UC Berkeley hosted a virtual graduation on Minecraft

Second Life might not be. I argue OpenSim would be more lasting because:

* The model of UC Berkeley can then be Open Sourced and used by anyone in an Open Source OpenSim server, either run by themselves or hosted commercially at their choice. Some of the privately hosted virtual world events I have taken part in that would benefit from that big of an accurate model of a campus are Tornado emergency response virtual world drills for training, active shooter virtual world training, virtual world career fair.

* Hypergrid on OpenSim would allow the UC Berkely virtual world campus to be hosted by UC Berkeley and have anyone from another OpenSim virtual world teleport to the campus and visit it.

Regarding the need for a lasting contribution.. A typical graduation doesn't need it, other than a motivating speech. This though involved making something. I am of the firm belief that if you are going to make something you should make it to be a contribution to the world's body of knowledge, if possible - doubly so if you are making it as part of academia and likely funded in part by grants.

We mostly used Google Street View to guesstimate where to put things. We started off building a 1/3 scale model of Gampel Pavilion (the stadium where commencement takes place), then we expanded on the roads around Gampel and started on the buildings connected to those roads. There are a variety of console commands (like /fill) that enable you to basically cut and paste portions of the world, so we could start building something in an open area and then transfer it to where it belonged once it was done.

Of course, but that’s not the point. At my alma mater graduation is a huge huge event. Easily millions of dollars to actually run the event. Musicians, professional photographers, videographers, full AV crew, event staff, parking staff, very famous speakers, swag, catering.

To just cancel it it does really suck for the students and parents who want the experience and memories. Just because the ticket price is hidden in the tuition doesn’t mean it’s not there and deserves to be refunded.

You can also set a certain radius around the spawn read only in the official server. I’m not sure what practical difference that would have vs adventure mode.

I learned Java because of CraftBukkit. For many teenagers, some even under the age of 10, Minecraft was their first experience in server administration.

From setting up game servers, optimizing settings so Java did not crash, installing plugins, setting up config files, maintaining backups, writing their own plugins, learning basic networking issues, dealing with abuse (griefers), etc... Minecraft has taught a generation a lot.