The Rise, Fall, and Possible Rebirth of Hypixel Skyblock

Hypixel Skyblock is an MMORPG released on June 11th, 2019, when Minecraft’s popularity was on the rise and many players were returning because of the controversial Fortnite update. This gave them a unique game to start after a few years of games copying each other. The game is simple at face value: make new items, talk to NPCs, level up different skills such as combat and mining, and complete new challenges like killing bosses, but naturally, the game didn’t have much content when it started. The admins in charge of Skyblock gave an estimate of one week per update and that they were aware of many bugs, and players were happy with the current content and excited for more. As the developers released consistent updates and patched many bugs (such as duplications, inventory losses, dialogues not working, etc.) players spread the word, and the player count rose each day. The admins gave an outline on what content they wanted to update next. This gave players things to look forward to and kept them playing the game, especially as COVID-19 cases surged and quarantine locked everyone down. And then the content drought hit.

Seldom did any further updates come. Rarely did any teasers or leaks come. All of the markets for “hard to get” items became saturated. The game became dull.

But then, the admins said that a new feature, “dungeons,” was expected to come out in March or April of 2020, but that day didn’t actually come for months afterwards. Towards mid-May, Hypixel opened up their alpha network to test things on Skyblock before they come out, and with it came the first test for dungeons, their brand-new, extremely difficult feature, with co-op battles, randomly generated maps, and tons of new content and items. After so long with no new content, players (only the top-paying ones) could get early access to the soon-to-be staple of the game, but it was very difficult for players to progress, because all of the items pre-dungeons were very underwhelming compared to new dungeons items and the new item upgrading system. Then the alpha network was either in queues hundreds of players long, or it was closed until further notice, not to mention the economy crashing because of a group of people transferring an unfathomable amount of money to the main servers, and it left players anxious as to what would become of dungeons, and then came Judgment Day for Hypixel’s hardware.

July 7th, 2020. Dungeons released to the main network with many bugs, crashes, and hour-long queues that could be interrupted at any time. The admins didn’t plan on there being thousands of players trying to all join at once, because they didn’t stress test on the alpha with more players since it was limited to around a hundred people. They limited dungeon playing to people who paid $5 for a permanent rank or more for the time being, which didn’t really matter, because many players already had ranks. Too many people were rushing to join the hype train, and they had to temporarily close dungeons and the server to allocate more hardware to dungeons. There were 10 planned floors for the Catacombs (first dungeon), and very shortly after we got the first four, many famous players emerged and started obtaining the best, most overpowered gear in the game. One player got to Catacombs level 30 (extremely time-consuming and difficult at the time) and got the first set of fully upgraded Superior Dragon Armor (best armor for damage) and dealt millions of damage per hit. Around a month later, Floor 5 came out with the new best damage set, and another month later Floor 6 came out with the new best weapon and tank armor . . . but then nothing else came. The game became very content-saturated when Floor 7 came out on November 17th, 2020, but players were angry because the admins decided to drop Floors 8, 9, and 10.

For too long, the game went on with little to no major, long-lasting content updates, but here and there, the admins would tease upcoming updates (with a grain of salt) and players were practically on their knees begging for new content. Many YouTubers were getting bored and trying to persuade the admins to update older parts of the game, which did happen eventually, but in 2022 the admins have finally decided to crack down and update many features in the game. Up until now there have been more minor updates, but multiple skills have gotten updated, we’ve gotten insight into the release of Hypixel Skyblock 1.0 (it’s currently at 0.9.1, I believe); updated islands; a different boss fight for Floor 7; many, many bugs (some quite gamebreaking), and recently there have been multiple updates to the Crimson Isle, one of the combat islands, including a revamped boss fight with endgame gear and content for players to enjoy, and alpha testing for a farming skill revamp and more updates for the Crimson Isle. The developers have been pushing out many quality updates and are planning on releasing more. Thus, the game looks like it’s redeeming itself—but we won’t know until it actually happens, which will probably be another 3-5 business days. Hopefully, if they keep it up, they can meet their goals of major updates coming around early 2023 and 1.0.0 sometime next year.

My SkyCrypt, if you want to see it, is here.