So what do you think? Be sure to subscribe and check out my server! IP: og-network.net Server discord: discord.gg/6HV2qrreB6

The worst part of hypixel is that 99.9% of servers now are just worse versions of it

I think one way to fix this would be an overhaul of Minecraft's multiplayer tab. Imagine a global list of all multiplayer servers right inside Minecraft, where you can search for servers, see which servers are new, which servers are trending and which servers have the most players.

I think another thing to keep in mind is that Hypixel appears to have a good mod team and good anti-cheating measures. I used to frequent a server called Mineplex, but it has gone downhill a lot in the last couple of years with their anti-cheating measures going to the pits and lots of unmoderated situations happening. A lot of the building games were no longer fun because people would build a bunch of really obscene things that didn't have anything to do with the theme, and there weren't any checks in place to stop such players from ruining the experience for everyone else.

"servers dead, go home" idk why that sounds so depressing

For the minigame scene? 100% I've seen countless amazing minigames/custom gamemodes that don't stand a single chance with the giant playerbase hypixel has. And even if you do make something that somehow breaks the highly dense mold, it will get shoved into hypixel. I can't imagine the stress it is trying to make your minigame better while being outpaced by a whole well paid dev team.

I love Hypixel! But uh a little competition couldn't hurt right? Like there's no reason for them to work on improving things because no matter what they're gonna be the top 1. I saw a thing that was like 50% of java Minecraft players have played Hypixel and that is insane lol!!

Damn you sounded annoyed in this video, but you're absolutely right. There's actually BEEN a lack of innovation for a few years now. It's what almost made me quit multiplayer back in 2017/2018. Most servers that were able to, never cared enough to innovate and make their own unique minigames and whatnot. However, I'm honestly feeling more optimistic about the future of multiplayer. People seem to be taking newer versions, resource packs, mods, etc more seriously and implementing them. I'm very glad you mentioned Mineclub, and there's also other exciting servers looking to be released like MCC Island, Tubnet, and Pickade. They all seem like they could grow into big great servers and inspire other smaller servers as well.

20-50 players imo is the perfect multi-player server. A community, a chance to move up in that community. The world is unlikely to completely fill up thousands of blocks around... You have a standing chance be the first to get certain achievements! Enough players to have an interactive community but not so many that you don't matter at all. IMO Minecraft is ruined when 1,000+ players share a map.

Minecraft multiplayer has become more corporatized and its really painful to look back at the older days when things were more organic.

What I find fascinating are the real world implications of this. It's like watching society on a smaller faster scale and it can tell us a lot about our current society.

oml, I used to play soooo much on desiredcraft back in the day. Back then, it actually used to be alive.

I remember years back, when my friend and I would check out a new server basically every week or 2 after getting bored of the previous one. Every time there was sizable, engaging player base, and we would always discover unique aspects of each server. It’s a shame there are only a handful of playable servers nowadays. Time flies

Before LeafyIsHere was banned, he made a great video about how he actually made his first $100,000 running a Minecraft server but it was the most stressful and difficult thing he's ever done. Basically, it was so toxic and all the servers constantly hired people to hack each other or do other manipulative things

I truely miss what Mineplex used to be :( Everytime I try Hypixel, I wanted to play the games that Mineplex had.

It's like Hypixel is an entirely different game and Minecraft is just the game engine

Got me tempted to make my own voting website for Minecraft servers. One that avoids being a sellout to this big servers. Make it so that it doesn't list servers that give rewards for upvoting or reviewing their server (Kinda Like how Amazon straight up bans sellers that incentivize 5 star reviews.) That might eliminate alot of servers but at least all the reviews would be genuine. Maybe also list popular videos of each server, and priotizes servers specifically with new unique game modes that are trending. If it would grow enough it could help new servers that keep things fresh develop a following, while encouraging KZfaq creators to review those servers for more exposure. All the players would then have a trusted list of some cool new servers that aren't based on fake votes, or sponsored servers. Would be a great idea if there's enough support in just using it.

Hypixel has done a lot for Minecraft's multiplayer scene, and is a huge reason why a lot of people still play Minecraft at all

Man the minecraft multiplayer industry has fallen off so hard.

To be honest, I LOVE playing on smaller servers even if they have a few copied gamemodes. The environment tends to be nicer and so does the playerbase. It reminds me more of old multiplayer, which is what I am most fond of.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons why servers like skyblock isles have a high chance of failing is because of how difficult it is to keep up with updates as with rpgs people would immediately beat the game and get bored of the server

I have gone through those server lists before myself and they are some of the most scummy things I have ever seen. I now understand the challenges of running a server and I will continue to be in the community on your server as most other servers just don't cut it as they are just p2w, unoriginal garbage. The only true way I can think of that could challenge this current multiplayer landscape is that more videos like this one be created. Knowledge is power and the more people are aware of the issues, the more likely they will take action. Big youtubers that have lots of influence would have to be the driving force of this. I know this is not guaranteed to work, but it is our only option that has any potential to at least reduce these issues.

I remember logging in to Hypixel back when there were less than 200 players online, and you could actually see the player Hypixel in games from time to time. He made a bunch of cool adventure maps, so my friends and I logged in to check it out. Then we watched through the years as the server became the giant it is today. It sucks cause even though the player Hypixel is the original creator of “the walls” map, no one plays it on the server anymore (if it isn’t there already, that’d be a fun thing to add to OG). I don’t think the server is inherently bad, but it’s domination has become quite the issue. Also, shout out to Bajan for trying something cool and new, even though it didn’t work out.

Minecraft should have an official server list which can be sorted by Most Players, Fast Growth, Random, etc. Just spitballing but I think that would help a ton.

5:14 Hey, that's me!

This truly upsets me. I have been playing the game for 9 and a half years and some of my favorite servers of all time were servers with 20-80 people online. All are dead or dying. My favorite game modes like spleef, the ORIGINAL dwarves vs zombies (played by pauseunpause), have been killed by mega servers with the same shitty game modes dominated by try hards that make it impossible to enjoy yourself.

damn, i was one of the early players of skyblock isles, I really loved playing it when it gaining lots of popularity but slowly forgot about it over time and i never knew they had to shut down. It was genuinely one of the most enjoyable servers I have ever played on, sad to see it go like that.

Minecraft Central used to be an active server. I remember playing on it years ago and it being well populated then. But after a bit of time, the player count steadily declined to where it is today. Shotbow is another that’s going that way, though they thankfully still have some players, at least the last time I checked about a year ago. They have some pretty neat, unique games. Wynncraft is a lot of fun for sure. I hope they stick around for a good while, and it looks like they will if the player count stays alive like it has been. There’s a handful of other small servers I used to play on that were fun at the time, but eventually just ended up dying off due to lack of players. It’s kinda sad tbh, but just the way it goes, I guess. Hopefully it’ll change one day, but it doesn’t look like that’ll be anytime soon

I think one of the biggest things is that, the players themselves have been sold into the ecosystem that hypixel and a lot of these big servers have. they have in themselves turned into essentially a form of social media within minecraft itself, that is considered a rite of passage/neccecity despite how half-assed almost all of the hypixel games are, and despite having a massive dev team its still got very lacking gamemodes that are extremely grindy, and cant even come close to servers like mcstrike or mineclub in terms of being streamlined and stylized. Hypixel could be good if the developers were not limited by the owners greedy pockets. at this rate they will cut so much on the development and uniqueness of the gamemodes that they will cease to do anything and just sell crates like mineplex has been doing

The problem in my opinion is that A: there are too many servers that are p2w B: when you eventually find a server that isn’t p2w it is too small for anyone to continuously play in it Hypixel got a advantage as being a old, well know network, so it is indirectly killing small good mini game servers because why play another server when you can choose all the game modes in one place, it’s like a monopoly on mini games

I feel like Minecraft has passed well beyond the wild west glory days of the early 2010's, where everyone was kinda just screwing around, into a typical big game where money is king. Its sad, but somewhat inevitable. I really wonder if Hytale will address such issues a bit better, since they'll be starting the game off with experience of how these things go, instead of organically growing from a niche little game like Minecraft did.

Great video. Love this. I ran a server for roughly 6 years, stopped about June 2021. Went through a variety of gamemodes, such as Factions, Skyblock, and SMP. Eventually, I tried making something 'unique' and really enjoyed the "RPG" side of the game, so I made a sort of "survival RPG" and it was so awesome, I put in months and months of work to solidify and release it, however no matter how unique your server may be, if you don't pour in thousands of dollars to advertise and get it out there, and add p2w content as well, you won't get too many players. There were times where our server had a good 20 playerbase for several months. But it was also difficult to never add P2W content for years on end, considering people actually requested for certain things such as crates and kits to be purchasable with ranks or separately on the store. That was one of my main complaints, that all I see on massive servers are monopolies of popular gamemodes that have slightly unique takes but are incredibly pay to win anyways. Whether it's prison, factions, or skyblock... they all have some sort of pay to win factor. And servers bid thousands (highest I've seen is over $20k for a few weeks) spots on voting websites. Our server raked in several thousand votes legitimately, but seeing other servers with paid votes is just so demotivating. Thinking about all of this is one of the main reasons I had stopped making and running a server. Making, testing, and seeing your content in play is amazing, but the actual multiplayer side and getting players to consistently join, play, and stay is hard to think about. It just feels so bad to work so hard and not be able to see your work come to life unless you have lots of money to shoot into advertisement. I don't really see how the multiplayer scene can escape from this. But overall, I think hypixel is great, they have their own stuff to work on, but it's not their fault other servers don't thrive. They're one of the only giant servers that are doing something right.

I used to run my own minecraft server when I was 13-14 and it was a fairly original concept (mix of skyblock and factions) but that was the most stressful time of my life and cost my pockets a fair amount. However, I don't regret doing it since a large chunk of my online friends nowadays I met on there, and it gave me insight into how managing software is and all the cruelties of the market, which are things I'm gonna need to deal with if I ever do my dream of creating a tech startup.

Hypixel is a blessing and a curse.. I really miss the good ol Mineplex days and even hivemc.

Funny you mentioned DesiredCraft. That server used to be popular around 2015-2017. It's prison servers got fairly popular when PrestonPlayz made videos on it years ago. I'm sad to see it has become a ghost town, since I remember having a blast playing on it when I was younger.

As someone who’s looking at setting up a server soon thank you for this

This video is amazing. I have been thinking of starting a server because there is so much more that can be done with the games. Everyone wants to play new games but servers are only making the same games because it’s easier to get players

It's sad that servers CAN'T innovate because then they wont be competitive enough. I don't think the playerbase needs like a thousand prison/faction servers. Only a few is good. New game modes is what servers need to try and do. Good video!

So I'm not the only one who has this issue when looking for a new Minecraft server. Neat. Quick Edit: I've always wanted to find a Minecraft server that innovated on the Mob Arena plug-in. Something very PvE oriented, but not an MMO RPG (although I do love you, Wynncraft).

just got an ad on this video that played a hypixel bedwars clip and then was like, "Playing Minecraft, Right now?!"

This is really interesting to think about, as a primarily single-player, I'd never thought about or realized that fake servers was such a rampant issue! It seems like the multiplayer world is incredibly polarizing, either Hypixel or very tiny servers with someone with their close friends.

Gotta love how over a third of all minecraft servers still run a version from nearly 8 years ago

As a small server owner and developer, this video really stands out to me. It’s always been so hard to get my server out there, even though it’s a much higher quality gamemode than most other big servers out there. Even after thousands of hours of work put into developing these plugins, it just seems that it will never really be profitable in the end

I think the server situation is pretty much a microcosm of what happens today with every industry. One, maybe two brands (that are probably owned by the same bigger one anyways, so yay illusion of choice) have a monopoly on a specific market. And the entry barriers are so high that newer competitors have two choices; either fade away because their idea doesn't bring out anything revolutionary and they don't have the reach for it to get popular anyway, or they get bought by the bigger ones and their ideas are used to make the already established one richer.

Oml, I used to play on goldenleaf. It had like 30 players like 5 years ago, then i stopped playing after it died lol

I helped run, moderate, and develop plugins for MANY servers back in 2014-2015. What officially killed the scene was the 1.9 update, because it fractured servers. You either had a dedicated coding team to update the game modes and plugins, or else you had to keep the server on 1.8 We see this with 2B2T because of stability and performance issues (IIRC they run on the World of Color update). Hypixel and other larger servers who have that code support via devs can navigate the game's code to make these large servers run smoothly. Thus I thing the absolute worst this is upon us: the death of MC Servers. With parity issues between bedrock and java, and the massive performance updates we've gotten for the past, the game runs poorly compared to before the updates. It's a LOT harder to code now than in years prior. Java is an easy language to code, but breaking into the server market is EXTREMELY difficult because you basically have to 1-up the popular servers (who all have or had dedicated coders) and make a more fleshed out server... which shows how much more difficult that is because of BajanCanadian's flop of a server. Never played on it, as I don't really play on servers anymore, but that is an extremely short lifespan for a server. MCPVP, my favorite server, Lasted from like what, 2012 all the way to 2015 I believe. EVEN Then their custom plugins still live on, or at least half of them. Brawl got MCCTF and their Creative Build server. I forgot who got the HG game mode. MC Servers are a brutal market, I hope your has a lasting life and impact, making up for all the good ones who died before it.

Here's a thought experiment: One week after this video, Hypixel dies for some reason. We'll just assume there was an unintentional backdoor that's completely exclusive to Hypixel and the whole server kind of just gets broken. It's going to potentially take months for Hypixel to run security audits, fix everything, and recover what databases can still be recovered. I think the first thing that's going to happen is the majority of the most dedicated players (like the ones who play it everyday for like 6 hours) are going to just quit on the spot because there's no point in even hoping anymore since they might not even get their ranks, stats, or playtime back. This includes plenty of youtubers, however they will just find other minecraft content to make. Casual players (me and most of you) are going to be pretty angry but get over it pretty quickly. Most of us would just play singleplayer, play with friends, or find other random servers. P2W servers mentioned in the video will experience a boost in popularity and make plenty more money. However, I suspect a significant amount of players might be opposed to spending money on servers for a while after the great shutdown because they don't want to end up wasting their money. Additionally, people like The Horizon are getting pretty popular, so their followers (a lot of players) would just skip over these servers. Small servers obviously would get more players, but they would be the last to get them as most of the players will be soaked up by the aforementioned mid-size servers. The flip side of this is that most hackers and annoying players will be attracted to bigger servers, saving small servers from a lot of trouble. There's also the elephant in the room, Mineplex. A lot of players on Hypixel __have__ played on Mineplex before and will try it out again. If they are smart, they will start improving the server again. If they play their cards right they could absolutely replace Hypixel as the king server or if Hypixel comes back start competing with them again. There's my thought experiment

I think Hypixel, after enough time, grew from something fun, into something somewhat bad for the minecraft community as a whole. Don't get me wrong, the server can be fun, but I feel like it's sort of messed up the mindset of minecraft players as a whole. People who Hypixel only know things about minecraft because of the server. Not many people take the time to go on singleplayer or smps to learn the mechanics of the game and how to "play the game" in a sense. And, no offense to those good players, I sometimes see people who don't even know about sprint jumping, which is a bit disheartening to watch. One major culprit for this I feel is skyblock. It's a grinding game. People who come into it only know how to grind, and become accustomed to the minigame. However, that ruins their experience of the game in a way. As someone who enjoys survival and SMPs, I've come to realize that most people end up having the grind mindset. They can't take the time to appreciate building a cool structure or redstoning a cool invention together, but instead must grind to become as strong as possible, with the best armor and weapons possible. After like a week, most smps I do with friend die off for this reason where no one stops to take time to appreciate the game, but instead just hard grinds everything. Of course, it's not very fair to say Hypixel is the only major problem, as I feel like minecraft speedrunning and fake speedrunning really keeps people from enjoying the game and taking their time with the game's other aspects. In the end, Hypixel is still a major contributor to this issue. (Credit should be given where credit is due though, as Hypixel does have it's SMP thing, so I guess that helps somewhat)

I'm really glad someone made a video on this. I've modded some servers (theyve all shut down now after being somewhat successful) , and I'm currently in the process of working with some others to create a new network, and man I couldn't agree more. There's no easy way to fix the problem either, but man the state of multiplayer minecraft hurts me. Thanks for making a video on this topic, you've earned a sub

To have a bit more optimistic picture, keep in mind that Minecraft Bedrock has featured servers, which mean at least a few servers will be competitive. This has its own list of problems, but at least it isn't just one server dominating, with no other servers able to compete.

I don't remember the ip anymore but there was a server back in the day where it was all combat games with a military style. It had an army ranking system with your setup/kits being usable across all games in the server. It was known for the zombie survival and death match. I watched in grow by youtubers then slowly died off before scaping the cool idea and become a clone server to what is talked about in the video. I missed those times

great video! also, playing on smaller servers is also really fun, like I sometimes play on cubekrowd, its a pretty high quality and fun server too!

I'm hoping that MCC Island, which is made by Noxcrew collaborating with Smajor, will be able to disrupt how things are currently going because a very large portion of big name Minecraft streamers and KZfaqrs play MCC, and the MCC games are very fun while also new as well. I myself want to play them really badly and MCC Island will probably be my go-to server once it releases.

I agree with so many things you said. Minecraft Server innovation is slowing and there is very little that are "innovating". The two I can think of that stand out are Mineclub (lke you mentioned), and Origin Realms. I feel that servers with resource packs are the new "meta" for servers here on out..

me explaining to a Saudi Arabia prince how we need a unique Minecraft server

I've been playing mc for almost 8 years, java edition for almost 3 and moderating for a year. I've been part of the staff team of a quite consolidated Network, but I decided to resign as the owner did not care about our playerbase and I had spent more time and effort than I should have spent (I worked as a high-ranked staff but I had to do some admin tasks because I was the only staff that knew how to use some plugins. Also I worked as a builder in two servers of this network). Since I decided to quit, the server where I worked as a staff has been on a free fall (something I'd rather not say that I'm happy about but I am bc the way they treated me). Now I'm working in a new server, it is a pretty small one and is only a few months old. The owners have been really grateful to all what I've done for the server, also they are working very hard to bring quality content to our playerbase. It is sad that loads of effort are sometimes not rewarded and servers that do not deserve their playerbases continue to grow. If you have read this message and you're interested we are a Spanish server but most staffs also speak English. If you're interested do not hesitate to write a comment below or if you have any tip that you think may be helpful Thank you for reading

I don't really know how to thank you for this. I've been working with servers for at least 4 years; First starting with learning proper moderation, then working with plugins in game, then plugin configs and proper server setup, all the way to making my own plugins on occasion. And even through all of my experience and hardships of learning these skills, even after making a proper server that had NO pay to win features at all as well as having some interesting gamemodes. The team I had developed and memories I had forged all seemed to slowly fade away in a gentle solitude. My motivation for the project began to dwindle, and due to that, I have started loosing faith that the game as a whole; Noticing all the gaps in its structure that weren't there years ago. So much has changed, and no one brings attention to it, and those who do, people rarely care. Or maybe I'm just in denial that this game has reached it's peak for me. Maybe I'm scared that my last block has inched far closer than I anticipated. Even so, I hope people listen to you, for everyone's sake including my own. My server died along with my passion, though I still pray that candle can still be lit once again.

Thats why i like the "featured servers" in bedrock edition, they are basicly servers that are always in your server list as the "default servers". they all have some unique gamemodes and are not just shitty copies from each other. There is not just one server that rules everything, theres like 5 of them

The multiplayer server scene was richer in 2013-2016. A lot of innovation and you could find some really nice and unique games and servers that had somewhat of a playerbase if you looked a little bit more. Even hypixel innovated a lot more, 2015 was the golden year. Other minigame servers too that are still around made a lot more new back then. But things started going downhill for minecraft, a "kids game". Around the time in 2016 when the hyper popular gamemode bedwars was popularised (by cubecraft not hypixel), it was the only thing that many people cared about. In my opinion it's not bad, but it's just not a special minigame either. Anyway, I think it indirectly contributed to multiplayer downfall by pulling players only to it (smaller factor that growing disinterest but still significant). The server scene started losing its richness, many games and servers dying and more p2w popping up. Hypixel innovation decreased after bedwars. Mineplex was passed, undoubtedly becoming the #1 server on minecraft now. So did basically all of multiplayer. Soon, playercounts started dropping again more and innovation yet again decreased. But in 2018, the darkest time, there was a legitemate risk that hypixel should be terminated. A 70% sale off of ranks should speak that. The last days were coming, until they weren't. 2019 resurrection, kinda. At least hypixel hit a new high, multiple times. But apart from skyblock, innovation was still stagnated to 2017-2018 levels. Other minigame servers like Hive (java version now gone) and Cubecraft weren't much better either. At least they were getting some players now. But again, at least public multiplayer popularity has been dropping again. Hypixel is sitting at about half of the players compared to 2019-2020, so have many other servers lost playercounts. I know Minecraft will not die completely, but I hope that we wouldn't go to 2018 levels again

another issue is that some servers have not many players but the players are extremely dedicated, but then it gets popular, and they have thousands of players. then those numbers start to dwindle, and they reset the server with different stuff. this wont matter to new or casual players, but the dedicated players who have put in hours to get the best stuff have all their stuff deleted, without getting a say in the matter

This video is super interesting! Having played MC for 10 years and my interest slowly fading, I've always wondered why there haven't been any other real competitors. It really is just down to servers not doing anything unique and dragging and copying game mode plugins to try and make a quick buck, no originality, no interest in making fun gameplay. Hypixel practically has it all at this point for what version of the game they support though. I think a mini games server utilizing newer features could do pretty well, guess we'll have to see..

Ya like he said the main reason why hypixel is always at the top is because it's really hard to come up with new ideas for games, and even if you are able to make a new creative gamemode then it's not a guarantee that people will like it. All the good gamemodes are already taken

One of my favorite alternate game mode server was civcraft, which was basically like minecraft meets the civilization games. You had to get culture to build an empire and expand, unique resource collectors, defensive towers etc, and there were wars every weekend

My first minecraft multiplayer experience came in the early 2010s with factions servers. The servers I played on had 500+ players continuously at their peak, and I remember that feeling huge at the time. Over the years as I saw servers with singular game modes slowly die out and be replaced by the network servers. It's really sad to see the game modes/types of servers I'm nostalgic for, and created a lot of memories on go away and be replaced by fewer and fewer giant servers that really reap in the cash and leave no room for anyone else. Oh well i'm an old man now I guess.

the fact that so many people play on hypixel specifically and nothing else saddens me there are plenty of innovative smaller servers ive come across while trying to get players onto my own, there's good stuff out there besides just hypixel im sure there used to be a time when smaller servers were getting players even without paying thousands for advertising, now it's like good luck even if you do that

The Minecraft multi-player scene shows why monopolies are a bad thing.

I know a server named DiamondFire, which allows players to create their own minigames with a unique coding system.It's player count isn't very low and youtubers advertise it but I don't think the server gets what it deserves.

For servers I play on, I mainly play BrinkMC which has skyblock and a custom unique minigame called invasion (although invasion looks like it might currently be offline), I play a private SMP server run by a friend which also has parkour, and I've even connected to og network once, I would love to at some point try out the survival games on there.

I've found from experience that if you want to make a server, you should ONLY do so as a passion project. There will be little profit if you're lucky, sometimes not even at all. Only open a server if you have a genuine enjoyment for creating things and you have resources to spare.

I feel like we should have a Shark Tank version for Minecraft servers. People can pitch their ideas for a Minecraft server and if it's unique and interesting, give them the money and the publicity.

I know what you mean, theres been multiple times where ive tried to play on some smaller servers but it often gets boring very quickly because there isn't enough players for the gamemodes to queue in the first place, and yeah it is quite sad to see some of these smaller servers go like octanemc for example, the uhc randomizer server but ofc as soon as yters stopped uploading content on it, it died and had to be shut down

It’s kinda sad to see that mineplex went down, I’ve played on there a few times, idk if that was due to not handling o run the server anymore or the player base was going down, cool video and that was really good to know all of that about hypixel.

Wow. Makes me kinda sad. Great vid tho. I log on Hypixel from time to time, and it’s fun, but I once joined this small box-pvp server that was super well made and saw the the community was so cool and funny. I talked to some of the admins and they expressed the same points that are brought up in this video. :((( Hypixel is great tho, I just wish there was some more variety with big servers!

This is... a tough thing for me to think about. I'm an extremely active Hypixel Skyblock player. I'm extremely aware of its many flaws (although it has a lot of stuff going for it a lot of other servers don't). It's very grindey, there's a ton of bugs and dupes, the community is ass. But I keep playing it, not just because its relaxing for my autistic mind to grind in it, but because it's very technically impressive. They managed to take the archaic version of Minecraft 1.8, and bring it to its absolute limits. There's lore, there's tons of custom systems with so many different interactions most players can't keep track of them. I think that's where the issue is. As Minecraft grows, and becomes more advanced, the peak quality of the top servers goes up. As that happens, that high quality becomes harder and harder to reach as things get more and more complex. Very few can hope to rival how impressive Hypixel Skyblock is, simply because of how it operates. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of servers, all tracking player stats and running custom damage calculations. Random structure generation in the crystal hollows, an economy. I'm sure the code running this behind the scenes is so far modified from vanilla Minecraft it would be hard to recognize it at this point. Because of this, the growing creativity and resourcefulness of larger creator groups and servers, the "wealth" gap of players was inevitable. It's hard to have competition in a scene where people want to choose one thing and be dedicated to it, and when all of your players are already recommending their friends to play on your server, things will only keep going up for you and down for everybody else. That's what hurts for me. I know, by playing Hypixel skyblock, I am taking attention away from other servers, but I enjoy skyblock, and I have time invested into it, so I don't want to leave. This simple fact stifles creativity and inspires boring copycats, not out of anybody's greed, but out of pure and simple brand establishment. That being said, Hypixel has been firing a lot of staff recently, but not because they want more money. In fact, I've heard it was because they want to put more effort into paying all their Admins and GM's and I'm all for that. I want all of Hypixel (and especially Skyblock) to grow in a healthy way, and paid staff are important to that. In the end, Hypixel isn't bad for Minecraft's multiplayer, its simply that they got lucky and now have the budget to outpace most other servers with the quality of their product. It just wouldn't make sense to intentionally put less work into their server just for the health of all of multiplayer, and it probably wouldn't do much anyways. When Hypixel went down for a week due to DDoS attacks in Chicago, a bunch of other servers got players. When Hypixel was back, they all went back. This is just... inevitable. I don't even know where I was going with this at this point. I love Hypixel, and I want it to improve, but I also understand it can harm other creative projects, and that's a shame. Maybe Hypixel should add some kind of game sponsoring/ partership system with other servers where creative ideas from a server could be purchased by Hypixel and hosted on the network with the same team of devs that created it?

It’s also really sad to see small servers with a few, very dedicated players who love to play there, be shut down because of the reasons you gave. I say this from experience

This hits hard. I remember when I was about 10 my friend got me into a server. I ended up paying like $70 for a rank only to get BANNED! Now I see my brother and his friends going down the same route and it hurts.

I had NO IDEA how many servers have fake player counts, wow.

I think the main problem with the minecraft community itself is the lack of criativity and costantantly overusing an idead. Think with me: Pewdiepie does regular let's play videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death Dream does manhunt videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death Dream and his friends does SMP videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death Dream does speedruns videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death Some youtubers does "Minecraft but" videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death LukeTheNotable does 100 days videos: Minecraft YT does it and milk it to death Now you got point, every time someone comes with an original idea, everyone in the Minecraft community does the same thing over and over again, completely copied from the original. The Minecraft community likes to play safe, so instead of doing actual content they just make the same thing that another youtube has done, of course there are exceptions, but they aren't so influential and if they get, the community will milk their content to death anyways

I remember my favourite minecraft game to play when I was a kid was dwarves vs zombies but all the servers have died

Ye, gotta admit the scenario you presented is highly real for many servers, maybe just not in the money case. I have similar experience myself. Made an RPG server, players came, I had kind of ok amount of players for our country's standard and then it just went downhill. With the decreasing amount of interest, updates slowed down. I can tell for sure that story and lore was one of the best our community could find, some aspects were very unique, some were later stolen from bigger server that denied everything, yet kept adding stuff I was talking about in relation to my server (I used to play there and promote it, so they all knew and watched me)... Example- I talked about adding custom forging and smelting system with a complete forging process. It got popular and people liked it. But a few weeks after I mentioned it, the server added a very similar thing :D even called it the same. But the most popular servers that has a huge flow of players were always the minivans ones... I'm updating to 1.17 now with a complete revamp and rework. Hopefully, people will come back and play, mainly because the story they can get is nowhere (our country...) as good. This word trend is killing servers. The OG guys already grew up...

The title honestly made me think about how the studio behind Hypixel is making their own Minecraft-inspired game (Hytale) that's supposedly going to come out at some point

The first part of this video is so close to home. I play wynncraft a lot, and you showed it a bit, and its so heart breaking that it is not so popular because it really does deserve more money and more effort

we can always try to make a real voting website without being paid (although u do need hosting and stuff) it would still be impossible by small servers since the biggest servers with the highest amount of players would be on top (because of the giant player base) but its impossible since hosting

The biggest problem is... a lot of people can come up with something great and unique, some can even already have the knowledge on how it should work. But actually doing it, setting up a network, getting all the custom plugins needed, and making a playerbase is enough of a nightmare for those people to not even try.

I remember watching my brother play eggwars on Cubecraft. Sometimes he’d let me play too! To this day, I still play on Cubecraft. I believe that it has done a good job with everything, including the mini games, the ranks, the lobbies and waiting rooms (which are always just a work of art), even just the mini things everywhere that you can do! Sure, I play on the server because of Nostalgia, but also that it’s just a beautiful server and never stops being fun. So yeah, Cubecraft. Btw, it was Cubecraft games that developed the Geyser and Floodgate plugins that allow Java Bedrock cross play and huge shout out to them for making it free!

I love how purple prison's custom name is just "bad"

I was trying to get my own server up and running that was supposed to feel akin to the classic survival servers from around 2013, but with some modern quality of life improvements. Almost got it ready to launch but I've had to put the project on hold for several months due to college.

I miss the mineplex days

One of my favorite servers is Shotbow. They have been around since 2012 and have a bunch of custom unique modes that nobody else has like Annihilation (my personal favorite) and Minez. Minez has a fully custom made map that is even bigger than Wynncraft's! I say all this because while most servers are carbon copies of the same pay to win formula now, there are still a few diamonds in the rough.

I think one thing you're missing out is that hypixel has been a thing since 2013 (9 years) so any other server is gonna take a WHILE to get 50K avg players and the other small servers are either scams OR they just suck after a few hours.

Finally, someone understand s my pain.... I have a Minecraft server, I tried a lot, almost impossible to grow, ridiculous to make money off and stupidly hard to make anything on the server.

Epic: Is Hypixel bad? The answer: Yesn't

Hopefully Tubbo’s future server doesn’t go the way of bajancanadian’s because they are/were really passionate of their servers really trying to innovate and make something to rival hypixel and having a lot of time and effort to making it

Thanks for the info I am currently in the works of making an earthsmp-pvp related server and I only have me and my friends who usually aren’t on working on it… hope this works

I think there should be a discovery tab in Minecraft that suggests lesser known servers to people

As a owner of a Minecraft server myself for 2 years. It’s hard to break into the market. The corrupt system of ways to promote your server is so limited. Especially if you are wanting to create something unique. Luckily my server survived but many people I know who had a passion to make something great all died due to these practices. Something needs to chance, but that change will probably never happen.

I was almost waiting for the “and so, I’m starting my own voting website. Go here to vote for your favorite servers…” or something, your OG server was a breath of fresh air, you’re an epic guy who points out many of the problems in todays Minecraft community. Keep it up! Edit: I actually didn’t remember your username had epic in it, now I feel dumb for staring the obvious.

Everyone seems to be aware of Wynncraft, but I personally like Shotbow, where they have a game mode similar to 50v50 bedwars but without the void, with 4 teams, with over 50 classes to choose from each with unique perks either made to collect resources faster or pvp skills, and instead of breaking the 3 beds once you need to break one endstone 75 times to kill the team. There are no finals, the game finishes once 3/4 ends tones are dead.

I play on a server with a small dedicated playerbase, that is incredible but you will only every find out about from a recommendation by another player. It would be nice to see it get the same chance at the spotlight as the servers that have the financial backing to buy their way there

I know This isn’t a really popular server but I play stonework’s and I love how its small success has nothing to do with money or resources it was just a really good idea