Hi friends!

I am finally here to tell you what we have been up to. TLDR - Short and sweet, we are fully updating to the latest version. The server will be version 1.20+. Keep reading!

Island Clash has been on a base version of 1.9 since May 2016 and then allowed versions up to and including 1.12. We had to change something, nothing would improve staying where we were.

We had several options to look at during season 3 regarding the future of IC. Here is a quick rundown of our options,

• Revert to 1.8 for stable PvP, arguably the most popular version with older players who are dedicated to said version.
• Go full Bedrock (and always the latest version). Bedrock is succeeding and will continue to grow compared to Java, which sees fewer players.
• Allow players to join on all versions (1.9+), which opens us up to a massive pot of new players. The easiest option.
• Update the base version to the latest, 1.20, which does the above.
  

ALL options have downsides and drawbacks with varying difficulty and time/commitment.

When I asked a group of community members their thoughts about us moving to 1.20, it was a lot of "ehh.." but followed the realisation that it makes complete sense. That might be your first reaction - or you'll be the few I asked who were immediately happy. 1.20 gives us the best advertising opportunities, opens us up to the biggest and most active community, and gives us 11 versions of extra MC content.

Where are we at now with updating?

Ooo boy, it has been long. It took a very long time to get our custom Spigot upgraded. The original dev tried to make time but was unable to. Linc came out from the ashes, saved the day, and got this done with Ryan's help and advice from others. We have finished going through the backend, updating all our code and making it work with all the changes. We are currently on the mountain of work, which is front-end. We have a working 1.20 hub server, albeit not much is functional yet, but it's the start! Part of this update included the essential job of getting brand-new boxes to replace our crazy old ones.
We will need help searching every aspect of the server for bugs and issues. If you are interested in helping, please PM me on Discord. I will be looking for players who have played IC for a long time and know the ins and outs of gameplay.

Season 4 Content

At the moment, we haven't decided on the final form of S4. There will be the massive change of not being seven years out of date; however, given the upgrade being so huge and time-consuming, I am unsure if there will be any new gameplay features. With or without new gameplay, we will focus on improving the game's current state.
A huge thanks to Aiboh, Linckode, Ryan, and Stephen for dedicating their free time to IC and making this possible!

Thank you so much for your time and patience. We are excited to update IC and bring it to more players.

-Beth and the team