The RISE and FALL of Mindcrack SMP - The Predecessor of Hermitcraft... 

Now theres a lot more to the mindcrack group including their UHC's and charity events, but for this video I just wanted to focus on the rise and fall of their survival server. Anyways, leave a comment if you enjoyed! Discord - discord.gg/WGc9UNM

I think Etho low-key is minecraft's one true goat. He's got his LP series which may be the greatest minecraft LP ever. He was a huge part of Mindcrack and now he's really finally making a mark on Hermitcraft. He's extremely well respected by his peers. Huge youtubers like mr beast have claimed Etho as their inspiration. Minecraft developers have been known to watch Etho and he got his own block in the April fools update. Yet, he flys under the radar of the greater RU-vid scene.

Crazy how so many people in these comments have never heard of Mindcrack. My whole childhood honestly. Etho, Guude, Seth, Beef; all those, guys I was obsessed with. Crazy stuff

The curses of the mindcrack server: 1. Always raining 2. You know season ending is close when bdubs and etho start a big project together

These guys are legends.

Thinking about Mindcrack is nostalgic... I miss waiting for Etho’s next upload back in 2012-2013, or the next episode of UHC. At least Etho still makes insanely high quality content that I can still enjoy all these years later.

I wonder how many UHC players realize Mindcrack made that mode up themselves.

The best part of this server HAS TO BE when Etho finaly got a kill with an anvil.

The fact that Etho is uncomfortable in signing that contract is so etho

My all time favorite MindCrack moment is a tie between “The King of the Ladder” and the time they did a ton of mock UHC’s.

Mindcrack was a part of my childhood, same with Etho

Mindcrack walked so Hermitcraft could run

I’m so happy to see someone mention Paulsoresjr. He was the first RU-vidr I subbed to and I’m so glad to see him get recognition.

14 minutes and 0 mentions of one of the best mindcrackers of all time Zisteau Etho and Bdubs fans may know him as "the E pranker"

Hearing that modern MC players don't know MindCrack makes me feel so old and I'm 18.

Minecrack’s days were numbered when the server reseted without much reason, there wasn’t really any fitting ending for “seasons”. This caused a huge blow to moral and interest while the new seasons lacked much purpose. They also lacked hardcore players and people were treating the game as if it were singleplayer too often. Its difficult being first, but it paved the way big time for future servers.

i remember watching Vintage Beef's prank wars for hours on end and rewatching them so much. I still hav 'Pink sheep' and 'Floating blocks of ice' Stuck in my head lmao

Missed so many things that were awesome of Mindcrack: King of the Ladder, Prank Wars, Zisteau (king of pranks and giant concepts), inventing UHC, Race for the Wool (featuring Super Hostile/CTM inventor Vechs), Guudeland. In the end I believe Mindcrack declined and Hermitcraft rose for a simple reason: Guude just liked talking while playing games, and minecraft was just a medium, not his passion. Like he said he was bored playing alone when he started Youtubing it. That's why it diversified into other games and marathon event shows. Meanwhile, Hermitcraft (after GB left) was a democracy formed around minecraft. Everything they did was minecraft. So decisions were made to grow Minecraft content, not to grow a group that sometimes did minecraft.

I've heard of Mindcrack quite a bit, but never watched any of it myself.

I remember actively watching MindCrack as GenerikB was setting up HermitCraft and being like really sceptical about it even existing back in the day. It's strange how much can change in a couple of years yet still be so close to how it used to be.

Also worth mentioning the PlayMindcrack minigame server and Guude's falling out with Rawb (OldManWillakers) being part of the buisness side of MindCrack that didn't end well.

Season 4 was so iconic. Bdub’s town hall. Ethos potion lab BUNNIES

I remember this, I stopped watching when bdubs an etho left, they ere the draw for me. Speaking of when will we get a bdubs vid, interested to see your take on arguably one of the best builders.

Whenever I think of mindcrack its instantly followed by potato on a stick

Man imagine having the most popular smp that even notch himself joined the server

i remember when docm77 mined out the last bits of his witch hut perimeter, aswell as the rube goldberg machine he built after that.

I'm not sure who made the decision for the slowly expanding world border in season 5, but it really seemed like that was the small domino that led to the fall of the entire community. I can remember how it went myself. First they were interested by it, doing experiments they wouldn't do otherwise and getting a really dense hub for the spawn as that's all they had access to. I can even remember them going out to explore the new horizons to see if an ocean monument or stronghold came into view yet. But then the attrition came, and they slowly started posting less and less videos, even though the news channel updates for Mindcrack were just as enthusiastic. Sethbling eventually did away with the world border, but that didn't make Etho return to finish his giant tree base. Activity dropped hard, and Etho left not long after. Then with key members gone, they were walking into season 6 with a shot leg, never to find the glory of season 4 again.

I have good memories of watching Paul Soares Jr play on MindCrack. I remember he built a sandstone museum of the server, had a house in a tree, and a mule called Ferris Mueller (a reference I do not understand to this day haha). Kinda crazy that I can remember stuff that happened such a long time ago. It’s sad that MindCrack died but hey at least we have some good SMPs that have carried the torch onwards, HermitCraft especially. Edit: well the video makes it’s clear MindCrack hasn’t actually ‘died’ although it’s basically become irrelevant over time. My main point stands though, HermitCraft absolutely feels like a spiritual successor to MindCrack, and other SMPs like SMPLive, SMPEarth, and DreamSMP have been innovating upon the core idea that MindCrack proved could work.

I think it’s so funny that GenerikB started the Hermitcraft server and then got invited to Mindcrack and quit his own server only for it to blow up a few years later. Seeing hermitcraft so big is a blast of nostalgia for me

I was wondering if you would ever consider doing a video on direwolf20? He’s not huge or mainstream (only 500k subs) but he helped catapult Minecraft mods in the mainstream, and the April fools dimension update even has an Easter egg based off him, so he’s had a big enough impact. I know he helped me get into mods, which is now my favorite way to play Minecraft, and I know he helped many others.

In addition to the server and UHCs, Mindcrackers used to team up to take on Vechs' "super hostile" maps. Those series were so much fun.

Mindcrack was legendary. I still have fond memories of season 4, where Bdubs and Etho really started collaborating a lot more and making some amazing builds. Not to mention their UHCs which were really quite unique back in the old days. It got me into Minecraft in 2013/14, now it's over 6 years later and while I rarely play the game, I still watch Bdubs, Etho and Beef all the time. Some things never change.

Tbh, its an honor to have watched mindcrack from the beginning. Season 3 and 4 are legendary. I still watch them for nostalgia. Etho bdubs beef are the guys i still watch religiously on hermitcraft and others. I miss the mindcrack days

if I may add something, Mindcrack rose as Minecraft itself rose, but it also fell as Minecraft fell. Nowadays, we're used to seeing a major update once a year to keep the game fresh, but that wasn't so much the case back then. Updates were more frequent, but they added very little in comparison. Honestly, if you asked me what 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8 added, I'd struggle to give you an answer and that's saying something: thanks to modded, 1.7.10 is by far the update I have played the most! Speaking of which, 1.8 was the first update that took over a year to develop. Nowadays, you see updates reach the .2, .3 or .4 update before a new major update comes (like 1.12.2, 1.13.2, 1.14.4). Well, the 1.7 update reached 1.7.10! Again, this was while waiting for 1.8, which wasn't that big an update, at least not by modern standards. One of the many reasons why Mindcrack fell was because it was stagnating, and the main reason why, in my opinion, was because Minecraft itself was stagnating. Recently, Minecraft has made a return to popularity, and one of the big reasons is because even though major updates are sparse, by comparison to old Minecraft, they add a ton of new content that keeps Minecraft fresh. That serves as an excellent factor of motivation to keep people going with the game. Something else I should add is that, as you said, back then they didn't just play on the vanilla Mindcrack server, they had several series going in other games, along with extra Minecraft content. People were also playing UHC (yes, for those who don't know, I believe Mindcrack invented UHC), along with the FeedTheBeast server, among others. This meant they played on the vanilla server less and less as their attention was divided. In my opinion, they were trying to hold too many series going together at once. By comparison, look at Hermitcraft: sure, many of the players play other games, but you still have an active core of great RU-vidrs who mostly do Hermitcraft. Many, like Xisuma and Mumbo Jumbo, keep their non-Minecraft content to separate channels. Iskall, Rendog, GoodTimesWithScar and Cubfan upload pretty much exclusively Hermitcraft right now and don't seem to have second channels (however I am not aware of whether or not they stream). To add to this, look at VintageBeef (the one I'm the most familiar with as I've been subscribed to him since 2012), one of the guys who played on both servers. Beef used to hold many series across different games and many Minecraft series too. However, you'll notice he tended to burn himself out and didn't keep those series going for as long. When you upload many let's plays at once, some will see less activity and many will die out. If you look at his playlists, you'll see what I mean. The guy has tons of dead series that barely took off. However, contrarily to what would happen usually, his Hermitcraft series is still going and he's still really active several months later. Why? His channel has changed over the past months. He hasn't uploaded anything non-Minecraft in 9 months (this is ignoring House into Home, his second channel) and seems to play less series at once. For months, he exclusively uploaded Hermitcraft! Beef has his attention less divided, focuses on fewer series and, as a result, they last longer. Hermits are much more active on the server, don't have their attention divided as much as Mindcrackers did, and as such the server stays active and people keep playing.

I feel like this retrospective leaves out *almost all* of the nuance of Guude and the birth of Mindcrack, as well as what he wanted from the project... It started out from a very personal place for Guude, he was going through a really hard time. It was like his diary. And as things got bigger and bigger. He eventually felt alienated from his audience. To paraphrase a little bit, he felt like the audience wasn't there to watch Jason. But rather the character that is the Admin of the big mammajamma server. Don't quote me because this isn't exhaustive and not something Jason ever said. But this is my interpretation being a fan that showed up in the mid seasons of Mindcrack. And wasn't there when it was a man making video diaries to help him grieve the loss of his dad. Just seems like the Server was a project that became something Guude didn't particularly want responsibility for. Because it was anchored to minecraft, and almost a genre shift in content production. Poor guy got really cynical for a time there before he started live streaming. And when he did start, it seemed his disposition improved somewhat. I hope the guy is doing okay. He's had some unfair shit happen, and was kind of a role model for me as a teenager becoming an adult. Kind of like the super cool older cousin.

I used to be obsessed with mindcrack. Not sure if anyone will get this reference but maybe it will give someone a chuckle: #ForTheHorse!

I still watch the trial episodes once a year or so just to remember how much fun Mindcrack was back then. I'm still subbed to a bunch of the guys but it's just not the same.

Fun fact Mindcrack is still doing charity to this day. I encourage you to check out the one they have planned on November 14 to 20th.

Man, so many memories. I don't think I'll ever forget Mindcrack Season 3 and 4, I used to religiously watch everybody's videos every day after school haha.

I still watch Etho to this day, he really be a huge part of my life for the 8 years or so ive watched him.

Good lord, I remember watching Zisteau’s montages from Mindcrack. They were some of the best edited videos I’ve ever seen, and it’s sad that so many people didn’t even know the server existed.

The biggest plus for me about Mindcrack compared to Hermitcraft now is that it was a lot more relatable. Hermitcraft nowadays is all about incredible, unachievable hours of work. A Mindcrack episode could just be building a wall of a small scale house which would take you about 10 hours to build. Hermitcraft is all about mega-builds, extreme resource gathering and time-lapses of days of work I simply can never put into the game. Every episode seems to want to one up the last one, and the creators seem to think of an episode as a failure if they haven't put in a minimum of 12 hours of work. It's a showcase of what minecraft can be, but not what's achievable for a casual player. I know that's probably what draws a large part of the audience, as they want to look up to the creators and see the best of the best. But Mindcrack gave me the feeling I could be part of them because what they showed in their video's was comparable to what I had/could make in my own worlds. So even though I enjoy Hermitcraft it will never reach the same place in my heart as Mindcrack did.

I think one of the aspects that is often overlooked when talking about the fall of Mindcrack "due to one poor decision" is that at the time, going more "pro" and being business-concious was actually quite common. It was the time of Machinima and youtubers signing up to these representative companies in order to get better sponsorships or have more contact with the bigshots at youtube, the time of in-person conventions like Minecon - pretty much all of these youtubers regretted that later on, but at the time, being able to do youtube for a living was still an incredibly risky and unrealistic dream for many.

The fun house prank video never gets old

The Old Ones... so long ago. They are still in my memory banks. Season 4 Mindcrack was the best. Redstone update, new biomes, a kickass spawn town, everything was perfect.

Few things I think need to be mentioned: BDoubleO100 joined at (I think) the beginning of season 3 Vechs, the creator of the Super Hostile maps which many mindcrackers played, joined mindcrack in season 4 Etho's statement on why he left mindcrack was actually on an episode of his modpack series, as he has almost never done any livestreams

I still go back and watch "the king of the ladder" video sometimes when I'm bored. Such a great time. I wish hermitcraft today had more of those 5-15 people heists, pranks, and general shenanigans. That being said, the mycelium resistance war vs HEP does come close, but it just doesn't feel quite as simple and fun, being more grand and tactical.

I still think growing a few hundred giant mushrooms above Guude’s house was one of the best pranks ever, in Minecraft.

Fun fact, the Jsano19 fan server still exists to this day, we are on our 5th season and have been active for I think at least 7 or 8 years or so. We're still an active server and our most popular muckluck has 20K subs. A lot of us still stream. We also recently did our 34th official UHC following in the Mindcrack tradition.

I still remember the days of the B Team and how they tried to prank and kill Etho and ended getting killed by the sneaky ninja. Also the epic moment when Etho 1v 3 against Nebris, Millbee, and MCgamer in his prototype Death Games.

they were the blueprint for today's SMPs and UHCs. the UHC competitions they had every few months were to tense and fun to watch. i remember vechs grew from an unserious underdog to getting a UHC winstreak of like 4 or so. these were the good days of MCYT :,)

Mindcrack was such a huge part of my childhood. a friend of mine showed me vintagebeef and the amount of time i spent watching him and guude especially was wild. i got personally invested in so many of these guys, but ultimately it makes sense why things fell apart. i have a lot of empathy for guude as it’s hard to balance making minecraft content for fun and also doing it as a full time job. they had to basically figure out on the fly how to deal with the huge growth that they experienced with no example to follow since they were basically the pioneers of multiplayer minecraft content. but ultimately, playing the same game over and over gets stale for most people, so it was probably going to decline in activity eventually regardless there’s also a ton of behind the scenes stuff that didn’t get covered in this video and would probably take a full length video essay to dive into - the dwarves vs zombies and playmindcrack drama comes to mind as an especially messy situation that caused some divisions in the group and also showed how hard it was to turn mindcrack into an actual business

Honestly it's funny, the name that got me into all of Mindcrack was Joe hills. and realizing how small he was compared the others after all these years really is funny to me.

This video is a great summary without going too much into detail. I remember in the very beginning knowing, liking and watching a fair amount of Mindcrackers. Occassionaly Hermitcraft videos would pop up in my recommendation, but since I didn't know those youtubers, the interest was small. Then, some Mindcrackers started to have cross-over jokes and mentions, such as about JoeHill and others. This made it fairly easy to "transfer" the fanbase from one server to another. It felt just like a name change at first. Only now, watching this video, one realizes how many youtubers have been lost and how many others have joined. I specially miss GenerikB, who would often have quite funny ideas, but I know that he was left out for other specific reasons.

Let’s go this is what I’m here for. I love OG mindcrack. I’m sad I missed the early years. I have since watched ethos whole playlist the last couple of years. The court trail was legendary (sounds like u had a bath). I started end of s3 I think.

god this gave me so much nostalgia, it really is a shame seeing how much it has fallen but in the end, it was probably for the best

Considering how recent this video is, I'm not sure you really did your research in regards to the "fall" of Mindcrack, specifically the licensing of Mindcrack. The myth of Guude being money-hungry and trying to make Mindcrack a business has been thoroughly debunked, as he has said on multiple occasions that the agreement signed by all willing members of the group was specifically to keep members like Bdubbs and generikb from accepting sponsorships and illegally not disclosing them.

I really enjoy watching mindcrack, though I don't watch as much anymore due to time, it's fun seeing them still have fun playing together on the server or on different games. Also really cool how they allow patrons from their patreon to play on the server. And also their charity livestreams are so great. Looking forward to the one they have coming up this weekend.

Still can't forget about Minecraft's massive dip in popularity in 2014 as well. That entire event definitely contributed to the server crumbling

I watched so much mindcrack in 2012-2014. Then I lost interest in all minecraft content. I only got back into minecraft back in 2019 with Hermitcraft.

I'm 23 now, watched Mindcrack from season 3 onwards and this video tapped into so many memories I forgot I even had. Mindcrack was a huge part of my teen years; From eagerly anticipating the arena build with Bdubs or the never-ending castle with Beef, to watching all the perspectives in UHC, constantly refreshing the page when I knew the next episodes were coming out. The prank wars, the trial case. Hell, even race for wool. I was there through most of it, and all I can do is thanks those that made that great content for us all. Admittedly, my interest in Minecraft isn't particularly high these days, but even so, I come back on occasion to see how some of my old favorite youtubers are doing. This is especially true when, like recently, a new season of Hermitcraft begins (season 8 as of writing this) and everybody is together, making new content and thus, new memories for a newer generation of people, and those of us who're still around from the predecessors.

Bruh thank you so much for making this video! Season 3 was my favorite, vintage beef was probably my most influential RU-vidrs at the time

Watching this video gives me a feeling I dont know how to describe. Kind of like nostalgia and sadness for a world I can't remember anymore.

The only thing I know about Mindcrack is the massive controversies caused by the B-team. I was very surprised to see that get NO mention at all in this video.

I remember watching Vintage beef and Etho on Minscrack in 2012 and 2013. I later watched Psj and Generikb. I miss watching that server Hermitcraft just isn't the same. I remember the decline in 2015 and 2016 and it made me sad to see it go.

Mindcrack charity marathon is this weekend on twitch, check it out.

Mindcrack... Those were the days. The trial of the B-Team, Beef and his castle/casino, Zisteau's starter bases, Etho's redstone shenanigans, not to mention the epic prank wars. Except for the newest Hermitcraft season this was my favorite era of youtube.

hey, you never mentioned that Guude was the pioneer behind UHC! either way, great video! i'm glad to see i'm not the only one who still remembers this group today :P

You just went through my childhood the memories. Yeah 2015 year I lost interest in the group. But its all good now we got hermitcraft season 7 😉 I just miss zisteau.

mindcrack used to be my favorite, such an iconic group

Kinda off topic, but hearing ethos old microphone brings back so many memories 9:00

I remember coming home freshman year of highschool every day to watch mindcrack non-stop. Bdubs, Etho, GennyB, Vintage Beef, Nebris, ect. I miss the prank episodes and the UHC battles the most. I don't watch mc as much anymore but it is nice to see many found a home on that new server.

11:55 they also didn't swear dure to consideration to each other. For example, PauseUnpause even back in the day said "fuck" on his own, but not during collabs with Etho, whose channel is family friendly.

Sad but true. I was watching since the beginning of S3, but lost interest when Etho left. Then the departure of Bdubs and Genny sealed the deal...

I'm a little surprised you didn't talk about their feed the beast stuff, but I guess you explained why in the pinned comment. Still, Etho's original modded mindcrack series is one of my favorites, and brings me huge nostalgia

Sad no one knows etho, the dude literally revolutionized redstone contraptions and paved the way for the current major red stone youtubers

I only watched Mindcrack while Etho was still there, as he was the only Mindcrack player I watched, and still watch with Hermitcraft and his other series.

Omg I can't imagine what my childhood would be without them. I loved watching doc, etho, anderz. I remember when they cleared out a whole chunk for a witch farm and dinnerbone as well as notch helped them.

I fondly remember the days of Mindcrack. My old friend group I had on Skype I met basically because of their videos. We were even inspired to make our own SMP at the time. I also loved watching the UHC’s, especially season 3.

These guys were my everything for a few years there 2013 to 2016 or so. Watched the minecraft videos, the G mod stuff, listened to the podcast. Slowly they adapted to a new RU-vid and slowly I found new interests; and I haven't watched in a few years. But they'll always hold a special place in my heart cause my final few years of high school and first year of college were filled with them.

I still have my Mindcrack Twitch shirt, they were my partner when I started my channel back when small channels needed partners to be paid, Guude was never anything but nice to me. I do miss old Mindcrack.

Thanks for the very nostalgic video bro. I legit almost cried. This was my childhood.

Thanks for making this video. This is the kind of history I would have loved to have known as a kid. Kurtjmac is the reason I started watching RU-vid videos, and his joining Mindcrack is how I discovered Etho, Bdubs, Beef, Doc, Pause, etc. I used to refuse to watch Hermitcraft out of resentment, lol. I'm glad I stopped, because HC feels the way Mindcrack used to, and I missed that feeling.

Man, thinking back there were so many legendary moments we watched happen with these guys that defined 2012-2015 for me. I loved mindcrack so much, Etho and Sethbling and Aureylian and all those guys. Got to meet a whole bunch of them at PAX East one year, it was the highlight of the year for me. I've grown a lot since then and I don't think about it a lot anymore but those were the days, this was a legendary time on minecraft youtube

Just the best SMP there ever was.

I really enjoyed the times of OOGE, B-Team, and Team Canada. Sad that they've moved on but glad that they stayed. Thank you, Mindcrack.

I used to watch mindcrack videos years before I even had the chance to play Minecraft myself since I didn't have a computer at home. Now this brings so much nostalgia from seeing youtubers names I had completely forgotten about. Now I gotta go see what they are up to.

Man, this brings back memories. Mindcrack videos were the bulk of my RU-vid viewing back from 2013-2015. B-Dubs, GenerikB, SethBling, Guude, Zisteau, Pause, Pyro, and many of the others were my jams. I still watch some of them in their other videos. The UHCs that come out now and then. Seth breaking speedruns. Guude, Pause, and a lot of them doing Mario Kart and TTT. Whenever there is a new "Zisteau Plays Minecraft" I have a piece of special joy. But it sadly just isn't the same.

When you grew up worh a quarter of thise creators. Vintage Beef's Jungle Village and Quartz Lily Pad were my favorite builds.

When guude cut ties with rawb that was the start of the fall for me but I still click on mindcrack videos when I see them

Watching some of these old clips was like seeing an old friend that I forgot was my friend.

Great video a lot of nostalgic moments. I still go back and watch the old Mindcrack videos. Season three was my favorite.

I like to congratulate the Mindcrackers and their community for raising over $200k for charity this year. Y'all are amazing.

I swear I remember part of the decline being due to some profit sharing scheme that Guude tried to employ, where the larger creators would give a portion of the money they made to the smaller creators as a way to make sure that everyone was making ends meet and could all dedicate time to playing and producing content on the server without having to stress about money. But this is just me trying to remember events that happened like over 7 or 8 years ago now, so I really can't say for certain.

I find it really cool that looking at all the clips of Season 2 and 3 I can remember them like it was my own world even tough I was only 8 at the time. I'll probably never forget about Mindcrack and although I didn't realize the amount of behind the scenes work it took at the time, I understand now that they work countless hours for their audience allowing them to have great memories of the group and Minecraft as a whole.

It blows my mind that some of the biggest fans of the current Hermitcraft season have never and will never watch “The Trial”. Possibly the greatest Minecraft collaboration in history. Man, I miss Mindcrack.

It's sad to see someone like VintageBeef who had hundreds of thousand views and now has only 100k on hermit and for some years 30-70k only views. Brings nostalgia, really.

While I like this video, I would've liked a longer video that went more in depth, because there's a LOT to this subject as other comments have pointed out. Like, I was sitting here wondering when you would bring up the mindcrack UHC videos, because those were HUGE, honestly I think they had more reach than the regular survival LP episodes often did (they did for me at least).

I watched Mindcrack all the time. I saw the Demise when Etho and Bdubs left and when they decided to try and make a network. I’m glad many of them are still around, I still pop in on an Etho video now and then.

I remember Mindcrack being basically my entire life.. And when it started to fall apart I honestly lost myself. Having never had people to hang out with all I ever wanted was to have a group like Mindcrack to call my friends. I miss them all and listening to the Mindcrack Podcast is so surreal in 2022... VintageBeef and Guude uploaded a new season of Mindcrack recently....