Draft:Skyblock

Skyblock, originally known as SkyBlock Survival, is a Minecraft survival world released on September 4th, 2011 by the Minecraft user "Noobcrew". The overall goal of Skyblock is to survive on a floating island with minimal materials in an empty void-like world environment. Players must use the limited resources given to complete a set of challenges to master the game. Skyblock has been estimated to have been downloaded over 5 million times and is one of the most popular Minecraft maps and custom world creations to have ever been created on Minecraft.

History
Skyblock was first created as a free downloadable single-player map on September 4th, 2011 by the Minecraft user Noobcrew on MinecraftForum.net. The official downloads and multiplayer servers for Skyblock is still provided under the official Skyblock website.

Over the years Skyblock has inspired many fan created maps and alternative versions on Minecraft some of which became widely successful such as Skygrid, Acid Island, Oneblock, and more. Skyblock continues to evolve in the Minecraft community and recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary on September 4th, 2021.

Gameplay
Skyblock is known for its survival, hardcore, and strategic gameplay. It is common that users need to restart Skyblock many times based upon simple mistakes, if just one resource is lost then the game can not continue. Common mistakes on Skyblock would be turning your lava into obsidian, losing all tree saplings, or falling into the void with any of the starter materials. This has taught players on Minecraft that all resources on Skyblock are valuable and have an important game mechanic.

The earliest version of Skyblock consisted of a 3x3 block island made out of 26 dirt blocks, 1 sand block, a single tree, and a chest. This was soon changed to be approximately three times larger resulting in the iconic "L" shaped design made out 78 dirt and 3 sand blocks.

Today, there are officially two versions of Skyblock. The first version is known as "Skyblock 1.1", on this type you can play a single Skyblock island with all existing materials located in the starter chest. And the second version is known as "Skyblock 2.1", on this you start out on Skyblock on the same island but with just a lava bucket and ice block located in the starter chest. There is also a sand island with additional materials 50 blocks away and a glowstone island in the Nether realm as well. This version is the most well known and the most difficult.

Every resource of Skyblock has an important mechanic and when combining a set of resources they can in turn create infinite resources in order to expand the small Skyblock island into a large vast world. These types of infinite resources are blocks such as cobblestone which can be created by combining lava and water in a "cobblestone generator" or of logs or wooden planks by taking advantage of tree saplings that fall from chopped trees in Minecraft.

Multiplayer
The first Skyblock server to exist on Minecraft multiplayer was created by Noobcrew in early 2012.

Due to Skyblock's huge success, many other Minecraft servers also provided the game. The concept of Skyblock on multiplayer expanded the world even further by allowing users to play with friends or others who will commonly collaborate and build a Skyblock island together. There have been many variations and versions of Skyblock on Minecraft multiplayer servers and each server has a different theme, feel, and player created or server provided economy.

One of the most successful Minecraft servers with Skyblock on multiplayer is provided by Hypixel and was released on June 13th, 2019. Their highest record on Skyblock alone is 113,703 players.

Media
Skyblock has been played by many YouTube content creators and Twitch streamers for gameplay and tutorial videos on Minecraft, such as CaptainSparklez, MrBeast, PewDiePie, Technoblade, and more.

CaptainSparklez is one of the first large YouTubers to pick up Skyblock, and created the first video of his gameplay series on October 2nd, 2011, just less than a month after Skyblock's initial release.