Eventually he identifies all of aVo and bans them.

aVo joins a new server, uses their xray trick to gather resources, and starts demolishing buildings and replacing them with natural-looking terrain. This means that anyone unfamiliar with a specific area will not notice the griefing, ensuring too much time passes for the admins to simply restore the map from backups (due to everyone else's work being lost as well). This episode also establishes the aVo memes of "stealing" (destroying) ships and smashing storage chests, causing the owner to lose all their resources.

When a local notices the damage, aVo hides underground until they leave, then attacks that player's house. When reinforcements arrive, aVo teleports back to spawn.

At this point, aVo is using freely-available utility modifications ("hacks" from now on, to avoid confusion with moderators) for Minecraft, including a full-brightness hack. They are otherwise doing everything manually, from resorce collection to demolishing structures. Even the teleportation feature is a built-in part of the server they're on.

More of the same. aVo starts leaving signs where the buildings they destroyed once stood. They leave when they get bored, not having been caught by anyone.

aVo had only released the previous Spacemonkey videos after being banned. Spacemonkey players re-built, griefed the now-abandoned aVo-built structures, and posted pictures on the aVo forums to gloat. When aVo followed them back to their forums, they found that the admin had encouraged this behavior, and had given them in-game resources to use for the project. aVo finally comes up with the idea of using alt accounts to continue griefing after being banned, and returns to Spacemonkey.

aVo discovers that the server was not rebuilt, but rather restored from backups. That means their griefing supplies are still hidden in their old base. They recover the supplies and re-enact all their old pranks, starting with Dell's bridge. They also start setting up delayed traps, so that the damage can not be easily traced to their alt accounts, and if the server is restored from backups, the traps will be reset as well.

aVo then proceeds to target any of the players who interfered with previous griefing operations, killing them indirectly so that aVo can not be identified in the logs, and using in-game sneak features to escape before being identified by the players. They then expanded on their previous pranks, and also built ugly structures in public areas under the guise of being "noobs" who didn't know better.

Other players eventually noticed aVo's signature style, and the staff started witch-hunting through all the new players. Dell eventually set off the delayed TNT trap while hunting for the much less destructive fence pranks.

aVo, still undetected, sets up more TNT traps. Then they recreate their failed blackout prank in a much better way by removing light sources. This won't be noticed until night falls and monsters start appearing in areas which are supposed to be safe. They also replaced the fence pranks which had been cleaned up.

At this point, aVo is now implementing their own Minecraft hacks, starting by updating an existing xray wallhack from an earlier Minecraft version, so they can see interior blocks as well as exposed blocks (the texture pack trick only shows exposed blocks). This allows them to destroy hidden bases and steal hidden resources, as well as to mine straight towards diamonds (which are used to make the fastest grade of tools and heaviest armor, speeding up demolition and allowing them to kill players with near-impunity). They also use flammable blocks to spread existing fire sources, rather than setting fires themselves (which shows up in the anti-griefing logs).

aVo didn't know that breaking chests was now logged as well, so their alts were eventually banned. However, their major targets had already quit the server at this point, so aVo wasn't terribly upset.

Doridian

At this point, aVo's videos are going viral in the early Minecraft YouTube community. A player from the Doridian server invites aVo to come on and grief there.

aVo's previous targets are all offline or unplayable due to lag from griefing, so they decide to visit Doridian. They discover that Doridian is (shock, horror!) a furry server, which at the time meant that they were considered fair game by most of the internet. They start by smashing chests, which aVo likes because it isn't obviously a coordinated campaign until many players have logged in and noticed their stuff is missing. By then, it's usually too late to restore from backup without causing significant chaos. It also lets them steal lots of useful equipment for later griefing projects.

This server has water and lava buckets disabled (due to their usefulness in griefing), so aVo has to find alternate methods. They continue smashing chests, and eventually find an admin-created stash hidden inside an unbreakable bedrock shell. They look up some Minecraft glitches which allow a player to fall through any block, access and destroy the stash. Unfortunately, that leaves them stuck in the vault. An aVo member spends some time looking up how to write a basic teleportation hack for that version of Minecraft, then uses it to escape.

A second admin vault contains several kinds of blocks that normal players can't normally acquire, including unbreakable bedrock and the block forms of water and lava (remember, buckets are disabled so without these, nobody can use water or lava at all). The previous teleportation trick won't allow them to escape with the loot, and the other trick they know requires more players to pull off. They actually manage to recruit their Spacemonkey enemies Dell and ps3, who log in to Doridian and help them escape!

aVo decides to attack a city located far away from spawn (presumably in hopes of discouraging griefers). They have added a new hack to their toolkit, allowing them to keep their names invisible by locking Minecraft's "sneak" feature on, without having to hold down a key or having their movement restricted as normal. This is a very basic modification, but makes their lives much easier. They then use flammable blocks to spread fire from a lava fountain all around the city, burning it down without leaving anything in the logs. The sneak hack allows them to burn down houses with players still inside, all without being noticed, let alone identified.

aVo continues looting and burning. One member, Krysk, slips up and is identified by a minor mod who has the ability to kick a player off the server but not ban anyone. He spends all his time kicking Krysk while Storm_Surge burns the rest of the city. This drives home the value of sacrificing one member as a distraction while others continue their griefing. The mini-mod eventually realizes what's going on and stops concentrating on Krysk, who resumes griefing as well.

Over the course of several days, aVo steals thousands of diamonds and other loot from players' chests. They stash the loot to equip alt accounts in case of bans. Once the area around the city was thoroughly looted and destroyed, they headed back to spawn, removing all the torches in the tunnel to the city as they went. Other players eventually made their way to the city and noticed the destruction.

When they arrive back at spawn, they find the mini-mod from before, and begin testing a new teleport hack by teleporting around him and trapping him in a box. They then locate and destroy an admin's house.

Storm_Surge has not yet been banned, but Krysk has and is now using an alt account. As they're griefing a new area, one of the players joins aVo's Ventrillo server and starts shit-talking them in song form. After they swap stories for a while, UnknownGamer decides to meet with them at spawn, and join them for a new griefing project: dismantling a floating island. The server begins to lag due to the lighting recalculations this causes, which leads to an admin showing up and banning whoever he catches on the floating island.

Some of the players notice the griefing and bannings in chat, and start talking about aVo. The remaining aVo members play innocent, and the banned members wait until the admin logs off, then log back in under alt accounts.

aVo continues removing the floating island. The other players, including the mods and admins, have realized some of the banned names match accounts aVo uses, and are watching aVo's videos. They shit-talk the supposedly-banned team in the chat, completely missing the griefing going onaround them. aVo builds a massive floating `AVOLITION` sign in the sky where the island once stood. Eventually, someone looks up and notices, and the bannings resume. They switch to new alt accounts to record the final results of their project.

UnknownGamer joins aVo, and his "singing" skills will become very useful later when they start trolling in voice-chat as well as in-game.

aVo joins a new server, and discovers all new players are trapped in an unbreakable bedrock box around spawn, until a mod verifies they have a basic skill level and approves them. aVo tests out their new teleport and fly hacks by escaping the box, steals some equipment, and collects hundreds of lava buckets. They then return to the newbie box and flood it with lava. They also learn a way to identify admin accounts using a particular admin toolbox plugin: flying glass platforms below the player. The admin bans aVo, who return under alts and start killing newbies and destroying their skill-testing projects.

aVo joins yet another new server and gets up to their usual antics. They quickly learn that flying around is an easy way to attract unwanted attention, so their fly hack is less useful than they expected. They then get caught by other players while stealing from chests, and teleport away. This, of course, is also noted in the chat. Luckily for them, no admins are online to ban them.

aVo mostly entertain themselves by flooding things with buckets and smashing chests. Other players on the server start to believe that aVo has hacking tools beyond those which they actually use, such as NoClip, which offends aVo as they accomplished their griefing without such a thing. They eventually start being banned, and return with alt accounts to survey the damage, before being banned again. Storm_Surge in particular is banned by an admin in a "creepy" Ronald McDonald skin.

Reddit

At this point, Team Avolition starts making the front page of Reddit. The Reddit Minecraft community is not happy about aVo.

Reddit starts DDoSing aVo's website and Ventrilo voice-chat server, as well as brigading and doxing aVo members on Reddit.

Meanwhile, Doridian (admin of the Doridian server previously griefed by aVo) has created a tool called MCAdmin. One of its features is a shared ban list. If a player is banned on any three MCAdmin servers, they will be banned on all MCAdmin servers. Doridian also included a backdoor which gave him admin access on any MCAdmin server, and would let him remote-disable any MCAdmin server.

Doridian also had control over the global banlist, and added all the aVo accounts he could find. Unfortunately, his banlist implementation had no real security, so aVo were able to use a tool to simulate server bans, and globally ban any player they wanted. They immediately proceeded to ban Doridian and any of his players they didn't approve of from their visits, as well as top commenters in the Minecraft Reddit thread complaining about aVo.

Doridian was forced to shut down MCAdmin while he upgraded security, cleaned up the ban list, and removed his backdoor. All known aVo members, alts and associates were added to the MCAdmin global banlist.

With an ongoing DDoS from the Reddit community, aVo decided to target the official Reddit Minecraft server at nurd.nu. A sympathetic Redditor prepared a chest full of diamond tools, armor and griefing materials. They proceeded to demolish buildings, replace them with solid chunks of cobblestone, "steal" another boat, and attack various other structures. Storm_Surge was in the process of destroying a greenhouse when an admin appeared and started banning people, so they had to scatter. aVo made sure to show that they had left their Reddit mole all of their stolen diamonds, to encourage others to help them.

aVo returns to the MineRealm server to "steal" another boat. Just as they finish, they are caught by the Ronald McDonald admin and banned again.

aVo fills a church with (difficult to remove) obsidian. BowlOSoup starts watching aVo's videos to find usernames to ban (without logging out), and Storm_Surge uses the opportunity to kill him without implicating himself in the logs. BowlOSoup logs off, and aVo continues destroying things, including the time-out jails, before being banned.

The tool stash aVo had left behind has been confiscated, but most of the damage remains. aVo can't simply steal new tools, as most of the chests are now protected using a server plugin. Instead, they spend a few minutes xray-hacking to mine diamonds and replace their missing equipment. The server is nearly empty at the time, so Storm_Surge scouts some major targets and destroys some targets of opportunity on his own. aVo then returns to the greenhouse from last time to finish demolishing it, and proceeds to their primary target: Mumble City.

They start noticing glass flying carpets, which means an invisible admin is watching them fly around. Their primary accounts are banned for hacking, so they return later under alts. After removing most of the city's central tower, they are caught (due to flying showing up in the server logs) and banned.

aVo returns under new alts and notices that the destroyed tower in Mumble City is being rebuilt, which means the admins are unwilling to simply restore the server from backups to undo their damage. They then locate a new city to attack, and xray for diamonds again, destroying the community mine near the city. They then start destroying only the interiors of the buildings, as there are other players still active in the city.

Once the local players all leave, aVo starts destroying entire buildings. They wreck most of the city before an admin appears and bans them again. They re-appear under new alts just as the admins are surveying the damage to the city. Storm_Surge joins the server's Mumble voice-chat and claims responsibility for the damage. The admins ban him from Mumble as well. aVo wait a while, then decide that if the admins were going to restore from backups, they would have done so by now. They take a short break until the admins let their guard down.

aVo continues destroying the city. Someone else notices that griefing is happening, and distracts the admins by dropping (otherwise disabled and unobtainable) water bucket items all over spawn. This both causes lag and attracts players to collect the "illegal" buckets, which the admins try to hunt down and remove. The admins have to reboot the server to clean up spawn. Meanwhile, the admins are afraid to discuss what's going on in voice-chat, as they (correctly) believe that aVo has an alt on there to record it and add it to the video. This only encourages the second set of griefers at spawn.

The admins take the server down for about 30 minutes, but do not restore from backups. aVo continues destroying the city when the server comes back online, but are caught and have their latest set of alts banned. Around this time, someone told aVo about an exploit which allowed players to instantly break blocks, and aVo added the hack to their toolkit. They return to the city under new alts and start shredding buildings in a matter of seconds.

At this point, the main Reddit Minecraft server is a disaster area, the admins can't even keep it online for any length of time, and they're banning anyone who so much as uses the letters `avo` in chat or commented on the YouTube videos. As destroying the r/Trees treefort on Spacemonkey was what Reddit kept bringing up as their reason for hating aVo, they decide to move over to that subreddit's official Minecraft server. The Enthouse admin had banned all of aVo's primary accounts, but they had plenty of alts at this point. (A side note: aVo didn't buy extra accounts, they were "loaned" usernames by fans who didn't care if their accounts were banned on servers they never intended to play on.)

With their instant-break and fly hacks, aVo didn't even need to prepare tools before destroying anything. They could just fly around shredding whatever they found. Of course, this made them easy to identify, so they tended to scatter whenever somebody came into viewing distance. They made sure to destroy the major landmarks around spawn, then got into a flying chase with an Enthouse player who also had hacks enabled, while shredding everything they passed near, and eventually getting banned.

The Enthouse and nurd admins have combined their banlists to eliminate all of aVo's known alts. nurd's admin also announces that they're trying to dox aVo again. Enthouse has reset to a temporary map due to a mass outbreak of aVo fans griefing the server. aVo now joins the official Reddit creative mode server, which allows players to essentially build with virtual LEGO rather than playing a survival building game. They're slowed down by an IP ban rather than a username ban, but resetting their IPs on the router solves that.

aVo locates r/Trees-related builds and starts shredding them, while conducting an anti-drug PSA on their voice-over. After finishing that, they return the next day to "steal" an airship. Nobody noticed any of this, as all the admins were over on the survival server waiting for aVo to return.

Enthouse started denying that aVo had done any lasting damage to the server (despite the ongoing copycat griefing campaign). This offended aVo, so they threatened to crash the server instead of simply griefing it. Enthouse's owner invited them to try.

aVo gathered the team, joined en masse, and started with their instant destruction hack. The combination of rapid block breaking and hundreds of items all over the ground caused the server to lag horribly. They found several boats to "steal", then destroyed several large buildings. The admins were forced to restore the server from backups, causing multiple players to lose their progress. Enthouse's owner contacted aVo to taunt them, saying that causing the server to lock up and being the cause of rollbacks were not the same thing as crashing the server.

aVo returns to Mumble City, which was built on a floating platform over the ocean. aVo decides to remove the city's foundation layers, causing anyone logging in at the city to fall to their doom. An admin notices what's happening, but accepts Storm_Surge's claim that it's his city, so it's OK, and the destruction continues. A second admin isn't so gullible and bans that account. The next day, attacks resume on NoName City, leading to another ban.

On day three, everyone on the server is talking about how aVo has been banned, as aVo's latest alts are scouting the server. One of the mods had resigned due to being sick of dealing with aVo. They break into teams, with one group killing players at spawn, while the other looks for targets to grief. Turns out that PvP combat was allowed on that server, so killing players at spawn was just fine, if annoying, so it continued with no bans. Unfortunately, that left the admins free to notice the griefing, leading to more bans. aVo would just lay low for a day or two, then return with new alts and destroy a new target until being banned again.

Doridian has declared that he prefers Team aVo over Team Reddit, and reverses their MCAdmin bans, so aVo calls him up on Skype to see what's going on.

Doridian is upset over the outrage on Reddit regarding his MCAdmin backdoor (which was intended for tech support), and has decided that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" now that aVo is griefing Reddit's Minecraft servers instead of Doridian's server (much like several Spacemonkey players and UnknownGamer from Doridian). Doridian also thanks them for demonstrating the flaws in the global banlist system, so they could be fixed, and explains that the global banlist is now curated.

The creative-mode server has been reset, so aVo has a target-rich environment. The new rules discourage the use of particular blocks, and aVo has added a remote-place hack and an invisibility hack to their toolbox, so they can spam these blocks from relative safety. When that starts attracting attention, they also start trying to trap players by spamming blocks around them.

When the admins join voice-chat, aVo starts trolling them there as well. Sincere or not, they try to bribe aVo with the offer of giving them control over the "chaos" (aka anarchy, no-rules) server. aVo isn't interested. The admins start asking what it will take to make aVo go away. aVo decides that if all the admins on voice-chat say "Team aVo deserves ice cream", they'll declare victory and go away. The admins refuse and ban aVo from the voice-chat. (Meanwhile, aVo is still trashing the server.) The admins then told everyone still in voice-chat to leave the server or be banned, and start banning everyone remaining on the server. aVo notices the sudden exodus, so they log out before they can be banned.

(Doridian can be seen as a spectator in this episode, and is banned by the admins for no reason due to proximity to aVo members.)

All the nurd.nu Reddit servers are down, so aVo finds another Reddit-associated server. There were few buildings on the map, and normal combat was disabled, so aVo flew around with their invisibility hack, setting everyone on fire and building offensive shapes. Even admins requiring all players to assemble in one area didn't help, as aVo still had their freecam hack and could set people on fire without moving.

So if you really want to be bothered by Team aVo, you have to do two things: first of all, you have to act stupid, and second you have to act like you're important.

A YouTuber and Minecraft server moderator challenges Team aVo to grief his server. They accept his challenge, and find boats to steal (and other structures to destroy).

MCBans

aVo somehow got into a pissing contest with the owner of MCBans (Firestar), another federated global banlist system. We don't know exactly how it started, because:

Things got somewhat heated between Team aVo, Reddit, and MCBans. We're not uploading Episodes 1-3 right now because they're totally super mad and they might call up their uncle who's a lawyer. Really. They're that mad. To clarify, we aren't scared of their threats and we haven't changed any of our tactics.

aVo starts using the list of servers running MCBans as a "hit-list" for griefing targets. Anyone using MCBans is fair game, anyone else is safe unless they call out aVo. MCBans' admin can end this at any time by putting "aVo deserves ice cream" on the front page of MCBans.

MCBans threatens to respond to "malicious packets from aVo IP ranges" with legal action. aVo points out that all anyone needs to do to make them go away is say "aVo deserves ice cream".

aVo has added a hack to their toolkit which can change the contents of every sign on a server. They test this out on an unnamed MCBans server, changing them all to "Team Avolition likes ice cream". They then find a different MCBans server (tminecraft) where TNT is not disabled, and abuse a duplication glitch to mass-produce TNT. They bomb the hell out of the server, eventually crashing it entirely. (This also shows the wonky client/server desync issues common at the time.) After the server restarts, they resume their bombing.

The meta-attack on MCBans continues:

Firestar was forced to remove the names of the servers from his website, but you can simply Google any admin's name to find the server IP. It's really not an effective way to stop us. If you're a server owner, the best thing you can do is uninstall MCBans from your server so your name isn't on that list.

To all the griefers: APPEAL ALL OF YOUR BANS! It prevents the MCBans staff from distinguishing griefers from the innocent people caught in the crossfire (or socially engineered, like we did in this video). Seriously, just appeal everything.

Firestar has globally banned anyone who might possibly have been involved in the previous griefing episodes, including a large number of innocent bystanders. This, plus aVo's campaign, is severely damaging MCBans' reputation.

aVo joins thunderdome-mc and starts spamming obsidian (a very strong block which is time-consuming and expensive to clean up) everywhere. They livestream the destruction, but MCBans' global ban system doesn't take effect immediately, so even with MCBans banning their accounts, they are able to continue griefing until a local admin identifies them. They decide to multiply their forces and add to the chaos by changing every sign near spawn to read "Rule #1: GRIEFING IS ENCOURAGED!!"

A group of Reddit players were on a video chat, so aVo started trolling that as well. They then discover that, in attempting to ban aVo, MCBans has somehow made aVo unbannable. They reconnect to the server, mock Firestar's inability to do anything about aVo, and use another new exploit to instantly crash the server.

aVo finds a way to gain admin privileges on another server, "steal" a huge airship, and then start banning other players.

More legal threats from MCBans, more refusals to say aVo deserves ice cream.

The Nobility server announces that they will be removing MCBans, but taunts aVo at the same time. As build permissions on the server require a 2-week probation period, aVo decides to grief the voice-chat with loud noises instead, while using an undisclosed inventory exploit to repeatedly crash the Minecraft server. The admins wound up wiping the inventories of every player on the server to eliminate what they thought was the problem.

Reddit Part 2

The MCBans-specific series ends there, and aVo now returns to griefing Reddit-affiliated servers, often still "protected" by MCBans.

For Earth Hour day, aVo joins the MCBans-protected Reddit nurd server and removes all the torches using a new automatic torch-breaking hack, causing monsters to spawn everywhere. The admins attempted to roll back the damage, but missed most of it. During Earth Hour itself, they used an exploit to crash the server. Afterwards, Storm_Surge receives yet another threatening call from AlLnAtuRalX.

(Easter Egg: YouTuber Styxhexenhammer666 can be seen in a comment in the background encouraging the spamming of MCBans' forums!)

Clips from aVo griefing a semi-official Minecraft streaming marathon, featuring major Minecraft YouTube personalities and Minecraft developers. aVo griefs the voice-chat and repeatedly crashes the servers involved. Eventually, the admins patched that exploit, and aVo logged in to actually grief things, but "the server was already ruined. Very few buildings were left." They then repeated the Lights Out treatment on the Weekend of Minecraft servers. The admins ended up just restarting the map entirely, erasing everything ever built there.

A collection of unused griefing footage released a year later, and more threats from AlLnAtuRalX.

UnknownGamer records a CD of his trollish songs, and aVo gets the DJ at an IRL Reddit meetup to play it.

aVo decides to test out their updated hacks for the new Minecraft version, and visit Minerealm again. They find a huge boat to steal. The server has an anti-grief setting which is automatically kicking players for destroying blocks too fast, so they adjust the cooldown timer to avoid it.

Returning to the nurd Reddit server, aVo demonstrates their new hacks by stealing more boats. They have a new method of destroying blocks that won't be recorded in the logs. They then move to another server (looks like the nurd creative server) to test another hack which automatically destroys entire areas around the player, instead of requiring the player to manually break each block. It doesn't appear to work very well, as they go back to using freecam hacks and breaking individual blocks.

aVo find a way to convince the server to tell everyone else that an aVo player is dead, while still allowing the aVo player to continue playing where they "died". They use this to interfere in PvP combat in the Reddit nurd server's arena. The admins are convinced something is wrong with the door control circuits, but it's "dead" aVo players opening the doors from inside.

After a falling out between AllNaturalX and Firestar (AllNaturalX had demanded that Doridian and several others be banned from interacting with MCBans in any way), the nurd Reddit servers are banned from using MCBans services, unbanning everyone banned through that service (including aVo's primary accounts). aVo visits the server, just walking around until they are reported and re-banned, then they contact AllNaturalX on Skype. After poking at that drama, they debate the usefulness of anti-griefing plugins.

aVo joins a roleplay factions server. They are invited to join the Jericho faction, and proceed to steal their stuff and destroy their city, leaving behind a huge AVOLITION sign and crashing the server for good measure.

aVo finds a brand new unmoderated server linked on Reddit, and accidentally discovers a new block duplication glitch while messing around with one another. They cover the spawn area in diamond blocks, then start spamming them around the rest of the server. This causes everyone expecting a survival server to look at the diamonds everywhere, decide it's actually creative mode, and leave.

Challenges

At this point, aVo is mainly targeting servers run by people who challenge aVo, or when players invite them on due to a grudge against the admins.

aVo joins a new server which claims to be in survival mode, but contains a lot of large builds using rare and expensive materials. They destroy a bridge, then use the materials from it to cause lag at spawn as a distraction. They then take advantage of the fact that fluid interactions between lava and water creates cobblestone, which they use to cover builds in cobblestone. (The same technique can be used in a controlled manner for construction, but I very rarely see it applied for that purpose, even to this day.) One mod finally escapes the lag trap at spawn and notices the lava everywhere, banning one set of accounts. They log back in and flood a city.

The admin of this server is both stupid and self-important (the key traits for attracting aVo's attention), challenging aVo when he has an ineffective anti-griefing setup, and attempting to get aVo's website shut down by the hosting provider. aVo waited until Rice-Think's admin lowered his guard and opened the server back up to the public, then attacked.

They found unprotected diamonds and boats at spawn, and (of course) stole both. The admin built a house out of valuable materials and didn't protect that either, so aVo (of course) stole that as well. Some admins notice the griefing, but are distracted by an alt account telling them to look at something else (a large collection of pet wolves).

aVo then finds a huge admin warehouse full of otherwise-unobtainable griefing materials. The whole thing is completely unprotected, so they steal the useful bits, raze the rest, and start landscaping the area where it once stood. An admin shows up, and asks them what they're doing. They say they're building a fort, and (not realizing what used to be there) the admin who had built it offers to help!

aVo tears down an unprotected building, builds an ugly house there, then uses the protection system to claim that plot of land, preventing anyone else from altering it. They then start ripping out the insides of buildings, replacing it with surrounding landscaping, then tearing down the shell when the admins are distracted, leaving apparently undeveloped areas behind.

An admin catches one member, but believes him when he says it was his own house. When Storm_Surge gets caught, he tells the admin that he's patching holes around town, and convinces the admin to give him some more materials.

The owner of the replaced house eventually logs in, and has an admin restore that area using an anti-griefing tool. Unfortunately, the claim system takes precedence, leaving aVo's house embedded inside, and impossible to tear down.

To celebrate Storm_Surge's birthday, aVo livestreams their griefing of Rice-Think. It is completely overrun by aVo fans. UnknownGamer starts "singing" in the voice-chat, and the fans spam the text chat. The server is completely unplayable due to the overload.

aVo tries to call the owner of Rice-Think, but they only reach the answering machine (and leave an obnoxious message, complete with UnknownGamer's singing).

aVo then moves over to the nurd Reddit servers, and the influx of aVo fans again renders the servers unplayable.

One of aVo's most famous videos. A ChaosCraft player leaves a message on aVo's YouTube channel, telling a story of an abusive admin demanding constant cash donations for server upgrades, and even encouraging players to steal from family members and friends in order to donate. After they log in, they discover that it is also a "Christian" server, complete with mandatory virtual church services.

Krysk starts roleplaying as a Satan-worshiper, getting banned repeatedly. Meanwhile, Storm_Surge has located an admin's stash of items, and abuses a glitch to get inside and steal the contents.

aVo starts building a shrine to Satan under the church. An admin, not realizing where they were building, uses a world-edit plugin to excavate most of the space for them. Later, Storm_Surge encounters a glitchy plugin at a shop, and an incompetent admin accidentally gives him infinite credit, allowing aVo unlimited access to blocks and items.

Another aVo player exploits one of the glitchy plugins to gain admin privileges, and starts world-editing the map himself. First they destroy buildings by turning them to sand, then decide to terraform the map to resemble Hell and otherwise leave an atrocious mess. They eventually crash the server by accident. The admin didn't have usable backups, so the entire map wound up being reset.

Someone informed aVo that this server had incompetent admins and poor protection plugins. They find that their old instant-destruction techniques aren't blocked, and proceed to start shredding buildings and replacing them with tree farms. The benefit to this method is that tree growth is treated as a natural process rather than a player-caused change, so the selective-rollback plugin Big Brother can't undo the damage: a restored building would still be full of tree blocks. For the same reason, they dump falling sand all over an underground city. This eventually turns out to be a non-issue, as aVo accidentally corrupts the Big Brother logs by crashing the server at the wrong (right?) time.

A server listed on Reddit with the description "Screw you AVO!" is apparently an irresistable target. Given that they have no protection systems enabled, they're also an easy target. After aVo destroys several buildings, the admins enable some basic anti-cheat systems, which only slows aVo down. After destroying an entire city, Storm_Surge ends the video by requesting "donator status" as offered on their website for bringing large numbers of players (aVo fans) to the server, with the alternative of a second visit by aVo.

Minecraft has implemented a proper, built-in Creative mode (flying enabled, infinite blocks, instant-breaking of blocks, etc) and forgot to add cooldowns to any of the functions. aVo hacks their clients to allow near-instant destruction of entire areas, and tests it out on a poor unsuspecting server. Unfortunately for aVo, the admins have a functional selective-rollback plugin, so they repair the damage almost as fast.

Remembering that the rollback software can only undo player-caused changes, they start flattening areas, then quickly growing trees where buildings once stood. When the destruction is rolled back, the trees remain, filling up the interiors. The admins try selectively deleting all tree-type blocks from the area, but that destroys landscaping and log buildings as well. The admins eventually have to lock the server down to approved players only.

PhantomCraft's admins did in fact give Storm_Surge donor status on the server and unbanned him, after restoring the destroyed city. They apparently decided that the advertising potential outweighed any damage he might do. Unfortunately, the aVo fans aren't exactly what one might call "good neighbors", and the server regulars aren't terribly happy about the new arrivals.

After some complaining in the chat about "griefing this, aVo that" by one of the other donors (Coyote), Storm decides to build one of aVo's signature "swastars" out of unbreakable bedrock, hovering over spawn. After learning that Coyote is a girl, Storm starts pretending to propose to her. This becomes slightly awkward when it's revealed that Coyote's mom also plays on the server, but Mom apparently finds the whole thing hilarious. He eventually wins Coyote's "hand in marriage" by building a Nyan Cat house for her. All in all, a surprisingly wholesome episode by aVo standards.

"No one Deserves Ice Cream" is apparently an unacceptable rule in aVo's book, so they decided to visit this server. After getting caught xray-hacking for diamonds, they decide to steal an airship (as is tradition). Nobody noticed this, as (unfortunately for the other players) while attempting to disable xray-hacking with a plugin, the admin managed to remove all diamonds and other ores from the map. This resulted in a complete map reset, as it was unfixable. Admin incompetence in setting up the anti-grief plugins resulted in two more resets in quick succession, driving most of the players away without aVo doing anything else to the server.

After being banned from a completely different game for griefing, aVo discovers that the same site hosts a Minecraft server, which they destroy in revenge. Nothing too exciting here.

aVo chooses a poor, unsuspecting creative-mode server to test their latest hacks in. They start using an area-of-effect destruction plugin, flying around and shredding the world. They then render an entire region of the server unplayable by spamming minecarts everywhere. After being locked in a jail for griefing, they use the webchat interface attached to the server to spam the Minecraft chat.

This server temp-bans players for 15 days whenever they die. aVo tries to depopulate the server, using various combat hacks. One admin starts trolling them right back, setting traps for them and unbanning killed players. He was demoted when aVo reported his behavior.

The admins on this server are very concerned with keeping the spawn area presentable, so aVo decides to redecorate with a TNT cannon. When they find that their primary target is protected from any damage via a plugin, they dig a trench around spawn with duplicated TNT, then use the rules listing what not to do as a to-do list.

A silly episode. aVo spends half of their time following around a player with a female avatar, rapidly toggling the sneak function to simulate a "humping" motion. When this attracts the attention of other players who attempt to "defend her honor", aVo kills them, then continues humping. (Amusingly, none of the other players are willing to believe that the female aVo team member is, in fact, a girl as well.)

aVo gains admin privileges on the server somehow, and starts using the world-edit plugin to troll players and destroy things.

With major open Minecraft servers with rules becoming a thing of the past (most either use whitelists or are anarchy (no-rules) servers, and any server of significant size is now using working anti-cheat plugins), aVo decides to grief the latest Minecraft trend: minigame servers. They eventually manage to gain admin priveleges, and start destroying the map. It just isn't the same, and aVo moves on from Minecraft.