Mistral Network
The History of Mistral Network
Mistral Network started life as the Yognau(gh)t Community Network, created by Z0eff as a vanilla Minecraft network to replace the discontinued Yognau(gh)t Community Pack modpack he had created, managed and hosted a server for. I had been a very small part of the YCP as I helped create and update the modpack's main menu, and was also running a custom modpack and server for a former member of the Yogscast.
When Z0eff told me he planned to launch a network of vanilla servers, each one themed for different members of the Yogscast, we started planning to merge the subscriber-only server I was running, and integrate it into the network. However, that plan didn't pan out, and we ended up shutting down the sub server before we could integrate it. At this point, I joined the YCN to help Z0eff in managing the different servers, and I became more involved with the Yogs community as a whole.
At this point, that former member of the Yogscast was removed and I stepped away from his community entirely. I moved to host a modded server for Duncord - Duncan's community. Over time, interest in the modpack server dwindled, and we decided to instead create a Skyblock server for the YCN as the Duncord server. This was the first server I'd worked on fully and it was definitely a learning curve!
With the addition of the Duncord server, the YCN now had servers for ThatMadCat, Duncan, Radders, Geestar, Vadact and a couple of non-yog based survival servers. Things were going great for us, we had a lot of frequent players, we were growing at a healthy rate, and we were working with other Yogscast members to create servers for their communities to join too.
Then one day, I entered the Lobby server and bumped into a couple of players who were hanging around the work-in-progress portal to the upcoming The Spiffing Brit server, and I started chatting with them, letting them know that the server wasn't open yet, we were still working with his team to set it up etc. As Z0eff had been working with Spiff's team to set it up, I had no idea I was actually talking to Spiff's community admin Connorbrow and his lead developer for the server Randompersson. When they told me who they were, I started talking more with them, and became a more active member of the Spiff MC team, working to set up and integrate the server into the YCN.
It was around this time that ThatMadCat was removed from the Yogscast, and (most likely) due to our affiliation with him, with his server being our most popular server, multiple members of the Yogscast decided to separate their servers from the YCN. We continued to host and manage the servers, but they became isolated servers operated by their respective communities. This was the point Z0eff also decided his time with the YCN had concluded, and stepped down as an owner, handing the reins of the YCN fully to me.
With the newfound responsibility of the entire network, and not being able to dedicate the time and effort it required, along with Minecraft getting it's biggest server-breaking update yet, I made the tough decision to close the network on June 7th 2020. A closure that lasted just 27 days.
Z0eff reached out to me and informed me that he was going to relaunch the YCN, now branded as the Yogscast Community Network, with a new mc.yogs.net domain. Initially starting as a lobby and a single survival server, Ravscraft. Built in the latest version of Minecraft, and with a lot of new features we'd been lacking in the Yognau(gh)t Community Network, we spent the next month creating what became known as the colour servers. Multiple survival servers with limited world sizes, each containing a different range of biomes for players to explore. The YCN now had: Ravscraft, Blue, Orange, Red, Purple and Yellow servers.
But, all good things must come to an end, and again Z0eff decided to step away fully this time, handing the servers to myself to host and manage. Due to the limited resources I had available at the time, I was only able to maintain three of the survival servers, plus the lobby and the proxy (used to connect to the network and direct players to the correct servers when they join one). On October 24th 2020, we discontinued Red, Orange and Yellow, leaving just Ravscraft, Blue and Purple. This actually became a benefit for the network though, bringing our spread out playerbase closer together, and we saw our numbers increase again!
On December 23rd, we shut down Ravscraft as we had a new version almost ready to go, with some final adjustments and tweaks, Ravscraft 2 was launched on February 8th 2021. This came with a new world, updated systems and mechanics, and paved the way for the planned overhaul of Red and Purple survival.
And then, just as things were really taking off, with work on minigames servers, a creative server and more, disaster struck. The Fire.
March 10th, 2021 - I was made aware by multiple players that the network had gone offline and I was unable to access the server to reboot it. After some back and forth with OVH Cloud (the provider we were using to host the YCN) about it, I was informed that the building our server was hosted in had experienced a fire, and they had shut off all power to the building while firefighters were tackling the blaze. It was worse than we could have imagined. The fire started one floor down and two rooms over from where our system was located, and the fire resulted in the full destruction of two buildings, and half of a third.
Normally, this would be a small set back, we'd set up a new server hosted somewhere else, load in the backup and be back online within 24 hours. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have any backups of the network. Not because I hadn't taken any, but I had been hit by a Zeus virus, which infected both my personal PC, and the webserver I was using to run all my websites (and host off-site backups of the YCN). This meant the YCN was truly gone. (This is why we also rebranded the YCN for a short time at this point too!)
This didn't dissuade us though, Surveillance (my server manager) managed to get a new system up and running in just a handful of hours after we knew the total loss had occurred, and I got to work building a new temporary server for our players to join while we rebuild the YCN from scratch. After 5 days with me working 20 hours to rebuild not just the infrastructure to host the network, but a fully functioning server, with a spawn area, new plugins etc. we launched the Temp Survival server on March 15th 2025.
Now, I was completely burnt out from this, and took a couple weeks off to rest and recharge, happy that out community had somewhere to play together. I still made bug fix tweaks to the server, and made sure everything was running smoothly, and the Temp Survival was probably the YCN server I played the most on across the entire YCN history!
After my break, I started working on the YCN 3.0. During this time, I also reached out to The Yogscast regarding the use of their brand in ours, as I planned to open donations to help with the running costs of the network (running a network is not cheap). In those emails, I outlined that the cost of the YCN was becoming unmanageable on personal income alone, to this day I still don't know the total that Z0eff had spent on his side of hosting, but from when I took over hosting, I'd spent over £6000 on hosting, Spigot plugins to improve the player experience, web hosting for the yogs.net domain etc.
After several emails, and being passed between Lewis, Harry and Rich Keith (The CEO of The Yogscast), we were asked to not use the Yogscast name in our branding, as we weren't affiliated with them, and it could cause confusion. We were also asked to stop using the yogs.net domain for the same reasons. Aside from that, they were happy for us to continue operating and accept donations to help cover costs. After long discussions with the YCN team, we arrived on our new name and branding - The Mistral Network!
SoftmintSheep drew our logo, and we went through dozens of colour schemes until we arrived at our yellow and blue combination. We chose the Mistral name as it kept our history of The Yogscast with Mistral City being a location in Shadow of Israphel, our logo being an airship from the series too!
With the new brand, and a new network ready to go, we launched Mistral Network to the world on May 11th 2021. Starting with a survival server using Towny to encourage players to work together, more servers with different gamemodes were being developed alongside. I was still the sole developer of the network at this point, which made updated and additions slow to add. In October, we made the decision to separate from the Yogscast Discord server, and created our own Discord server, which allowed us to be more community focused and gave us more options outside of Minecraft. Shortly after this, we updated the network to the latest Minecraft version
It was around this time that personal circumstances resulted in me being unable to work on anything Mistral for an extended period of time - I won't go into details here, but I was essentially made homeless after my mother experienced a mental break. This resulted in Mistral becoming stale, and SoftmintSheep answered the call, creating a temporary server that was being updated frequently. I cannot express how thankful I was for Sheep taking the initiative and keeping Mistral alive while I was unable to.
Once my situation settled again, I started working on Mistral 2, an overhaul of the survival server. I'd re-evaluated the plans for the network, and decided that launching multiple gamemodes wasn't feasible yet, and would require a larger team. I spoke with SoftmintSheep and Ooppen, who had both expressed interest in helping develop new servers for Mistral, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to revitalise Mistral.
And so, after more internal discussion, an evaluation of our financial situation and multiple members of the team stepping down, the tough decision was made to discontinue Mistral Network on Sunday 14th August 2022. World downloads for the different survival worlds from the Temp Survival and Mistral 1 servers were made available on the Mistral Network website, donations were disabled, and an announcement shared with the community.
A timeline of Mistral Network created by Eman7Blue
What's happened since Mistral shut down in 2022
Since then, I've moved to FiveM based GTA Roleplay, invited by a friend I joined a server and later became their community manager. After some more time, I was invited to become an owner of that server. I continued playing there for around a year before I stepped away for a multitude of reasons I really don't want to drag back into the light, and I moved to a new community called CGH - Community Gaming Hub.
Joining CGH as a player, I established myself in their city, and created a website guide for new players, submitting it to their ownership team, I was invited to join the team as a Web Developer to help improve their website and create a toolkit for their Police and EMS departments - The Info Hub.
Over time, CGH merged with a Red Dead Redemption server called Ravenshire Frontiers, and the RP Collective was formed. The CGH server was shut down, and a new, improved server was created - Raven City Roleplay. I was still the Web Developer for them, and at this point I'd also joined the social media team, using my experience in editing from my College degree to create trailers for them.
In the downtime between CGH's closure and Raven City's launch, I felt inspired to relaunch Mistral Network the way we'd always wanted it to be, fully custom-coded plugins that gave us full control over the experience. Once of the GTA RP developers offered to join me in this, and his skills were unmatched. We started working on a core server, getting as far as a few core systems, and the particle boots Sheep had been asking me for for years. However, it quickly became apparent that I didn't have the time or funds to pull this off in a way that Mistral deserved, and the relaunch development dwindled to a halt.
I made the mistake of teasing the return in the Mistral Discord, without consulting any of the original team. I was excited and blinded by the thought of a valiant return, and completely overlooked that, and again, I apologise to Sheep, Ooppen and Sunxy for that. I also apologise to our community who got excited by the prospect of a return, just for me to let them down.
The complications of running a network
As I mentioned a little in the history of Mistral, running and maintaining a Minecraft Network is not an easy task to undertake. The financial burden is surprisingly high, with server rental costs for a system that would be able to handle the load of multiple Minecraft servers costing around £120-150/month, plus other costs such as development time, pre-made plugins etc. the annual cost of a network can easily exceed £2000! That's not taking into account the amount of time it takes to code plugins, source and configure pre-made plugins, setting up the hosting machine to run the servers efficiently, moderate and manage the community, grow and expand the network etc.
Most networks like Mistral run entirely on volunteers. There's no big corporation behind it bankrolling it, hiring full time developers to run and maintain it. For the majority of Mistral Network's run, I was soloing everything. Development, maintenance, marketing, funding from my pocket. After doing this for years, I hit burn-out, physically dreading turning on my PC to work on Mistral, but knowing if I didn't I'd be letting everyone down. I always had this unspoken pressure behind me, pushing me to find a way to make Mistral unique, to reinvigorate the network and bring in new players. In the past, our Yogscast connection was our thing. It's what made us different to all the other Minecraft networks out there, and it allowed us to grow with the Yogscast's community. When we lost that connection, we became just another network in a sea of thousands.
Plans for the future
While I don't know what the future holds, I would love to be able to relaunch Mistral Network again some day in some capacity. It's always been a goal at the back of my mind, and the decision to discontinue the network three years ago has stuck with me as an unavoidable regret. I truly loved running Mistral, it became my baby.
However, I fear too much time has passed since then, Minecraft servers have evolved so much since then, the competition we would be facing have grown into more than I'd be able to handle alone. If I were to launch Mistral again, I'd want to make it something truly unique, setting it apart from all the other networks around, but I lack the skill, time and motivation that would require.
At this point, I feel that it's better to leave Mistral as a fond memory than revive and watch it wither away. If I do some day decide to return to running Minecraft servers, it won't be under the Mistral name. Although I will always love Mistral, and everyone who has been a part of the journey, the story of Mistral has come to a close.