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Considering Minecraft isn't five years old, it's astonishing how many types of multiplayer servers have been opened to us.
Many people don't realise that in the beginning, only basic survival servers were available. The evolution of these communities is responsible for making the game we all know and love such a success story. Many players return simply just to enjoy a game of splegg, hide and seek, the walls or the hunger games.
Of course, the humble creative server became available when creative mode was implemented. Before then, fly mods and the /item command were the only ways of quickly getting things done. So the new mode made it much easier to create the huge and attractive structures desired by servers.
In the last couple of years, they've started paying building teams for commissions - getting them to construct huge maps that can be transferred to the servers, allowing them to attract more visitors. For example, Team Vareide build survival games maps for The Hive. World Edit and Voxel Sniper have made the building process more efficient, enabling even larger structures to be built for the servers that need them.
So, in a way, purpose-built creative servers (and obviously, creative mode in itself) have partly been the driving force behind all our favourite servers. Thank Mojang they thought of it.
RPG servers involve Role-Playing Games and have been around for a long time. These servers have created entire maps with their own missions, as well as towns and villages that mimic those which you can find in the real games. Thus you can have the wonders of Runescape, World of Warcraft or FusionFall while enjoying the comfortable, simplified, blocky surroundings of Minecraft. At least, you can enjoy it if the quality and closeness to the real thing is there. Both of which are difficult to achieve.
Examples: A'therys Ascended, WildCraft
Prison servers are great for people who like PVP and socialising - the huge events that they run can be a lot of fun and they've recently seen a boost in popularity due to some of SkyDoesMinecraft's Cops and Robbers videos.
Examples: Mumau's Prison,Block City Jail
Survival Games servers need no explanation. Popularised by the books and especially the recent Hunger Games movie, which grossed $700 million at the box office (relevant fact for you, there), server makers have come to realise that Minecraft is the perfect springboard for this game. It's a fun and simple way to play PvP, with items to grab and the last one standing being the winner.
Examples: LavaCraft,SimpleGaming
Recently we've seen servers trying to win over a vast array of players with different tastes. They incorporate all of the features above, as well as creative worlds and a huge number of mini-games, in an attempt to ensure you don't switch over to another server. This has made some servers (The Hive, The Shotbow Network, The Chunk, It'sJerryAndHarry) extremely wealthy. With tens of thousands of regular players, they're making thousands of dollars in profits every month, and creating huge teams of staff to ensure further growth.
They're not necessarily the best, but they're certainly making it more difficult for newer, smaller servers to thrive. Although some people enjoy smaller communities, the majority are flocking to giant ones to enjoy much greater choice. It's just like real life. Why enter a small, dingy electronics shop when you could walk straight into PC World?
It's arguable whether you could call them recent, but great advances have occurred in other areas. More people are playing in server economies, trading items for in-game money and owning their own land and property. By trying to convince you that you're in real life, and giving you things to do such as jobs and building, mining and hunting, searching and socialising, servers are becoming increasingly addictive.
One thing's for certain: there's a lot more fun to be had nowadays. New games like Sky-block have become phenomenally popular. Mini-games like TNT Run and Minecade are available, and we have YouTube videos to thank for bringing them to our attention. Entire servers have popped up that are dedicated to Call of Duty and Pokemon. More maps have been created for games like The walls. The advances are endless.
Chances are, we still have new types of servers to discover. Can you think of any games or popular movies that could be transformed into servers? First, you'd have to imagine it within the boundaries placed by the plugins, Minecraft features and mods currently available to us.
You'd also have to assess what would be possible with redstone, and whether a purpose-made texture pack would be suitable. Finally: would people actually like to come online and play? You'd have to do surveys to find out. These are the challenges that server builders have faced, and the challenges you can choose to take on yourself.
Of course, as the game grows, more opportunities will become available to developers. What's more, the first person who transforms the next cultural phenomenon (such as the Hunger Games) into a server, could become very rich indeed.
Do you have any ideas for a new server?
Also, I've probably missed out some important things. Notify me in the comments (without accusing me of a lack of research).
Okay, that feels a bit dramatic. I'll still respond to you all in the comments, and don't forget to comment on the blog itself!
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aand i hope you are soon done with irl things and you have time to write more cool things :D
But speaking of servers, I'm setting up a large mini games server, and can't get Spigot to work. Any suggestions? Help me out in this thread.