How 1 Island CHANGED Minecraft Forever – The Story of Skyblock…

Minecraft is a game of limitless possibilities almost endless resources and an abundance of terrain to explore so what would happen if you took all that away and only gave players access to the bare minimum to survive in a massive empty void well someone did and they created something that would change minecraft

Forever a minecraft map that would become almost as well known as minecraft itself a minecraft creation so unique that it would form the basis of many of the most popular game modes today and many videos that we see on youtube today i’m going to tell you the 10 year story

Of skyblock minecraft’s most famous map and how it changed minecraft forever so let’s begin but quickly a word from captain sparkles subscribe to mr epic well you heard the man you better make sure to subscribe now that’s pretty epic it is indeed on september the 5th 2011 noob crew

Would make a post to the minecraft forums showcasing a simple minecraft map he had created and named skyblock instantly minecraft forum’s users were intrigued holy crap now that’s a survival map wrote i am shane dulong the first commenter on the now over 400 page long thread that’s still active over 10

Years later wow this is quite the map it’s so simple yet quite the ingenious idea corn shot 1 would state and i think that summarizes the map quite well the original skyblock map or skyblock 1.0 was slightly different than the one most of you would be familiar with the island

Was much smaller featuring only a 3×3 of dirt blocks including a singular bedrock block and a singular sand block you had a much smaller space to work with making skyblock much more challenging in the chest were a variety of items more than the newer skyblock as this skyblock only

Featured one island there was no way to get to the nether not too long after skyblock’s initial release skyblock 1.1 would be created this time the island was three times as big but still featured the same resources meaning traveling to the nether was still impossible then came skyblock 2.0

Skyblock 2.0 featured much fewer items in the initial starting chest but also had a second sand island nearby which you could build to you had to be careful with the second island though because it was made from sand and a single block update could end your sky block run

Spectacularly anyways the second island had some farming resources and enough obsidian to make another portal which you would have to light with lava upon entering the nether you would find yourself on a third island which contained even more resources skyblock 2.1 was basically the same with just a

Larger starting island but this is the version of skyblock that would become most popular eventually anyways did you know that the goal of the original skyblock maps were to complete a range of challenges similar to the original survival island map as seen here furthermore there were a few rules that

You were meant to follow such as not purposely jumping off the island to regenerate health the goal of skyblock wasn’t really to set up a massive base and structures as it is in modern day but rather to complete the map so how did the map gain such popularity in the first place well

Captain sparkles would begin his skyblock playthrough on october 3rd 2011 about a month after the map’s release captain sparkles was probably one of the most popular minecraft channels at the time and his video currently had 7.6 million views with his other parts to the series also accumulating millions of

Views anyways a couple of days after its video more videos would be uploaded many of which would also accumulate millions of views in late october of that same year slime macau would upload an amazing animation of skyblock which became the map’s official trailer accumulating over 12 million views as of today after this

Video skyblock had cemented itself in minecraft history getting over 2 million downloads on the originalminecraftmaps.com website and god knows how many across noob cruise server website in the coming years more and more youtubers will do their own skyblock series some of which getting upwards of 9 to 10 million views but

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves because while skyblock the map was already so popular something else was going on at the time players had discovered that skyblock was even more fun with friends the skeleton’s got like speed 10 or something [Laughter] noob crew started a multiplayer skyblock server which is still running today

Called skyblock.net but also a new gamemode combining skyblock with pvp had popped up skyblock warriors created by swipe shot team in march of 2013 it took the concept of skyblock and made it into a competitive pvp oriented minigame four slightly modified skyblock islands were placed within close vicinity of each

Other with players given access to a variety of tools also equally spaced around the edges of the map were four chests containing other useful loot and one singular chest in the center containing the best loot of all sound familiar to you maybe swipe shot team would create a public server that

Would run games of skyblock warriors and the game mode was also added to the official skyblock.net server it would gain much popularity when popular youtubers at the time such as skydoseminecraft would make videos playing it accumulating well over 6 million views the name skyblock warriors was eventually shortened to just sky wars

Being easy to remember and pronounce other servers would begin to add their own spins on the game mode adding more loot and items kits different shaped islands and areas around the map as well as expanding the map to include 8 to 16 players rather than just four the game

Mode began changing substantially slowly evolving into the incredibly popular skywars we know today servers such as hypixel expanded upon the gamemode even more including lots of high tier loot multiple islands new weapons such as snowballs and eggs and much much more hypixel even has a ranked version for

Those who want to play competitively during 2013 to 2014 skywars was what bed wars was now an incredibly popular intuitive and fun pvp-based game mode that almost every significant minecraft server had to this day it is still one of the most popular game modes on servers such as hypixel with thousands

Of players playing daily skyblock successfully spawned and inspired one of the most popular minecraft pvp mini games of all time and that’s not even the greatest thing it accomplished back to skyblock now during 2014-2015 it entered a dark time period in late 2014 and 2015 skyblock took a turn for the worse

While previously a simple and balanced design likely influenced by the success of factions skyblock became corrupted by pay to win features instead of grinding for resources and to build a large base spawners became the number one goal you could pay for items currency and kits giving you access to resources which

Would normally take weeks to grind it got so bad that servers let players have the ability to fly if they donated one of the major challenges and features of skyblock was removed in an instant expensive donator ranks often exceeding the hundreds of dollars became commonplace crates or chests similar to

What we see on factions became more and more prominent and the nature and style of the original skyblock was slowly fading away it’s fine enough to modify build upon or even completely change some of the fundamentals of the game but by doing them in such a lazy and greedy

Fashion and ruining the major challenges skyblock was meant to pose to players all it did was give skyblock a bad name during 2016 to 2018 skyblock remains somewhat dormant minecraft in general lost a bit of popularity nobody really innovated on the game mode and as such

It just kind of stayed as it was that would all change in 2019 however high pixel skyblock was officially released on june 13th 2019 the biggest and most drastic innovation upon skyblock since the map’s initial release hypixel took the naturally grindy and rewarding concept that was skyblock and amplified it like crazy

Hordes of custom items blocks skill levels npcs custom enchants and oh so much more were now a part of skyblock skyblock became like an mmorpg or massively multiplayer online role-playing game similar to world of warcraft many mechanics commonplace in rpgs were adapted to high pixel skyblock instantly making it incredibly addictive

Grindy and rewarding where the goal of it was not to complete a set of challenges but rather to accumulate the best gear and weapons players could level up a variety of skills by performing certain actions they could collect and unlock new crafting recipes create minions to do their bidding and

Constantly collect certain materials for them which could be traded with other players the auction house encouraged a flustering economy which came with its downsides of course but nevertheless was extremely active the map had a variety of themed locations which could be visited to get quests from npcs or to

Visit specific shops to buy certain items quest allowed players to carry out various activities to gain various rewards players could visit dungeons to fight challenging mobs or to grind their skills with a chance of getting rare drops it was sky blocked like nobody had seen it before and it immediately

Captivated the minecraft community now honestly i never really got into hypixel skyblock but as a testament to its popularity even though i never willingly went to play it or google it in any sense i couldn’t stop hearing about it in discords getting recommended videos of it and entering discussions

Surrounding it around the time it was released high pixel was reaching upwards of 30 to 40 000 concurrent plays online on just skyblock a feat which most servers don’t even come close to accomplishing on their entire network these days hypixel skyblock still gets over 20 000 concurrent players daily two

Years after its release a truly amazing feat while hypixel skyblock may have temporarily stolen the spotlight with minecraft’s resurgence in popularity during 2019 vanilla skyblock also boomed again many popular skyblock series were created including pewdiepie’s series which has episodes accumulating over 20 million views it was just like 2011 and

2012 all over again with newer aged youtubers doing their very first skyblock series furthermore the community released updated versions of skyblock which included features from the modern versions of the game here’s a 1.18 updated sky block by dr trogg which is a variety of new items in the

Starting chest as well as a variety of different biome related islands which you can build too as well as an amethyst geode there’s also a variety of different islands when you enter the nether including another fortress following the minecraft but trend many popular modded or challenged skyblock maps and videos would be created

Skyblock where you only get one block was one such challenge utilizing modern tools allowing you to have a block which regenerates and changes over time just search up skyblock but and you’ll see a variety of challenge-based takes on the skyblock concept which really display how creative you can be with the

Original skyblock and there was something for everyone here as well technical servers such as scicraft created their own version of skyblock which focused on the technical side of the game all biomes were available and the starting island had less resources the goal of their skyblock was to use

The new features such as wandering traders to not only make skyblock more challenging but also more grindy in fact basically everything you can do in a normal vanilla minecraft world was somewhat possible in this version of skyblock structures such as the n portal frame still generated locations where

Guardian farms and which farms could be built were available it was basically an extreme minecraft survival challenge really returning to the roots of what skyblock was meant to be there’s lots more i could talk about for modern day skyblock it truly is amazing how a simple concept put together over 10

Years ago now is still being built upon and innovated with as well as managing to remain extremely popular within the minecraft community i hope you enjoyed today’s video be sure to subscribe join my discord and follow me on twitter below one percent of you guys follow me

On twitter so go give me a hand over there thank you all so much for watching