January 2026 - New Year, New Start
Hello EarthPol!
Welcome to our first blog post of 2026. January was an exceptional month that built upon the momentum we saw in December 2025, which you can read about here. This month's post looks at the progress, milestones, and numbers that made the start of the year such an important moment for EarthPol.
Landmark Version
I’m pleased to announce that this version of EarthPol is now officially the longest-running in the server’s five-year history. Before Astra, the record was held by Nebula, which lasted 235 days. Astra has currently been online and active for 0 days!
Since June 2025, our server has grown and thrived, and we’re excited to soon surpass a full year of uptime. This effort would not have been possible without our dedicated staff and amazing community!
Server Growth
Below are some key performance indicators of the server's growth this month:
What makes these numbers exciting is not just the growth itself, but the consistency behind it. Nearly every key metric increased by double digits compared to December, showing that EarthPol is not experiencing a short spike in activity, but sustained and compounding growth across players, towns, nations, and residents.
Furthermore, these new players are not only joining but staying and shaping the political landscape that makes EarthPol unique.
Website Statistics
These website statistics are especially important because they reflect player behavior outside the game. More players are using EarthPol Observatory, searching shops, tracking nations, and engaging with EarthPol’s data tools, which means the website is becoming an extension of gameplay rather than just a reference page.
Vote Statistics
Community Highlights
Social Media
This month we saw incredible growth on YouTube and TikTok, especially as some of our videos were able to cross the virality threshold. One of our TikTok videos managed to reach 700k+ views!
What's next?
- Towny Guide: We have a new and improved Towny video guide that is in the final stages of production and will be released sometime in February.
- Short-Form Bank: We have begun to create an extensive backlog of daily short-form videos which will allow us to have flexibility in working on larger long-form projects and to begin uploading two shorts everyday.
- Improved Workflows: Thanks to some recent advancements, we have made our content creation workflow more productive and efficient, allowing for more shorts to be created in less time.
Development
With the server growing at this pace, we shifted much of our focus in January toward strengthening EarthPol’s technical foundations. Many of the changes below are not immediately visible in gameplay, but they greatly improve the accuracy, stability, and long-term reliability of core systems.
Several of these developments were originally planned for a future major update, but we chose to release them early to support the server’s current growth.
SiegeWar Improvements
- SiegeWar Backend Update: SiegeWar now supports tracking Banner Control and Penalty Points for addon plugins and includes unique siege identifiers to distinguish repeated sieges on the same town.
- SiegeStats: Siege statistics have been expanded to track all point events, including kills, deaths, banner captures, and penalty points, both per session and per siege. Due to structural changes in SiegeWar, existing tables were reset, which should be the last time this is necessary. The /siegestats command provides detailed statistics and leaderboards for sieges, allowing players to track performance both globally and within individual sieges.
/siegestats current: View your stats in the current active siege./siegestats profile [player]: View global totals for a player across all sieges./siegestats top [stat] [page]: View the global leaderboard for a specific stat./siegestats [siege] top [stat] [page]: View the leaderboard for a specific siege./siegestats [siege] player [player]: View a player’s stats within a specific siege./siegestats [siege] kills [player]: View who a player killed during a specific siege.
- New SiegeWar Stats Page: A new
/siegesendpoint is available on the EarthPol Observatory website, check it out! - Death Message Cooldown: A 30-second cooldown has now been added to death messages when a custom lore weapon with an incrementing kill counter is involved. The kill counter will still increment but this is intended to limit chat spam.
- Live Siege Tracker: We’ve launched a live Siege Tracker that gives real-time visibility into active sieges, ongoing sessions, and results.
These SiegeWar and SiegeStats improvements mark the first time in EarthPol’s history that sieges can be tracked with complete historical accuracy. Every battle session, kill, and capture is now recorded in a way that allows for reliable leaderboards, analytics, and external tools. This lays the groundwork for future features that were previously impossible to build.
Updated Lobby
- KitPvP: KitPvP is now available in the lobby, featuring a live leaderboard to track your progress.
- Domination/Revenge Kills: Similar to mechanics seen in other games, if a player is killed three times by the same player without any deaths, they will be marked as "Dominated." If the dominated player kills the person who is dominating them, they will get a "Revenge" kill.
What's next for the lobby?
- EarthPol Museum: Our intention is to bring back a bigger and better EarthPol Museum that does not impact performance.
- Parkour Timer: We are currently working on our own custom Parkour Timer plugin to be added to the lobby.
- Tutorial Section: We are interested in expanding upon our guides and having a dedicated tutorial area within the lobby for new players.
Security Upgrades
- Vulcan AntiCheat: With Folia support now available, Vulcan has returned to EarthPol, making us one of the first Folia-based servers to implement it. Having used Vulcan prior to Folia, we’re excited to bring it back as we expect it will catch cheaters more efficiently and create a fairer experience for everyone.
- Custom VPNShield: Our custom-built anti-VPN system improves alt account detection and helps us maintain the high standards of security and fairness we uphold.
- Wiki Account Verification: An email is now required when creating a new wiki account. This improvement helps protect the EarthPol Wiki against griefing while ensuring account security.
API Changes
- /shops API: No longer returns empty shops, shops priced over 100,000G, or shops outside the primary world.
- /sieges API: Now correctly returns battleSession timers in long format, making it easier to build automated notifications.
- SiegeWar & SiegeStats:
- Fully rebuilt siege system
- Tracks each siege individually
- Records every battle session within a siege
- Tracks all kills during each session
- Tracks every banner capture point earned
Leaderboards are now accurate, historical stats work properly, and points are tracked correctly across the entire war system.
EarthPol Observatory Updates
/shops: Now automatically recommends the most viewed item stacks for easier access./shops: Continues to provide auto-suggestions even if a space is used instead of _ in item names./nations: Deleted nations are no longer displayed, but data is retained for an upcoming reports feature./towns: Deleted towns are no longer displayed, but data is retained for a future feature set.
1.21.11 Update
On January 19, EarthPol officially updated to 1.21.11, which includes many amazing features such as shelves, lances, and copper golems.
Additional Changes
- Item Pickup Priority: Our new custom solution temporarily restricts newly dropped items, including weapons, armor, tools, and rare materials, to their original owner for 5 seconds to prevent theft during mining, drops, or container breaks.
- In-Game Calendar: We’ve added /calendar, an in-game system that lets players view upcoming events, community activities, and server-wide moments directly within Minecraft and reduce reliance on Discord.
- Mapcolor Rework: For Premium users,
/mapcolornow supports two options, border and area, allowing you to set the outline and fill colors of towns within your nation using the format/mapcolor [option] [color]. - New Vote Site - Our server has now been added to Minecraft Server List (MCSL).
- Added more emojis like
:joy:,:sob:,:pensive:,:nerd:,:cookie:,:cake:,:party:,:fire:,:robot:,:gem:,:balloon:and:eyes:to translate in-game to their unicode equivalent.
Many of these smaller changes are part of a broader goal to make EarthPol feel more alive from inside the game itself. Features like the in-game calendar, map color improvements, and item pickup priority all contribute to a smoother and more immersive experience for both new and veteran players.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that led to players being kicked when using Easyplace.
- Fixed an anvil bug that allowed for Lunge V.
- Cleaned up the Custom Recipes page to be updated and user-friendly.
What's next?
- New Major Update: Currently, we are on track to release our next major update in mid-February.
- Website Improvements: We are looking for a Front-End Developer who is interested in reorganizing the EarthPol website in preparation for future expansion. If you are interested, please reach out to
@georgeorwells1984on discord.
Don't forget to also read our thoughts on Hytale and why EarthPol will not be pursuing any venture in the game: Hytale Blog Post.
Looking Ahead
Great communities are built through consistency, care, and shared effort over time. The statistics throughout this post show that EarthPol is experiencing steady, sustained growth, with players not only arriving but choosing to stay, build, trade, compete, and contribute to something larger than themselves.
This has been a strong and encouraging start to the year. It gives us confidence not only in where EarthPol is today, but in where it is headed. If January is any indication, 2026 will be the year of EarthPol.
— MrTytanic
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