You know, I used to assume that most MCYT SMP's treat death the same way, like a joke. Like - ya know - it's what half the pranks on their server involve, everyone kind of waves it off as no big deal, if it happens it happens - all because of infinite respawn. Go big or go home. Blow your friends up. Drop anvils on their heads. Drop them into death pits. Who cares? Excepting, of course, SMP's like the DSMP that have life limits written into their canon, I figured every other SMP laughed in the face of death on a character level. Like, even on the Traffic Life server, where the point of the game is to survive, they still had a laugh over death in most cases. Jimmy dies first every time? HILARIOUS! Joel's murder attempts lose him like four lives in one session? PRICELESS! Sure, there's more weight to death on the Life servers, but surely the normal standard must be to treat it with hilarity and friendly chaotic intent...right?
Except.
Except.
Except I never factored in that my main source of MCYT content is Hermitcraft of all things, and it never occurred to me that the Hermits are just batshit crazy.
Even in watching Empires x HC crossover, it kind of stood out to me that there's a difference in the way both groups approach the game (other than the obvious RP factor of course), and it's only now that I'm realizing what the difference is. Like yes, true, death isn't a big deal on Empires either because they have respawn. But where the Empires members can brush it off if it happens, or where they might play the occasional joke that kills their friends (Jimmy, jail, case in point), the Hermits go to insane lengths and have insane standards where death is involved. They play deadly pranks that are excessive to the nth degree, they lay traps that are more convoluted than is ever necessary, and that's a standard that carries over to every other thing they do.
Sure, most other players might do most of the same things as any Hermitcraft member to some extent - we all build, we all play pranks, we all banter, we all get silly playing the block game - but the way the Hermits do it, on the scale they do it, to the degree they do it? With that as a personal standard, it'd make anyone look like some kind of insane and unmatchable and undefinable god.
