Wool

Wool is a building block added to the game Minecraft in version 0.0.20a on 20th of June of 2009. From HelloMiners founding until the introduction of Concrete in 2017, it was the dominant block used to design and construct the majority of plots on the entirety of the server.

Early and Lasting Use as Building Block
By the time HelloMiners began it's current period of city-focused gameplay, Wool had already became an established block by the semi-established Minecraft design community due to it's simple, uniform design and variety of colour. This influence shifted onto multiple of the earliest buildings in HelloMiners; multiple buildings remaining that are over the age of 10 years old feature wool.

Many iconic buildings or design standards of the HelloMiners server, both extinct and extant, feature wool as a minor or plainly defining feature of it's design. These include:


 * Old SFC HelloClan
 * Orubo River City
 * Weather Apartment Co. Standard
 * EGEO
 * Sorna Tower (InGen) or HCSM Warp C Exchange

Competing Blocks
Although, for the majority of time before 1.12.2, Wool was still the dominant block, some other block types had great presence. Blocks such as Quartz and Sandstone, which had a distinct but common colour, in addition to variation in block design, complemented or replaced Wool in many buildings. Terracotta, which was a "smoother" block also with colour varieties, was also commonly used.

Value and Gathering
In it's later years, Wool maintained a steady value of approximately F15 per stack. The value of wool was kept down by constant gathering by "smalltime" players, who committed to grinding blocks such as wool, quartz and obsidian. Wool was usually sold for about F10-12, and thus maintained slim margins for farm operators such as HelloGeneral, Owl, and SFC. As wool's usage declined, and faster and richer methods of moneymaking arrived, the price of Wool has gone up somewhat, about 25-50% of its former value. This may be attributed to the decline in farming of the item.

Decline
Upon the server's update to 1.12, the concrete block type was added to the game. Concrete blocks offer the same colours using the same dyes as wool, while, like terracotta, offering a smoother texture. Therefore, compared to terracotta, it offered more straightforward dyes; and compared to wool, a smoother texture. It quickly became the dominant block of the server, pushed on by the establishment of major designing firms which shifted the design industry into a more experienced, costly endeavour. Despite concrete's high value, currently resting between F40 and F50, wool was effectively killed with its introduction.

Other than the introduction of concrete, by 1.12 HelloMiners player base began shifting to a smaller group of more experienced players, and the smalltime new players effectively ceased to exist to push for wool production. Farm mob caps limited the amount of sheep available for material gathering, slowing the process. The farm and shop operations who held stakes in wool had inactive owners. With all these factors, the era of the wool skyscraper has ended.