Hello and welcome to another RetRollSpective, where we reflect on the history of marble athletes that have competed in the tournaments of Jelle’s Marble Runs. This time, we’re not going to focus on the history of marble athletes, but on The Marblebase, the unofficial Discord server for all things Jelle’s Marble Runs. Read on to find out how this server has connected the community!
(Design Credits: Spex)
Known internationally as a place where marbles can “meet and converse with fans around the world”, The Marblebase is an online server of about 9000 members that has become a major hub of discussion for the teams and tournaments of Jelle’s Marble Runs over the years. Although it may be something we take for granted, you may be surprised how important this server is not just to marble sports, but to the world of Marblearth.
The Base of All Marble Runs (Pre-2017)
Since the dawn of the online age, The Marblebase has been a unique location for marbles to gather on the Internet. The server has existed under different forms and different aliases throughout its history but has consistently served one essential purpose: connection.
The Marblebase’s beginnings as an online chatroom, developed by upstart developer Spheroid from Zuro and hosted on the Internet, limited the depths of its connections to the technology available at the time. That said, the feat of instant messaging captivated personalities across Marblearth, as they began using the chatroom to meet new friends, discuss current events, organize online game campaigns, and share music. The chatroom eventually expanded beyond a single channel to include categories, such as #general, #serious-topics, #gaming, #music, and, #sports.
Spheroid’s presence in Zuro led to many of the city’s residents using the online chatroom, including future athletes for the Kobalts, Azure, Royal, Cerulean, and Dodger. During their studies as doctoral students in mid-2014, the four friends were in the thick of a Marbles & Monoliths campaign when they saw the #sports channel light up with a notification. A user named Sapphire had shared a viral featurette about the rising popularity of marble sports tournaments, and the friends got together in person to watch the video together from their apartment.
Sapphire, an athletics trainer from the nearby city of Elsham, had connections to Knikkegen: the host city of their “Marble League” sports tournament. Upon sharing the featurette in the #sports channel, The Marblebase as an online chatroom changed forever. Not only did #sports become dominated by discussions about the Knikkegen Marble League – #music was flooded with comments praising the soundtrack of the tournament; #gaming discussed ideas for a “Marble League” online game; #serious-topics was filled with comments praising Jelle for their work on the tournament and push through adversity; #general became a hub of discussion for all things Jelle’s Marble Runs, from discussion of their marble run projects across Marblearth such as the Eden Project in Cornroll to speculation about JMR’s next endeavors.
As for Sapphire, their activity on the Marblebase in mid-2014 led them to connect with the marbles that would become the athletes of the Kobalts, two-time Marble League Showdown victors.
“This was something else. It felt like a calling,” reflected Azure, the team’s Captain. “It would have been impossible for us to receive that calling if we did not have the opportunity to connect with Coach [Sapphire]. The Marblebase gave us that calling.”
Although the Kobalts’ application for the 2015 Knikkegen Marble League was not accepted, the team kept training. In 2016, they submitted an application for the rebranded Marble League, which was expanded to accept teams on an international rather than regional basis, and were one of the few teams to be accepted. The Kobalts placed ninth overall, a welcome start to their Marble League career, and a moment of vindication for the fan’s massive following online.
“It may be hard to imagine now,” Coach Sapphire admitted, checking the #roles-info channel to find only 220 fans repping the Kobalts in the present Marblebase Discord. “But we didn’t shy away from building a fan following on the premise that we met in an online chatroom. Ironically, that fan following was what led to the end of the service as we knew it…but the beginning of something truly amazing.”
In the months following the 2016 Marble League, the Marblebase as a chatroom began to struggle, with its increased membership causing latency issues, data losses, and online outages. Despite efforts by Spheroid to keep the website active, fans became frustrated at its frequent issues and looked to other social avenues to continue discussing the Marble League. One such forum hosted on Reddit, r/MarbleLeague, was founded in June 2017, becoming a community base for discussion of JMR. The business’s official presence on other platforms, such as MarBook and Twitter, also gave the community ways to message each other.
What all of those platforms lacked was the ease of instant messaging that the Marblebase had once provided – its endless flow of conversation that connected marbles to each other, and to the growth of sports, went missing once the online chatroom announced it was discontinuing its services, thanking its users for participating. Its users, among them Limers fan Lego, were unsatisfied, and began planning a new base for discussions on the Discord platform, headquartered in the booming technology area of Sancitron:
“[I still] wanted a place where I could talk to other people about the Marble League, mainly friends and anyone else interested,” Lego expressed in a recent interview. “Looked for a server but couldn’t find one, so figured I’d make it. Felt I could run it since pat and I had lots of experience running MarbCraft servers in the past.”
The Discord Era (2017-2018)
Lego and pat, a Gliding Glaciers fan, came together on Discord to bring that experience to users who were once active on The Marblebase. On 18 December 2017, the two posted an announcement on the online chatroom: they were opening a “Marble League Discord” server in hopes of bridging the connections that were once made purely online, within a platform more secure and with more longevity and potential.
Another up-and-coming fan, a musician and member of the recently established International Marble Sports Committee (IMC) known as Mellacus, saw potential in the initiative and offered to help the two friends with getting it off the ground. Lego and pat gladly accepted and welcomed them as a moderator just four days after the launch.
As word of the server spread, fans from all corners of the internet started to roll in, the vast majority sharing their passion for their team and marble sports in general in a friendly and welcoming way, posting their fan art and bantering about their team’s success and failures. Discord’s “roles” feature allowed fans to take the colors of their favorite team on the server, initially by asking a mod for their role of choice in a specific chat.
Unfortunately, not everyone was as keen to follow the rules as the majority of visitors. One of the first challenges for the growing team of volunteers running the server was a marble that went by the name Pamplemousse101 – an overzealous Limers fan who regularly got in trouble for encouraging those who were attending marble sports events to bring trash to throw onto the field. They were eventually banned for posting a video of them trying to break into the Savage Speeders’ stadium, claiming it was “for the meme”. Pamplemousse101 was also one of the many marbles that tried to launch a rival server that never caught on, the “Jelle’s Marble Server”. It lasted about two months before being shut down as the few marbles that did join were turned away by their frequent posts begging people to listen to their new podcast – each episode was an hour of them ranting to themselves about the art of trash throwing.
As the 2018 Marble League approached, interest in the server grew, which eventually attracted members from the IMC and its official media partner, the Marble Sports Performance Network (MSPN). With this increased presence, the “Marble League Discord” joined the committee’s communication strategy and became one of the main spaces for discussion and breaking news about the latest events.
The support also brought another IMC member to the server staff: Hershy, head of MSPN, who also provided some graphic assets for JMR. The news outlet gained a dedicated chat, where fans could talk about blog posts on the Marble League website (which included the original RetRollSpectives by Stynth), criticize the “1 on 1” interviews with ML athletes, take a behind-the-scenes look, and more. Very few other news outlets accompanied MSPN in reporting about the newest Marble League, but All the Marbles, a series covering breaking news and rumors, and Power Rankings, a collection of predictions by RandomTonio, did just that.
However, the “Marble League Discord” experienced significantly less activity as the 2018 Marble League drew to its natural conclusion. Despite the miraculous upset that the Midnight Wisps led against the Savage Speeders, the excitement from the results of the season quickly died off, and fans went inactive as a result. The fans who stayed looked to other marble sports competitions to discuss – giving Hershy, head of MSPN, an idea: they would run a virtual sports tournament simulation series for fans of the server to follow.
Discussions about the first two seasons of “Marble Mayhem” were what the server needed in the Marble League offseason to maintain a reasonable level of activity. Perhaps inspired by the idea of offseason competitions, JMR decided to organize their own events, inviting all of the active Marble League teams to compete in special events during the 2018 Marble Rally. While these events were successful in gaining attention in other social spheres, they were less effective in the Discord, which had somewhat pivoted away from JMR’s organized sports – save for conversations about Red Number 3’s legendary season.
The anticipation surrounding the incoming Qualifiers for the 2019 Marble League, coupled with the return of the Hubelino Tournament, helped bring interest in JMR back to the server. Community members that had taken a hiatus for months went online again to speculate about which water events the Oceanics would host, who would make it through Qualifiers, what updated logos would look like, and an endless stream of other ideas. Excitement grew even in a moment of crisis – caused by the accidental deletion of the Jelle’s Marble Runs YouTube channel – as old videos were published to the new channel under a consistent upload schedule.
Although this reset was shocking and unprecedented, it led to the growth of the community as we know it today. Following a suggestion from RetRollSpective writer and server member, Stynth, the Discord server was renamed “Jelle’s Marblebase”. In addition to being a neat homage to the server’s origins as The Marblebase chatroom, the renaming also demonstrated respect for Jelle Bakker and their passion for building marble runs and organizing marble sports – a passion that would soon be shared with thousands of fans.
Growth and Community (2019)
The buildup to the 2019 Marble League began with the Qualifiers, taking place in January right as the last brick was set in the Oceanics’ Seven Seas Stadium. As surprised as the rest of Marblearth was by the early event, they were soon looking for anywhere online to talk about what they saw: shock exits from Team Momo and the Limers, the fight in the Team Primary fan stands, and the Green Ducks’ sterling debut.
Marble sports fans soon noticed a message pasted across many websites and many forums, from someone by the name of “LegoDude007”: “TALK WITH MARBLE FANS AROUND THE WORLD!”
It is unclear how well Lego’s first marketing campaigns worked, but what seemed more effective was Mellacus’s initiative. The striped marble was now head of the Jelle’s Marble Runs Committee (JMRC), formed on 13 February 2019 and starting with three IMC members. During Mellacus’s off days in Dunduei, they kept in touch with fans not only through JMRC convos but by chatting with the regulars in the Marblebase server.
It didn’t take long to see the work of the JMRC coming into effect. In February 2019, Jelle agreed to hear from marble sports fans on who to invite for future Marble Leagues. Marblearth press would cover Mellacus announcing the “Fan Team Contest” – and asking everyone to check out the Marblebase.
The Marblebase, at this time, had 500 users and a circle of a few dozen regulars. That was before a rush of newcomers joined, eager to talk about marble sports news. Famous users who joined in this wave include Piney, Ocho, and Minty (February 2019); Spark and FamousOlSpiced, the advocates for the Hornets and Turtle Sliders respectively (March 2019); Flare and Ghost (April 2019); and JARS, Alayjo, and Fouc (June 2019).
Early 2019 was not just a story about growth. Hershy, who built up their MSPN channel through engaging with the server, faced contractual disputes with JMR that led them to distance themselves from the Marble League community.
In light of the split, subjects related to MSPN moved to a new server, where the organization would attempt to build a new era as an independent marble sports promoter; they, and multiple IMC members, would also drift off into new careers unrelated to sports. Combined with several who left after their teams failed to win the Fan Team Contest, the server chugged on with a new generation of regulars.
At first, what they found was drama. Ahead of the Marble League premiere in April, the marble sports world dealt with hundreds of teams wanting an invite to the top tournament. Several would use the Marblebase to market, lobby, or battle rap their way to getting enough votes.
The best community meme came after frustrations boiled over at a staffer for the Balls of Flame. As that team mass-mailed every other contender for support, Marblebase regular Darkarchon joked that all of Marblearth must “check em.”
“If you’re looking for a place to share your ideas, theories, chill with the greatest community ever, or straight up rant about why a certain team sucks,” wrote Lego in their initial marketing. “Join the Marblebase Discord!” Once the first wave of jokes wrapped up, this generation did all of the above.
As marble sports fans, they would react live to the Marble League in Summer 2019, or debate the various rule calls and design decisions made in Dunduei. More than the talking heads who had fought over the winners and losers coming out of every event, this generation also cared about improving the quality of marble sports.
When marble sports were not on the air, Lego, Mell, Minty and the mod team around them would organize more social events. Lego, the expert MarbCraft player, designed a roleplay SMP server for Marblebase members. Mell, speaking as part of the JMR team, would give exclusive premieres to the server, such as their Marble League soundtracks or the replacement of team logos to those designed by Tim Ritz that we have today.
These exclusive premieres were met with praise from the community, which also kept up activity on its own. Members who were commonly online late into the night, including Alayjo, Flare, KingOfBots, Minty, Novawolf, Shea, and others, participated in conversations that became known as the “Late Night Gang”.
By the end of the 2019 Marble League, the server entered four digits – over 1000 members. After Marble League Showdown wrapped up and Jelle Bakker was off to create their sand rally courses, the server focused more on maintaining its core connections than gaining new users. Notable users joining after the Marble League include Mesp (July 2019) Icy (August 2019), Spex (September 2019), and Simon and Casen (December 2019).
Going into Winter, the server’s two driving forces – Lego and Mellacus – would each plan their most ambitious initiatives yet. Within JMR, Mell was planning out many details of a new marble sports venture, Marbula One. Throughout Fall, Mellacus would post exclusive behind-the-scenes updates while consulting with the discord community and the JMRC. Alayjo, now a JMRC member, would also reveal each M1 team reveal poster first to their Discord friends.
For Lego, it would be a trading card game that rewarded cards of marble sports athletes to people having conversations – cards that can be traded and form the basis of a server game, letting the athletes duel each other.
Before both projects would reach their fruition, Glassmas was coming up and the New Year right after. A present that only the server could offer was the Rolly’s, the first edition of which happened in December 2019. Leading up to the event, Lego had already given their sappy speech on the year of growth:
The Rolly winners themselves were a who’s who of server personalities. Longtime community leaders like Lego and Mell were rolling together with new leaders like Minty and Spex. There was also room for server regulars who had an opinion on everything, never letting a conversation or argument go by without them: people like Marbles For Autism, Akanon, and MarbleGuyy.
This was the Marblebase as many veterans remembered it: a little corner of friendship while the chaos of marble sports swirled around it. It was the next year that elevated the server to a whole new level.
The Viral Era (2020)
As the New Year rang in, it was the server owner that reached their goal first. Working overtime with longtime server contributor – and Balls of Flame meme originator – Darkarchon, Lego announced the release of the Marblebase Trading Card Game, powered by Dark’s “T. Roller” bot. Right away, the server would ring in a T.Roller Card Tournament that pitted community members head to head.
Just like the marble racing that drew Marblebase members together, these Tournaments would have their own upsets and dark horse runs. Server leaders with the rarest, high-stat cards could still lose a battle against a newcomer with upgraded racers they had trust in. And when one dice roll would decide a match’s end, server members would hop in and yell out that this moment was the “D-CIDER,” with an emoji to boot.
After Icy won the first Card Tournament, Grand won the second with three of the most elite athlete cards “P” can buy. The third winner was Spex, and the fourth was MarkusGwyndol, who fought to the end by putting their faith in one lucky card, their M1 edition Prim.
Marbula One, however, was not far behind. The first Marbula One GP was released on 15 February and was the first JMR event to have live premieres online. Thousands of marble racing fans found it easier than ever to log on and watch the race, but also to see a note in the description, to check out the “Official” server for JMR.
As marble sports fans tuned in every week to react to the newest Marbula One race, the Marblebase also started to distinguish itself from the pack. For one, it hosted the Fast Finish aftershow with JMRC member Fouc, who now broke down overtakes and highlights in fine detail for all their listeners. For another, Lego also rebooted the Marblebase MarbCraft server and inaugurated it in style: a race down a MarbCraft recreation of the Savage Speedway.
Just as the new staff team, including admins like Minty and Spex, were settling into the bigger server, they were hit with a wave. After 16 March, millions of Marblearth residents who had not cared for sports would share an old clip of Comet tearing it up in the 500-Foot Race. The number of M1 premiere watchers doubled between Hivedrive and Greenstone alone.
The week of the Short Circuit saw the viral buzz continue, with even more promotion of the Marblebase during the premieres. After the premiere, Lego could have been popping more champagne than Snowy did after winning the race, as they announced there were now 3,000 server members.
Consistent with the rapidly growing server, trivia games, Marblearth Universalis streams, and regular server-wide activity make the server more alive than it has ever been. Prominent fans joining in March and April 2020 include members like Phoenix, Shino, Danda, Jøsh994, orbitball, Karlc, Droid, and many more. 18 May saw the announcement of the John Rolliver sponsorship for the 2020 Marble League, while the day later the Marblebase celebrated their own success of the 4000 member milestone.
Alongside the server’s milestone success, JMR themselves reached an amazing 1 million subscribers on their streaming platform for marble sports. To further the celebrations, the server worked together to sign a birthday card for Jelle themself, while Icy, a server member artist, celebrated their own birthday with a detailed piece of artwork that featured some of the most active community members at the time.
Other server members expressed their creativity in different ways: during an impromptu slam poetry reading in the #smack-talk channel, JMRC artist and Marblegs enthusiast Betawolfs shared an acrostic poem for Team Primary. Unable to find a better word to end the poem that started with the letter “Y”, Beta used “Yams” to cap off their masterpiece. They received help from Mesp, who jokingly responded with the term, “Yarbles”.
From there, an entirely organic Marblebase meme developed: the idea of a team called the “Yarble Yellers”. A legend was born among Beta, Mesp, Piney, Spex, and Stynth, who worked together to create the concept for the team and spread the word about them outside of #smack-talk, sharing the meme with the larger marble sports community.
As more fans across Marblearth heard about the meme, word spread as far as the Yahara Desert, where athletes that had once competed in the Fruit Circuit and Knikkegen Marble League years ago had been peacefully residing, enjoying their hiatus from marble sports. These athletes had competed together under the guise of the Yarble Yellers, and upon learning about the Marblebase meme, decided to contact the server. With the team’s permission, Marblebase staff added an equipable role for all server members to show their support for the Yarble Yellers during regular server banter and discussion.
The greater impact of the meme was that it revived the athletes’ careers, brought public interest back to the team, and led them to be formally recognized by officials working with Jelle’s Marble Runs – the JMRC worked with the Yarble Yellers to have their Knikkegen Marble League record for the 5 Meter Sprint count as the official Marble League record until Smoggy of the Hazers set the new record in Marble League 2020.
“I’m honored that it was recognized for so long,” exulted Yap, a member of the Yellers. “That’s one thing I will always love about Jelle’s Marble Runs. They truly believe in the integrity of the sports, and so does their community.”
Highly anticipated, the premiere of the 2020 Marble League, sponsored by John Rolliver took place on 21 June. Attracting server members from all over the world, those unable to attend the Marble League themselves tuned into the server’s voice channels for a large watch party, sharing thoughts and excitement with each other. Alongside the launching of this, the ML2020 Fantasy League began, operated by FuzzyCevin, which was ultimately won by the user YooooYuuuu.
The rush of new users joining during the 2020 Marble League was a new generation of their own. These were the weeks that brought in Nordique and Roilan (June 2020), Ghostly (July 2020), Vector and Kozakk (August 2020), and numerous others. The server reached 6000 members the day after the ML2020 premiere, then hits 7000 members near its conclusion on August 7.
In terms of activity, discussion in the Marblebase during this time has not been matched before or since. All the newcomers brought their own perspectives but shouted and exclaimed in unison watching each new event premiere.
The server officially did not have a loaded calendar at the time, apart from scheduling JMRC member Fouc’s ML aftershows. Instead, the Marblebase was active because the content was shared all the time, and connections were made. With fan networks or independent media forming on other online platforms like Twitter, MarBook, and web streaming, the Marblebase also became a server where personalities check in and out.
Notable marble sports personalities that had chatted and promoted their work in the Marblebase include Dan Orboole of The Marble Report; Termlinson of the O’rangers Twitter, one of the largest fan pages across Marblearth; Jaiden of Marble Sports Films; and ThesaurusDinosaurus, roaster of teams and destroyer of worlds.
As sudden as the first rush was, a new phase was also immediate right after the Marble League finished. Many new fans shouted one more time and shed their tears at the closing ceremony, promising to check back in for next year’s Marble League. But a year was a long time to wait.
That said, JMR had not stopped uploading videos as Jelle directed both the Sand Rally and Marbula One seasons. The server continued to be publicized during JMR event premieres, and newcomers met a broad pool of regulars happy to chat and organize their own events. FuzzyCevin would be retained for several more fantasy league tournaments, up to the 2021 Marble League. Other server veterans got to host their own events, such as JMRC member Ghost hosting MarbChase or Ghost and Grand hosting game nights with new and old members.
In Fall 2020, the Marblebase still saw new members that are well known today, like Ramen, Crobatoh and The Emperor (September 2020), and Pickle and Edu (October 2020). While having a bigger core of regulars than before, Marblebase staff had to deal with growing pains: a mass of newcomers who enjoyed getting emotional or pushing the boundaries of the rules.
In the first of many moderation decisions to come, the staff team expanded to include representatives covering every Marblearth time zone, relied more on an automated reporting system as well as overhauled the rules channel to emphasize that the Marblebase is an all-ages server. To this day, server newcomers still remark that the Marblebase is more welcoming, polite, and overall nicer than many large Discord servers in their docket.
As the server kept growing at an insane pace, the demand for small, homemade competitions was also on a rise. Some users, alongside promoting their own tournaments in #creations-and-promos, also regularly posted results in #other-marble-talk, often leaving chat walls and interfering with conversations. In an attempt to minimize disturbances, the staff decided to outlaw live coverage.
A fellow custom competition holder by the name of Angus offered to welcome these events in their own server: originally built to host their “alternate universe” Marble League using computer software, Angus’s Epic AML also became the home for many of these enthusiasts who were redirected from the Marblebase and wished to share their creations with other fans. The partnership between the servers has kickstarted tens of series such as Angus’s Epic Extravaganza, North’s Marble Tourney, the Turtle Rally, and Vector’s Marble Sports League.
(Photo Credit: Phoenix)
Into October, some incredibly exciting news, as staff discovered that the server had been approved to become a Discord Partner, a massively respectable title that allowed the server to be provided with a number of perks and further opportunities for the server to grow. With exclusive access to special resources and events, the first initiative the community joined as a Partner was a Discord-wide event of ‘Trick’ord Treat’, held in alliance with other Partner servers during the month. The server saw additional changes in November, as a moderator was promoted to Admin and the staff team took on a small expansion again, as Season 2 of Marbula One began.
Following the wide enthusiasm and success of the Trick’cord Treat event, an even larger one, planned by the staff team, was coming up on the frosty horizon. Announced suddenly at the start, this new event ‘12 Days of Marbles’ began on 13 December, a community-wide collection of fun puzzles and challenges for members to complete that was the first of its kind on the server. The server bot Trubbish would drop fragments of a clue at random intervals, and community members would have to fit these together to form a whole clue, and then attempt to solve the challenge.
With 28 challenges in total, each day consisted of either two or three challenges of puzzles, riddles, scavenger hunts, codes, and other things. Each solved challenge would award the server with a prize, a slowly building-up artwork made by the moderator and server artist, Piney. Each solve added a few marbles, until the final challenge where the artwork was complete.
The end of the 12 Days of Marbles event fell on the afternoon of Glassmas, where another new event was held by a small group. Organized by the newly added moderators, Aweshwa and Nugget, as well as by Grand and Phoenix, an afternoon of Glassmas-themed events for the community to enjoy. A posted schedule of fun activities and games was created initially in the thought of those unable to be with their family and friends over the holiday, though it grew to be larger than that and enjoyed by a number of community members.
A Chip in the Marble (2021)
Barely a month after the wrapping up of the 12 Days of Marbles event, the second annual Rolly Awards Ceremony was to be held. After staff decided on nominations for the event, voting was released in mid-January for community members to select who they wanted to win each individual award out of sixteen. The awards themselves, featuring titles such as ‘JMRC Member of the Year’ which went to Stynth, and ‘Best Analyst’ which was claimed by Fouc, saw a number of different categories regarding positions, creations, message counts, and pets. The ceremony was held online in a character-based game, while the speeches and talking took place on the server, hosted by Lego. The ceremony and its awards were wrapped up with the creation of roles for each award, handed out to the winners that would stay with them for a year until the next Rollys.
The return of Fouc’s Aftershow was seen in late March, accompanying the latter part of Marbula One Season 2 amid the Crazy Cat’s Eyes’ unprecedented dominance. This led into April, when the server hosted a fundraiser, raising money for a mental health charity of the server’s choice. This was an immediate success, as the fundraiser reached its goal in three days. Alongside setting up a merchandise giveaway, the goal was extended multiple times following that, as the community continued to exceed expectations of support and positive feedback.
After a good start, fans were excited for the remainder of the 2021 season. However, the latest series was showing some issues, and this wear eventually culminated in a huge hit for the community: on 13 April, the Jelle’s Marble Runs Committee announced its dissolution due to “continued unresolved concerns”, with Mellacus confirming their own departure from JMR staff on the following day. Consequently, the server lost more than the official status, it lost the close connection to the channel.
“It’s safe to say that things have never been the same since,” an anonymous fan stated in retrospect. “What amazed me when I first came here was how accessible the marbles who contributed to making the show happen were. And now, that is gone. We could see a few things looked off, but we had no idea the problem was that deep. However, we couldn’t let that beat us down. We came together and worked on ways to ensure this community stayed fun and welcoming.”
Following the JMRC dissolution, the Marblebase Staff met the demands of the community by expanding their staff team, bringing on a record number of moderators: Roilan Estates, Stynth, Woef, Ramen, Ghostly, Phoenix, and Nate, as well as seeing the return of Flare. The eight new moderators worked to continue engagement with all members of the community at a time when JMR seemed to be in flux.
(Art Credit: Phoenix)
In an attempt to keep up the spirits of the community, as well as encourage activity, events such as an official watch party for a past Marble Rally and a Marblebase Trivia Night occurred in June and July, with other events starting to occur on a more regular basis. Also in June was the hosting of the large ‘Marbles & More’ Partner talk show, where a number of community members came together for discussion.
The launching of a new community project, ‘Project Marblearth’ was seen on 30 June and promoted through the server. This project’s purpose was to chronicle the lore of athletes and teams that compete in the tournaments of JMR. A number of contributors worked together to develop and release detailed histories and information on the backgrounds and performances of each team and athlete, presenting them to the fans of JMR in the form of articles and RetRollSpectives, complete with artists, photographers, editors, and general report writers.
Closely following the launching of Project Marblearth, an exciting new game, ‘Jelle’s Marble League’, was first teased on 3 July. This news was followed less than a week later by an announcement from Lego, a celebration of another amazing server milestone of 8000 members.
Shortly after the announcement of the server milestone, the Jelle’s Marble Association (JMA), the new volunteer committee for JMR, was officially announced on 10 July, with a few server members including The Emperor, orbitball, Lego, and Merlin, among others, being credited as members of it.
With the 2021 Marble League beginning in the summer, server activity began growing again but was facing considerable drops compared to the previous year. Despite this, the ML2021 Fantasy League was still held with a great number of participants and was ultimately won by PCAYS. The summer season also saw further news on the upcoming Marble League game, with a Q+A session held with the game developers on 27 July. The server met additional growth during this part of the year, with new members such as (Dan)^2 joining. Due to this, the next milestone of 9000 members was reached in September, however, this member count dropped below in the following months, and would struggle to build back up again.
4 December was the dawn of another brand new initiative, one that saw a number of Marblebase Community members joining a brand new Event Team. This team was to work together to hold regular events for the rest of the community to enjoy, beginning with a ‘Two Truths, One Lie’ event on December 11. This first event was hosted by the entire team together, consisting of JARS, ItsChamp, TripleHaven, Jacob, Quixotix, Spliff, Steel, Pesky, Mystic, Pickle, and Calibrate, started paving the way for a variety of different events and games that could be participated in.
With the founding of the Event Team, the torch was passed for the responsibility of the second 12 Days of Marbles event to them, with support from the staff team. Another 12-day long event, full of fun riddles, puzzles, and challenges that the server attempts to solve together. This event began on 12 December, starting with a long story introduction about a group of friends on a trip to the fabled village of Frostroll. On this trip they partook in a number of challenges alongside the server members, aiming to earn a cookie after each solution from the marble elves giving the challenges. These, in turn, would go to an elderly marble at the end, for a prize. The first challenge began promptly after the opening of the channel, as server members began huddling together to discuss the fragments of clues.
An excellent display of teamwork allowed the community to ultimately find a solution to the first set of challenges, including a larger scavenger hunt on the server’s 4th anniversary, which finished with the phrase ‘Happy Anniversary’. This special challenge was not the only anniversary special, as a large announcement from Lego accompanied a new anniversary role and some extra news. This news consisted of both the new Marble League Game being opened to the public early access period, as well as the return of the Marblebase MC server returning once more, soon after the newest update of MarbCraft.
At this point, 12 Days of Marbles was halfway through its range of events, and the following solutions in turn resulted in the collection of the required 24 cookies, with a final ‘Marblebase Glassmas’ solution. The final story was shared, which saw the elderly marble present them with their awaited prize, the potential M1S3 theme.
Similar to the previous year, the end of 12 Days of Marbles was followed immediately by a return of the Glassmas Day event, this time run by the Event Team members Jacob, JARS, Mystic, and Phoenix. This featured another afternoon of Glassmas activities and games for the community to enjoy, ranging from crosswords to creative haiku games.
The Base of Our Community (2022)
The year already began with an announcement from Minos: the launch of Minos Marble Orchestra, a new secondary channel that’s especially dedicated to all the original sounds we know from every JMR series. The channel would later go beyond the music and host a variety of extra content, including a Marbula One promotional video.
The start of a new year for the Marblebase brought high anticipation of an annual event – that was now reaching its third year. Throughout the month of January, nominations from the staff team, which was followed by voting from the community, created the awards that were to be presented in the third annual Rolly Awards Ceremony. Hosted by Lego, a great twenty awards were to be handed out to community members in the server for a number of things. Ranging from the community’s pick of Admin and Moderator of the year, which went to spex and Phoenix respectively; all the way to data-based awards such as ‘Most Ubiquitous Messenger’, awarded to Ramen. This event took place on another character-style chat room game, with the hosting taking place in a voice chat on the server itself.
Officially announced in December 2021, a year ago after a random mention on social media, a brand new tournament was set to begin: Marble ManiaX. This series was all about going big and extreme and taking familiar events to a new dimension.
The Marblebase was alight with activity in the wake of this announcement, especially as the theories on which teams would be invited ensued. From the Balls of Chaos hosting to five brand new teams joining the scene, some of which could become Marble League hopefuls, fans were curious to find out about the events soon and excited about what this series could offer. However, the excitement would soon fade.
The series was rife with controversy from the get-go: from delayed videos to a potentially standings-shifting error in Super Collision, fans in the server were thoroughly disappointed with the production and eventually discussed the numerous mistakes more than any event results.
Months of underwhelming activity followed by a mismanaged return to competition made for a new shift: unsatisfied fans left the scene, making room for a new batch of users who were hopeful for what was soon to come for marble sports in 2022.
In early April, coinciding with the celebrations of April Fool’s Day, a brand new channel was added to the server. Intended as a source of some genuine chaos for a temporary period of time, #hardcore-counting was the place where server members could test their counting skills under pressure, where a single mistake would result in immediate removal from the channel. Ultimately reaching a record of 255, the chaos caused by reset counts and members being banned from the channel was immense, until the channel was archived for the foreseeable future…
In early April, Reddit launched the second edition of r/place, an event in which communities would come together and place pixels on a massive canvas. The Marblebase server and r/JellesMarbleRuns came together to build the JMR logo on the canvas and spent countless hours defending it. There was hardship along the way. The logo had to be relocated several times due to getting overtaken by larger communities and a streamer, but through the combined efforts of the Marblebase, the subreddit, and their unexpected alliance with a large music fandom, the logo survived until the end and can be found at the top right of the canvas.
At the very end, a fan known as Pippin, who led the community towards the logo build and defense, commented:
“It wasn’t any one of us, it was all of us together. Together with others and their passions, we survived until the end.” Their attitude during the event earned them a special “Ambassador” role, but more than that, it influenced a later invite to become the server’s newest moderator. Pippin is, so far, the only addition to the team in a year that saw a downsizing of staff over the past few months.
April also saw the growth in server members, coinciding with activity related to Season 3 of Marbula One. Notable new members in this time included Mercy, High Noob, and Posh Pie Chris, who joined the ever-developing server culture to enjoy marbles with fans from around the world. It was around this time also in which the server name was changed from “Jelle’s Marblebase” to “The Marblebase” in order to acknowledge the effort and individuality that the server had to make its own thing.
Following the burst of confidence provided by perseverance and success with the r/Place event, a group of dedicated fans within the server organized a r/JellesMarbleRuns thread for feedback on the new teams entering the ML2022 Showdown. Through much deliberation and effort, the group leading these efforts compiled two separate polls, gauging fan opinions on possible new team uniforms they would like to see, as well as what four teams they would like to see added to the Marble League. These efforts were seen and acknowledged by the community with great positive feedback, including from official representatives of JMR and the JMA.
Near the end of Marbula One, while activity on the server was at its highest in recent months, the Marblebase Event team began some extra planning. Starting with a two weeks long intensive set of events, where each Event Team member, now consisting of JARS, Haven, Jacob, Pesky, Mystic, and Calibrate as well as a few staff who frequently assisted such as Ghostly and Phoenix, hosted a game or event for the community to enjoy. From anagrams to crosswords, these two weeks formed an activity-packed time before a new initiative was announced, allowing community members to begin hosting their own events with guidance from the Event Team. Crobatoh also joined the Event Team, following the indefinite reopening of applications.
Merely a few weeks afterwards, a new event was announced at the end of July. “A Marbellous Vacation” was to be a week-long event reminiscent of 12 Days of Marbles, where community members could take part in enjoyable puzzles and challenges such as riddles and word searches, completed as a server-wide team. While on a much smaller scale than the Winter’s 12 Days of Marbles event, the fourteen challenges that make up the event are very much alike in style, and ultimately lead to a final prize.
Once again, the community bonded together over the solving of a variety of challenges and were able to finally complete the final challenge and earn their reward…this RetRollSpective.
In RetRollSpective…
The Marblebase’s humble beginnings as an online chatroom underscore its importance within the marble sports community today. The Discord server has proven to be a hub for connections unlike any other – a refuge where marbles can “meet and converse with fans around the world” – among thousands of others who have done so for nearly 5 years. It is a testament to the dedication and passion that fans demonstrate: which Jelle models in their vision to bring the best marble sports can offer to Marblearth. Moreover, it is a testament to the work that staff members have put in: to make the Marblebase feel less like an online chatroom and more like home.
Congratulations to those of you who worked on completing “A Marbellous Vacation”! You bring out the best of the community and are living proof that if you’re passionate about something and give it your all, you will achieve your goals and be the best that you can possibly be.
Thank you for reading, and keep on rolling!
Special thanks to the Marblebase Event Team, Marblebase Staff, the contributors of Project Marblearth, and our community designers for helping craft this article!
Credits
- Writers and Editors: Members of the Marblebase including Edu G. J., Fouc, Laurent Rollon, Ocho, Pesky, Phoenix, PippinPlover, Ramen Powder, Smacg13, Stynth, Vector
- Artists: Icy, Piney, Phoenix, Toffeeshop
- Graphic Designer: Spex
- Photographer: Phoenix
- Reference: The Marblebase
- Release: 08/08/2022
Project Marblearth 
Amazing! Thank you 🙂
LikeLike