The Dream SMP
The Dream SMP started out in mid-2020 as a for-fun server amongst friends, rising to popularity in late-2020 to early-2021, starring notable creators such as the titular creator Dream, TommyInnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, and Ranboo among many other names. While not initially starting out as a roleplaying server, it has evolved into a server containing a compelling plot with many different and unique characters, all with their own points of view. It arguably was one of the biggest fan bases created during the Covid lockdown, and continues to have millions of fans around the world. However, due to its noteriety, the Dream SMP fandom has been placed with other such infamous fanbases such as Homestuck and Undertale due to how large the fandom is. But there is a reason that this server has garnered such a large fanbase, filled with angst and easy, digestible humor. Logo made by u/badbooy55 on reddit.
Hermitcraft
Hermitcraft is a very old style of server, as it still has the older naming convention of past minecraft servers, but every new season is self-contained and starts on a brand-new server. Each creator plays in survival multiplayer not with the intent to prepare for war with their fellow creators (at least in the usual sense) but to build amazing structures while also poking fun. This is a laid-back wholesome and fun series starring incredible minecraft vets such as Bdoubleo, TangoTek, Grian, Mumbo Jumbo, GoodtimeswithScar, FalseSymmetry, GeminiTay, Rendog, Docm, Impulsesv, PearlescentMoon, Ethoslabs, Cubfan, and literally so many more. As of now, Season 8 is the newest complete season (and easiest to binge) while Season 9 is currently running. Logo made by Dnator.
QSMP
QSMP was started on March 22nd, 2023 as a way to bridge the two halves of Quackity's streaming career, his English friends and audience and his Spanish friends and audience. Eight content creators were chosen that spoke English and eight that spoke Spanish to be brought to a mysterious island run by mysterious figures who want to keep the creators on the island for as long as possible. Cross-language communication is highly encouraged with most of the content creators willing to learn a different language, and since starting, a live translator mod was installed to help those who don't speak more than one language fluently. French and Brazillian creators have also been added alongside beloved egg children. The heavily-modded server is very silly with almost Looney-toons-esque humor and improv while also coming in with the angst steel chair from time to time.
Minecraft Championship
Each month, Smajor and Noxcrew, a prominent team of minecraft modders, put together a tournament pitting various minecraft creators and other online content creators against each other in a series of battle-royal games under the title "Minecraft Championship," or "MCC" for short. After each round of games, the teams earn coins based on how well they did and the top two play a dodgeball-style game called dodgebolt to declare the winner. Teams like to go all out by coordinating their Minecraft skins to their team color as well as dress up in fun costumes for specific MCC's. The logo was presumably created by Noxcrew.
3rd Life (Traffic SMP)
Also known as Traffic SMP, each season of this is named differently according to the season: Third Life, Last Life, Second Life, and most recently, Limited Life. The premise is that each creator gets three lives to start out in the hardcore world. Once they die, their green name turns yellow, and they have two more lives left. Once they lose another life, their name turns red and they become hostile, hunting down the other players until only one remains. Alliances, allegiances, homoeroticism, and good old backstabbing are core values in this SMP. Each season introduces new mechanics, building off the previous seasons, introducing a Boogeyman, the ability to trade excess lives, and a soulmate system. Creators here include many of the Hermitcraft players as well as a few other friends like Scott Smajor, SolidarityGaming, and LDShadowlady. Logo designer currently unknown.
Empires SMP
Each player builds their empire up, trading, fighting, and negotiating their way to the top of the world and having fun along the way, using mods to spice up the vanilla Minecraft experience. While filled with tons of worldbuilding and lore, this series remains as lighthearted as some of the Hermitcraft episodes but can also come across as serious and high-stakes as some of the 3rd Life episodes. The current season (Season 2) is underway, meaning the first season is entirely bingeable. Empires stars fWhip, Smajor, GeminiTay, Joey Gaceffa, Katherine Elizabeth, LDShadowLady, MythicalSausage, PearlescentMoon, Pixlriffs, Shubble, Smallishbeans, SolidarityGaming, and FalseSymmetry. Logo designer currently unknown.
Pirates SMP
Pirates SMP is an SMP by POW Creations acting as an open-world RPG world in the Faction Isles. Four factions live (somewhat) peacefully on the island, searching for treasure and fighting beasts to gain more loot and upgrade their ships. However, there is a bit more to the island than there seems.
Karmaland
This is a server starring many popular Spanish-speaking content creators. Like the Dream SMP, the storyline is immersive and interwoven between betrayals and wars. Each new iteration of the server restarts on a new world carrying some alliances and allegiances over from the previous world. Currently, it's on it's fifth iteration. Unfortunately, I don't speak Spanish well enough to keep up with real-time streams, so any lore that I write out here will be second-hand. Logo attributed to @harry_pottr.
Lifesteal SMP
Lifesteal SMP, much like the Dream SMP and Karmaland, tells a story of wars, betrayal, and tactical thinking. The twist is that if you die, you permanently lose a heart of health, and if you kill someone, you gain their heart of health for a maximum total of twenty hearts. Hearts can also be physically removed and placed in a nether star to give or barter with other players. Notably, there is a heavy motif of gambling and learning what the price to play is. Logo designer currently unknown.
Rats SMP
The Rats SMP started on October 16th, 2022 (ended first week of January 2023) by POW Creations with 16 different players from all corners of the Minecraft content creator sphere. They all play as different rats with different lives who have all found themselves trapped inside a mansion with a family who is slowly learning about their activity around the house. As it's a very rp-heavy server, there are events where the family will up the ante by bringing home cats to hunt the rats or by finally opening the doors to let the rats outside, or even surprise guest rats dropping in for a visit. They can find things around the house to bring back up to the attic to build to their heart's content, or they can choose to be bothersome to the family at the sake of them becoming more aggressive.
Each rat gets three lives, once those lives are up, they're gone. If any of the humans catch the rats, they get stuck in a cage and must be rescued by another rat. If the trap timer runs out, that rat loses a life. The fleas (livestream chat) help keep the rats company when everyone else is asleep on the server (logged off). Rats include: Scott Smajor, Tubbo, Shubble, SolidarityGaming, IntheLittleWood, TheOrionSound, OwengejuiceTV, Bekyamon, LDShadowlady, Snifferish, SoupforEloise, OliveSleepy, Apokuna, ggAcho, WillowMVP, and KrowFang. Logo designer currently unknown.
Origins SMP
Origins SMP is notable for using a mod to give players superpowers (or origins) surrounding different mobs, monsters, and animals. Using these different powers, the creators then try to navigate playing together with their differences resulting in wacky hyjinx and interesting exploits. Origins SMP is notable for having restarted four times (as of the current date) without progressing too much game-wise. Currently, the SMP has been recently revived again towards the end of 2022. Players on the server include: TommyInnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, Ranboo, Philza, Sneegsnag, Nihachu, Jack Manifold, Smajor, Technoblade, Shubble, Aimsey, and Slimesicle amongst others. The logo design comes from the Origins mod by Apace100 on curseforge. The logo designer is currently unknown.
SMPEarth
SMPEarth was created at the end of 2019 and lasted until mid-2020. The whole minecraft map was a recreation of the Earth and allowed different creators to mark out their own factions to join and fight against other factions. SMPEarth is considered to be canon to the lore of the Dream SMP for some characters. While not inherently serious, the server focuses on war and treaties, using mods that allow for tactical and creative thinking outside of the vanilla Minecraft experience. Notable creators here include Chip, Wilbur Soot, JoshA20, TommyInnit, Timedeo, Technoblade, and Philza alongside others. Logo created by pixelflow.
SMPLive
SMPLive was one of the first popular modern minecraft servers that began a new generation of minecraft creators. Starting in 2019, the premise was that in order to play on the server, the creator had to be streaming at all times. This fundamentally birthed the modern-day expectation that minecraft servers could be streamed from start to finish and allow creators to interact with their audience as much as they interacted with each other on the server. SMPLive's humor is very much friends playing around on a server together. In hindsight, it has raunchier and edgier humor than what the current Twitter climate would consider appropriate. But for the time, it was well-recieved and well-loved. SMPLive starred many creators including JSchlatt, Slimesicle, ConnorEatsPants, Ted Nivison, cscoop, and traves among many others who are either well-known in the Minecraft community today or who have started to branch out to other things after finding a core audience and are well-known in other content creator circles. The logo designer is currently unknown.
Minecraft Mondays
Minecraft Mondays was a tournament created by Keemstar back in mid-2019 to late-2019 when Minecraft was gaining traction and becoming popular again. While known as the precursor to Minecraft Championship, Minecraft Mondays was far less competent as a Minecraft tournament. Each week, Keemstar would find twenty teams of two, who could also hold a livestream audience of 2,000 average viewers, and pit them against each other in ten games for the grand prize of $5,000. Some of the participants were popular creators from SMPLive. Others were smaller creators who were starting to blow up from their Hypixel videos or solo lets-plays. Some Minecraft veterans like Captain Sparklez were also invited. Streams from Minecraft Mondays are very memorable, not only from the humor that has engraved itself into modern meme culture, but also because the games were uneven and unfair, even when they worked properly. Notably, the server was hacked twice before the tournament inevitably ended due to the hackers literally deleting the server during the last week, Week 13.
SBI-Rust
While not inherently Minecraft related, SBI-Rust was a Rust server that ran from January 2021 to February 2021 that saw many mcyt and adjacent creators on the server. Unfortunately, because many of the larger creators didn't play as often on it, many people didn't quite know about it, and is considered lost media. Well over 70% of the streams from this server are gone. However, from what remains, the server was fun and silly with an underlying story revolving around factions, religions, and the ethics around the consumption of human flesh. Art by @nyxrsh on tumblr.
FreeTrial SMP
Also known as the 30DaySMP, this was a small hardcore Minecraft server created late June 2021 and was supposed to last thirty days. The minecraft map was restricted to a small area, and creators had to work together in regards to limited resources and space. Creators here include: TommyInnit, Tubbo, Philza, Ranboo, Wilbur Soot, Jack Manifold, Slimesicle, and Sneegsnag. Due to the hardcore nature of the server, as well as placing a few limitations on Tubbo, no one really played on the server. Wilbur had a whole story planned for the server but died the second day of the server. The story was supposedly recycled from the SBI-Rust server (although we haven't seen it play out either way). Some parts of the fandom like to keep this server alive because they enjoyed the aesthetic of an ominous timer in the sky counting down while a damaging border kept players locked inside. Most fanart from this short-lived SMP contain an apocalyptic setting. Art by @_L1_B1_ on Twitter.
Voltz Wars
Voltz Wars is an older Minecraft mod that had a very successful series of its own in the mid-2010s. However, Captain Sparklez, Tubbo, Jack Manifold, and Ranboo started a series of their own in early 2021. The series focuses around two teams, Tubbo and Jack Manifold as pilots who have crash landed and must find help, and Captain Sparklez and Ranboo, who are a scientist with memory problems and the assistant who's heavily implied to be behind the memory problems, respectively. However, the series was soon canceled not too long after creation, just after the fourth episode. The fandom likes to keep this series alive through their works as it has a unique aesthetic not usually found in Minecraft. Art by @id-rivera on tumblr.
Bear SMP
Bear SMP was a server lasting the summer of 2021 to late-December 2021 that followed in the footsteps of Dream SMP starring up-and-coming smaller Minecraft Twitch streamers who were popular within their own community but didn't have the same reach as Dream SMP members. Notable members include Bearbubb, Fruitlegs, Aimsey, Snifferish, Guqqie, Billzo, Beautie, Highkeyhateme, and ElainaExe. This was also a more convoluted storyline, full of wars and betrayals, lore and acting, and, unlike the Dream SMP, hosted a number of beautiful builds. Some members from the Dream SMP were invited onto the server, either playing the exact same character from the Dream SMP who just so happened to visit the Bear SMP (Niki) or an entirely different character overall (Tubbo/Beep). Notably, Aimsey's character originated from the Bear SMP and moved to the Dream SMP, the opposite of the other two examples. Art by @beckyblah on tumblr.