Minecraft’s Most Historic MMO Servers…

Minecraft has tens of thousands  of servers, hundreds of RPG mods,   minigames and adventure maps, but only a  very select few projects ever aimed to become   something more. Wynncraft, Skyblock, RUNE – Today   we recount the historic projects and  servers that dared to dream of adventure,  

By aiming for one of probably the most challenging  categories of experience in gaming. The MMORPG. Welcome back to Kweebec Corner, my name is Connor  and today on the Minecraft Development Circle,   we cover the history of the game’s most  popular MMO servers and projects. From   discontinued legacies to unbelievable  evolutions, the minecraft community  

Has seen the rise and fall of some amazing  collaborative experiences, and we’re going   to cover just how some of those RPG features  came about and why they were loved so much. Before we get into things; a quick announcement  – if you’re a fan of the channel, WE’VE NOW GOT  

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KweeKwee.com ro view the store and remember  to use code Gordon for 15% off at checkout! You see, there’s been hundreds and hundreds  of RPG experiences in Minecraft’s history,   but today we’re talking specifically about  MMORPGs, experiences made on Minecraft servers,   intended to be massively multiplayer. They  hold RPG elements like the RLCraft Modpack,  

But allow you to function in an overarching world  shared by everyone. Resources could be limited,   a group may be needed to defeat a boss – that  doesn’t mean that all gameplay is inherently   cooperative in nature though. The best MMORPG  experiences lay out a course for the player,  

Teamed or solo. Not everyone has friends readily  available and wanting to play the exact same game. But How did we go from struggling  to develop an RPG style plugin   for multiplayer minecraft to single  servers hosting thousands of people,   multiple specialised experiences and minigames,  as well as pushing rollout updates regularly  

For the biggest MMO style projects that  we’ve ever seen built on the platform? Now there was a point in time where MMOs  just weren’t feasible. The ability to mod   things like that in just weren’t possible,  server development wasn’t anywhere near as   easy and configurable, let alone  creating something like a plugin.

Really the closest thing you could get to an  RPG within Minecraft back then was Roleplaying   on a server with friends. Setting your own  guidelines and lore – you’re this race,   you’re that race, you can cut trees, you’re  good at fighting, you can perform magic,  

Let’s pretend we have quests. At times  I remember really having to depend on my   abilities to RP learned in places like World  Of Warcraft, to help myself feel immersed. You can see this more familiarly with Shadow  Of Israphel, when the Yogscast utilised real  

Player characters and builds to bring the sense of  some living, breathing world. Despite this though,   it would still be a year or two until  support for plugins really took off. As systems evolved, server devs learned to  transfer singleplayer mods over to multiplayer  

Instances, sometimes developing them entirely  from the ground-up to be for servers. My RP   community eventually reset the map and developed a  completely custom and exclusive plugin which gave   all of our characters the actual attributes of  each race. There were alien players that could  

Heal by eating redstone, a vampyric race that  burned in the sun. We even made it so that there   was an In Character and Out of Character chat  channel. And this wasn’t just happening with us,   it was happening everywhere, evolving slowly  into what you see today, where these Ginormous  

Multi-experience servers host hundreds of complex,  exclusive, interlocking custom plugins to provide   dramatically different experiences for  every type of user in the playerbase. The likes of things like Bukkit, Spigot,  Forge, these programs enabled servers to   begin to craft their very own experiences, no  longer limited by vanilla capabilities. Plugins  

Like MCMMO grew popular. With factions,  minigames, survival and creative servers,   it was only a matter of time before people began  to attempt something more ambitious. An MMO. The first time the Minecraft community really  got hyped about an MMO Project was that of RUNE,   by Team Bashurverse in collaboration with FyreUK,  

Which began being teased in 2012, and a blog post  on the Minecraft Forums following in March 28th.   Originally, the project’s world was teased through  a series of machinimas named Legend of Hobo,   which set the stage for the Elder-scrolls  inspired world, factions, towns,  

And characters of importance. While this in-itself  was a revolutionary step for Machinima content,   they were also working in the background  to develop a much deeper world with a rich   backstory and regional lore, and so were subtly  advertising this project right from the start.

As The legend of Hobo began to pick up  traction and demand for episodes grew,   the team actually slowed down, eventually choosing  to focus more on building a community server while   RUNE trugged on in the background. Bashur would  always discuss his plans, they wanted quests,  

Races, real conditions within the world,  grandiose living breathing towns and   settlements, with a huge emphasis on roleplay. They planned for the map to be span continents,   with borders swapping the player over  to regional server instances. Once he   even joked about including a poop  mechanic, but of course back then,  

This was all just SO ambitious. To do quests  was one thing, let alone an ENTIRE MMO. It’s ironic to me that these earliest  projects were some of THE most ambitious,   perhaps teams not fully understanding the  capabilities of Minecraft’s system requirements,  

Or even the time investment required to  bring such a server to life, meant they   overestimated and got in over their heads. Safe  to say a whole lot of content was still developed.   Entire books worth of lore, I even won a writing  competition to get my story included in a great  

Library of tales, which at the time actually  inspired me to grow into the creator I am today.  RUNE simmered down and eventually  released as a fairly basic plugin   RP server with very little of  what was originally promised.  

Soon that era was over and people would ponder  on as to whether an MMO would ever be possible. Team Skulburn was a group of creatives,  builders and developers that began in   early 2013, and also had their eyes on  the idea of a Minecraft MMO. Mythros:  

The Rise of Elaragog was intended to  be a fully downloadable custom client,   fit with a large number of RPG style mods, and  a list of regional servers. I came aboard the   team as a writer after body acting in the largely  unrecognised Arcan Chronicles Machinima series.

The project was once again ambitious, the  team planned a huge magnum opus of lore,   comprising gods, races, religions, landmasses,  even ages in history. The project featured fully   animated player characters with bending  limbs and emotes. There was a workshop  

Where players themselves could log onto the  server and design 3d models IN GAME with blocks   that would be translated into holdable weapons  and items. UI was transformed to allow for a   cool health pot and mana pool, with many  dungeons and bosses planned for release.

Sadly, even with a panel at  Insomnia49 and some YouTube coverage,   the project never truly found its  footing, going quiet in late 2015,   and so Mythros remains as another  Minecraft MMO that never was. Started as a simple project in 2011 by the  Podcrash, Minescape began to expand as the world  

Of runescape was recreated in-game, and by 2014,  we finally started to see really big creators   producing content on the server. Even to this  day players record on Minescape because it has a   great way of capturing that old-fashioned routine  grinding that is so familiar to older players.

With Quests, Skills and talent trees, as  well as custom items and experience tables,   a Season pass was eventually introduced  which offered limited challenges that   rewarded cosmetics such as skins, pets, fireworks,   and special auras. And even a high alchemy  system inspired by the original MMO experience

Over time the map has grown to be gigantic,   with many locations and references to old  school Runescape. We have to remember a   big chunk of gamers before Minecraft were  playing World of Warcraft or Runescape,   so this server definitely had an audience,  a demographic, albeit a limited one.

Minescape were certainly kicking it with the  old fashioned players, but it was a niche   and something that is better understood  if you’re a fan of the original game.   The first truly successful MMO  would be one that offered an   entirely original experience  for players both new and old.

Around 2011/12 a server began development that  would change the way we see Minecraft MMOs   forever. Salted, owner of the  channel Crafted Movie began the team,   finally releasing the project on April 30th 2013.  Seen as the first fully developed, completed,   and successfully launched MMORPG Server, Wynncraft  had a special website, a dedicated playerbase  

N lots of inspiration from the classic MMOs of the  time YouTuber Grian joined the project with a team   of builders that helped shape a magnificent world  to explore. Grian also wrote many storylines too.   Quests, Factions, NPCs, Mobs, Levels,  Dungeons, it had it all. And over years more  

Updates continued to bolster the impressive  roster of assets and content on the server. Starting as killing mobs for gear and  mobs as well as simple dungeons and towns,   there was a max level of 70 but content  only went to lvl 40. The following month  

Updates began rolling out regular updates  that expanded the item and feature pool,   adding things like pets that could fight for  you, and quests for levels above 40. Quests and   skillpoints were added in the 1.9 update  and later that year ocean content was added.  

Spells and magic became a system of it’s  own, completely custom mob UI and healthbars,   EULA also deeply affected the monetisation of  the server which hindered earnings dramatically. After this the province of Gavel was released  along with the official resource pack,   a map 3 times the size of the original Wynn area,  

1300 new items and 80 3d models  to bolster their asset collection. Through perseverance, talent, and pacing,  Wynncraft has expanded it’s world tenfold, to   a size of 4,000 by 5500 blocks as of 2017, with  large capital city, branching storylines, and  

Has increased it’s player count dramatically since  2013 and even earned them a guinness world record. Zentrela appeared almost out of nowhere – As  the hype from Wynncraft’s Gavil update began to   disperse in 2016, Edisaki, a player of the server  finished development of HIS attempt at an MMO  

Called Zentrela. Advertising it, he gained a  small number of players that were captured by his   spellcraft and combat systems as well  as the huge array of diverse classes,   like reapers and alchemists beyond just  regular rangers and warriors seen in Wynn.   This instantly made obvious that  competition was not just possible,  

It was beneficial, as it prompted both servers  to compete for players in small ways, it showed   potential for an MMO ecosystem, and some Wynncraft  builders even joined the Zentrela team eventually. With a more detailed and nuanced combat  system, many players switched allegiances  

To the Zentrela server, many Wynncraft youtubers  began creating content to cover the new world,   This shows there is value in competition,  attraction to new shiny things, and while Zentrela   was only developed by one man, it still managed  to make a name for itself within the community,  

Albeit not for long, as the project was  closed little less than a year later. Zentrela wasn’t the biggest MMO but it came along  at a good time, teaching everyone in the space   that even when you think something is at it’s  best, it can still be improved. And though the  

World of Zentrela was short lived, it reminded  us that these experiences were possible, that   innovation needed to continue, and then servers  shouldn’t be getting lazy with content updates. I think at this point the idea was really being  pushed more. Now that MMOs were DOABLE, there  

Was hard evidence that it was achievable with  enough work, we saw lots of new projects crop up,   including a server aimed at the audience  of a longtime series known as Minaite,   which was streamed by CaptainSparklez,  tomSyndicate, jericho, firefox, and many others.  

MinaniteMMO was a project planned to encapsulate  the world painted in the series, similar to what   happened with Legend of Hobo and Project RUNE.  I actually became a writer for this MianiteMMO   for a short period, although due to project  inactivity it never really got off the ground.

Now there is a case to be made about Faction  servers. Like at what point do experiences BECOME   MMORPGs? I know a lot of MMOs with factions,  there’s entire sections of World of Warcraft   dedicated to PVP. So at what point in  Minecraft does a server with factions,  

Evolve to include so many RPG features that it  could be considered an MMO? I guess a faction   server could be classified as just that, it’s  barebones factions with little of anything else. It’s quite hard to categorise some servers  however, for example I worked for Island Clash,  

A server inspired by Clash of Clans and  Kingdom-building tycoons. Technically it could be   considered a real time multiplayer faction-based  strategy game with RPG elements, but that’s   well… a bit of a mouthful. At times a server can  begin to add so many plugins that when combined,  

It FEELS like an MMO, despite it not being  advertised as such. I think despite Island   Clash not technically being an MMO, it was a large  multiplayer server hosting many factions, allowing   you to set up a town, build up an economy, collect  resources and upgrade before raiding one another.  

It was certainly intricate, I remember seeing  the build schematics build up in realtime. Let   me know in the comments what you guys think the  difference is, where you think that line is drawn? In 2018, Hypixel dropped their iteration of  the popular Skyblock map. They hadn’t just  

Added an extra island or changed the rules  though – they’d gone all out and completely   revamped the game, providing new ways for players   to challenge themselves with skill  progression and communal areas. There were custom crafting recipes,  and even specially designed   NPC interactions that allowed you  to upgrade your weapons and armour.

Building on top of that, we saw RPG features  from many prior projects we’ve mentioned,   quests, pets, the ability to join together,   eventually the additions of dungeons and  even player housing coming along too. With smaller features scattered  throughout like the ability   to run foot-races and even visit the  auction house, Hypixel Skyblock acts  

As that fully-breathing world we wanted when  players first imagined something way back when. Of course they are floating islands in the sky –  it’s not exactly a huge continent like Wynncraft,   but it certainly fits a nice, simplistic theme,   allowing the devs to really focus on the  interlocking systems and player experience.

Hypixel average 30 to 40,000 players  in the Skyblock minigame alone,   because it’s not just building up your skyblock,  you’re building up a profile, a character,   in a multiplayer realm, that is by definition,  massive. That’s as MMO as it gets if you ask me.

At this point you can find expansive RPG  experiences for minecraft everywhere you look   like Hegemony:Traders from the East which launched  in late 2020 that offer boundary pushing world   layering. From maps on the marketplace, to new  trends like RLCraft and Minecraft Origins mod,  

But it’s safe to say that fully-fledged MMO  servers are still very far and few between.   Hopefully now you understand why. What it  takes to build a massively multiplayer world,   and more importantly, the steps we  took to reach where we are today.

MMOs in Minecraft sure have had an expansive  history. That and the incredible progressive   we’ve seen with RPG mechanics, plugins and  mods makes for an impressive journey that’s   worth looking back on. We should admire the steps  within the process, especially if you’re a fan of  

This channel, because no doubt with the insane RPG  mechanics Hytale provides, produced by Hypixel the   makers of that Skyblock MMO we mentioned earlier,  it’s bound to provide a new wave of experiences   and inspiration. So make sure you’re subscribed  for when the game launches and make sure to visit  

Kweekwee.com for 50k merch! Do you know of any  other Minecraft MMO projects? Let me know in the   comments. If you want to talk theories, gameplay  ideas and new updates then make sure to join   the kweebec corner discord server with over 3500  minecraft and hytale enthusiasts such as yourself.

Massive praise to the channel members listed  for all their amazing support! Continue smiling,   thank you for liking, subscribing, and  thanks as always for watching Kweebec Corner.