Edit 7/24/24: Hello everyone coming from Tommy's video! Unironically, Tommy tearing up a little bit from the ending was genuinely heartwarming and will definitely boost my ego for a few days lol. Welp, here it is, my DreamSMP video that took me down an emotional rollercoaster these past 4 months. This video is a couple months overdue and there's probably a whole bunch of editing errors that I haven't caught, but this video has driven me up the wall for far too long. Even if this video does horribly, I'm proud of what I made and I'm going to do my best to not let numbers dictate my emotions. I think I have a more solid grasp on what I want my identity to be and this video is a huge stepping stone for the future. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, subscribe, and comment below what you thought of the video!
bro please remember me when you get GIANT. This was an amazing video and I had genuine goosebumps when you referenced Wilbur's speech at the end of the video. This video perfectly balances comedy and seriousness, I honestly thought you had like 3 mil when I started this. Nice job!
She along with the other artists in this community made me interested in the plot of this story. I wouldn't have stayed for a long time if it weren't for them.
Given that Sad-ist’s views have dropped substantially since the SMP days.With a spike on the Technoblade video I’d say it was more of a symbiosis situation.
I think that Techno was holding the server on his shoulders with only but a few and with his death, the server simply lost one of it's biggest writers and plot
I love techno with all my heart but techno was actually not very important in the main lore, the reason why the server died after he did was because everyone was so heartbroken to continue without him.
@@notreal9220 well the prison breach, destruction of lmanburg and creation of last Nevadas, the syndicate and the final waltz wouldn't have happened nor the escape of dream since he wouldn't have gone to war with the others since he would've been alone with ONE ally (not philza) that was a double agent so he couldn't really do much.the revolutionaries would've been less prepared even tho the end would probably be the same and tbus and the others of lmanburg would be much more chill since there wouldn't be any power close to theirs.dream wouldn't have been made publicly homeless and Tommy would have died in exile and Sam would've gotten away with his crimes Now look at me Look at me in the eyes and tell me Techno wasn't important
I dunno, I personally believe the Dream SMP really did die with Technoblade. He was really the only POV I'd watch, no one was as interesting as him. He was always coming up with something new and fun. RIP Technoblade.
@@CryTwink Now That I Look Back At It Wilbur As The Story Writing Lowkey Was Carrying And Dream Was Getting Allegations For Being Homophobic Before Techno Passed That And His Stan’s On Twitter We’re Too Much Making Dream Unlikeable To Some And That Was Bad Because He Was A Crucial Role In The Sever, But It Was Nothing Too Serious, Then Techno Passed RIP, But There Was Still Hope They Could’ve Kept Going And Ended It But Then More Allegations Came And Killed It For The Sever.
I really do think it died with techno. If I remember correctly, Wilbur had stepped down as the main writer with techno taking on that role. Between the grief of his passing, and the fact that he was likely very involved in keeping the show together behind the scenes, it's not a surprise to me that the server did not survive his passing. I genuinely think that the server likely would have continued at least another year or two had he not passed.
No, Dream was the one who picked up the role of being the main writer, you can tell because cDream really leaned into being a shit person over the morally grey approach Wilbur preferred. But I do agree that Techno was def the glue behind the scenes
I totally agree. Also with him being locked up for 3 month because of his disease, which basiaclly halted the story for so long it also killed most of the momentum the server had gained
"Wilbur's character is the one with severe mental health issues, but Wilbur as far as any viewer can tell is just a relatively healthy streamer." Damn that didn't age well as fuck
@@rexanator100 wilbur had a pattern of abusive behaviors that hurt not only his gf at the time shelby (known here on YT as shubble) but he also hurt others like Nihachu (Niki). When dating shubble he would bite her all the time, not as like a playful love bite, it would bruise her and make her cry out in pain. She implimented a safe word so he would know when to stop biting, but he never listened to the safe word and he woud make comments like "oh you should probably cover your legs it looks like im abusing you". As for Nihachu. One the of the 1st times they met in person, wilbur (allegedly) picked nihachu up and threw her like against the wall in his office to "playfully assert dominance because she was just so small"
At the end of the day, the biggest problem with the dsmp was the lack of communication and cooperation. Everyone ended up doing their own thing, which caused a lack of the fun interactions between streamers we had before and it made the story and the lore more nonsensical and full of plotholes. Although I still think that some of the lore that was made after Tommy's disc finale is really good and even some of the most interesting lore on the server. The prison arc, the syndicate lore, Las Nevadas, Ranboo's enderwalk lore, the eggpire, tales from the smp, Wilbur's revival, they were all pretty good story arcs with a lot of potential, they just felt completely disconnected from each other and also lacked that lighthearted and fun atmosphere the early lore had, being all too serious, which made it less fun to watch after a while. Also, the fact that the streamers themselves felt obligated to do serious lore instead of just have fun and casually hang out on the server after a while made it less enjoyable both for them and for the audience and it just felt like they were dragging out the plot. Those high expectations the fandom set for the story kinda ruined the previously mostly improved roleplay, setting the bar higher and higher, like you said.
12:00 Slight correction, Wilbur mentioned that he retired from writing the narrative of everyone in the smp I think around the time of the revival book arc, which is why the story started decentralising, so it isn’t entirely the fault of his writing. Creators like Wilbur and Tubbo have also mentioned that the plot progression and scheduling was severely mismanaged where they wouldn’t even know some important lore events are happening/have happened, and that obviously caused the main plot to fall apart really quickly. Furthermore, creators themselves were starting to lose interest in/invested less time for the smp due to moving on to bigger things or due to the abysmally toxic subsection of the fandom cancelling and threatening them (death threats, harassment, bullying) for inane reasons such Quackity (latino) being cancelled for speaking Spanish, Eret being decimated for being a traitor to L’manburg, Tommy (a child then) being harassed on many occasions and needing to seek therapy just to name a few.
it's nice to see a retrospective that isn't just shitting on the dsmp/it's creators. it had a lot of good moments, and it had such a large and dedicated fanbase for a reason
@@PengyDrawsnah, if you watched Techno's pov, his character was huge to influence other characters' stories, like Quackity's, Niki's, Philza's, Tommy's, Dream's, Tubbo's, Ranboo's, even got involved with the odd egg arc. His character arc was so important to progress the latter half of the server's story. Without him, we wouldn't have Doomsday and the Prison Break for the huge events. And he did contribute to make it better, he did listen to other content creators to progress the story, something that wouldn't happen in the first half if you weren't part of the "protagonists".
@@Coristic121 He actually knew portuguese pretty well and it's only made sadder when you realize one of qsmp's brazilian admins learned english specifically to watch techno's content, it would've been so sweet to see them interact
I get really sad yet oddly happy thinking about how he would've totally been invited to qsmp because quackity loved techno sm): and how he would've loved the concepts, the many jokes he would've made about making breakfast the eggs but would've taken care of it I just really miss him
i think it's kind of poetic how to me dream smp's main theme was fall from grace and in the end it did the same despite everyone's best efforts. nothing can last forever, things change, kingdoms fall and all that jazz.
@@soumyadiptasensharma2055 Hermitcraft has no competitions at this point. That SMP endured a decade-long highs and lows and are still standing strong among the most popular SMPs in UA-cam.
I have a small little correction, DSMP didn’t start narritive or RP Minecraft servers. It brought them into the lime light (and to streams) but they’ve been arround for along time. The Yogscast did it way back when, the origins mcrp crew, Aphmau(if you want to include directly adjacent things) and there is likely many more small groups that most of us haven’t heard of.
@aboringredmop hermits have been arround for ages but it hasnt been too large in the RP front. Definitely has had the same vibe as early dsmp hyjink rp type. But it barely kinda scrapes into Role Playing. Imo But yeah i can see that.
@@Brenilla yeah no def not on the rp aspect. I think the life series fits that quota better, but in the "friends having fun" vibes I think hermit is peak
Even after Techno died I kept clinging to the scraps of the SMP because I didn’t wanna give up the feelings that the early story gave me. I stayed until the closing of the server and I’m never gonna forget the memories it gave me
I liked the lore and watching Techno's POV who was my favorite youtuber of all time. Dream's and Tommy's fight for the discs on that mountain but it felt weirdly acted which was completely fine for a bunch of streamers but as time went on the streams began to get more and more scripted. It became less about hitting story points and became more and more scripted down to the littlest word. It was crazy, the egg lore was completely awful and it truly shown how the DSMP turned into a shell of what it once had. If you look at awesamdude's lore you can see that they started scripting everything and even stopped playing normally and got other people to mimic their movements from a 3rd person perspective. Even Techno's lore wasn't as natural as it used to be, Phil's lore suffered a bit as well. I liked when the server didn't know what was gonna happen next. Their bewildered expressions were the best to look back on, capturing the horrors of Wilbur blowing up L'manburg perfectly. As the server members tried to control the way their story moved after leaving too many plot holes to fill in from the constant lore breaks and direction changes. They managed to slowly tear the server apart and drive people away, Techno was the only person I watched on the lore and overtime I stopped checking in on the server because I had no care about the story anymore.
sorry if i'm misinterpreting, but as a correction the streamers did actually know that wilbur was going to blow up lmanberg! in tommy's tribute to dsmp video, he shows wilburs discord message b4 the stream which outlines every single plot point of the nov 16 stream, including the detonation of lmanberg. but the more scripting as it went on is confirmed by tommy saying so + the then shown 3 page long google doc detailing the fight at the community house stream.
I think the glaring problem is that they didn't realize they needed to stop. With a calculated stop, not just grow out of it. Its just impossible to have a story go on forever without at least some pauses in between. They needed to stop with the disc arc and maybe come back, if they wanted to, only after finding a new prompt. Also im glad you're talking fairly about it, because yes, it was cringe, sometimes straight up nonsense, but it MEANT something to people. It did.
16:25 one point of contention here, because I think you make some genuinely good points otherwise but make a mistake here. Will was no where close to ‘relatively healthy’. Though he never confirmed it as far as I know, it’s likely he made his character have mental health issues because he had experienced them himself. He mentioned in streams he’d struggled with anxiety throughout his UA-cam career taking off, and at one point would only really get up to talk to Tommy. If I remember correctly he also mentioned something vague about having come close to a drinking addiction. So I like the points you’ve made otherwise, don’t take this as being a negative Nancy, just a little correction, that no while he seemed cheerful and since then seems to be doing ok he definitely has had struggles which I think probably contributed to him giving his character mental health struggles too.
Damn, I never knew that about Wilbur. That's why I added the "as far as any viewer can tell" phrase just in case there was a chance that Wilbur actually did go through something, even if I couldn't find any relevant information confirming my suspicion. I really hope he's feeling happier with his band. Thanks for bringing this up.
@@ChunkyNosher he made some music about his struggles with mental illness under his personal spotify - my favorites from him are la jolla and saline solution !! definitely would recommend giving it a listen.
@@ChunkyNosher if you listen to his music I think it gives a really good deep dive into what he was actually feeling vs what he portrayed. A lot of mentally ill people don’t show that they’re ill at all, and combat it with a bubbly and more fun person. His music is amazing!! You should give his newest album a listen :)
@ChunkyNosher ...they aren't allegations unfortunately ☹️ he made the shitties "apology" he could make on twitter? I think (and allegedly he used ai for it too) ;; same emotions man, really disappointed in him and also losing my faith in humanity
@@tr-st_me_bro They don't interact online no. But they might still be good friends. Will and Niki are still great friends, despite not having interacted publicly more than twice in two to three years.
Techno was the greatest person, he was just a funny guy who liked to have fun with friends and was just a really kind hearted person, Rest in Peace, TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES!!
This is why I love Hermitcraft so much. They have the perfect blend of everything that makes Minecraft SMP content so enjoyable. There are builders, experts in redstone, funny moments between friends, and even some cool storylines.
@truckerdave8465 Grian is to hermathcraft as Techno is to the Dream server. Many major events of each respective server have some involvement of the two.
ikr!! funny story i used to be a huge fan of dsmp and hermitcraft in 2020-2021 and eventually stopped watching them, then a few months ago i was reminded of hermitcraft again. i watched a few grian videos because i missed him and the other hermits and before i even knew it i became completely obsessed again LOLLL but im so glad to be back🙏
Seems like a lot of other people (including myself) got to a point where Techno was the only thing we bothered watching from the SMP. Everything else just felt so underwhelming that I was pretty much just watching Techno streams to watch Techno, the SMP itself was irrelevant. Man, the Wilbur praise did not age well at all... Also yes, you absolutely should watch Stein's;Gate. That show fucking slaps
as the minority of someone who disliked the more famous tommy and dream plotline while loving badboyhalo's egglore, a lot of what you said are things ive echoed about in my own praises and disagreements with how rp and storytelling were handled after the Manberg arc. its nice to see really. since you talked a lot about tommy and dream, i also want to talk about egglore because it really gets thrown to the side way more that it deserves. i love egglore. i loved it because it was different, especially during that time when the main l'manburg plot was just rehashed stuff- plot for plot- what wilbur did. (ei ostracized community, being banished by a president, execution, over the top destruction of l'manburg) apparently, i was one of the few able to suspend my disbelief for two seconds and enjoy the absurdity of a pile of minecraft blocks as a central antagonist. really brought me back to those old minecraft roleplay series' i grew up on. it got a lot of unnecessary criticism for 'suddenly being relevant and in your face' when there was so much subtle buildup and blink-and-you-miss-it moments people never got to see. mainly because smaller creators were driving the boat. like bad didnt just... suddenly decide to take over the server after falling into the eggs control. that was his main goal since formation of the freaking badlands. his chaotic nature was always there. its just that his family friendly-ness was an easy target for bigger streamers that it became what the fandom as a whole reduced him to. at the same time, the direction of the 'bigger' moments of egglore was... really awkward to say the least (ei banquet and finale stream). of course, the big streams is all what people saw unfortunately. just like you said, creators focusing on 'bigger' streams is exactly where it was weakest. it was good when it was subtle, a few moments here and there. it thrived when it wasnt in your face, when you had to make inferences on behaviors and connect stuff yourself. i will forever hold bad not showing the scene of him getting fully corrupted into his eggpire skin as one of the best writing decisions made during dsmp. people with basic media literacy dont need stuff spelled out for them to understand the gravity of what must've happened. it was good usage of 'dont show dont tell'. left it up to imagination, but enough building blocks to infer. a decision, i feel like would've been ruined because hes pg had he chosen to show it. bad's a good writer when hes focused on slow build-ups with big emotional payouts. which, thankfully, is all that he's doing on qsmp nowadays. anyways, im gonna... politely disagree with having too many plotlines as being a mistake. dsmp had a lot more creators other than tommy and co that can chose to do their own thing if they wanted to. its unfair to them to be sidelined to the Supporting Character to whatever tommy or dream was cooking up. remembering correctly, it was a very inaccessible to creators who wanted to rp a more 'morally incorrect' character. decided you didn't like c!tommy? receive hate from the toxic stan mob. decided to like c!tommy? your character will now be reduced to whatever 'family position' they decide you fit in. god forbid you try to break out of that. a lot of puffy lore was based on that iirc the entirety of jackmanifold lore was that too! i dont think it was selfish of them to branch off when it made total sense characterwise for them to do so. i believe its unreasonable to point fingers at smaller creators for focusing on their own characters as if thats the problem. in reality, it was the apparent existence that there was a 'main plot' to begin with that was the final nail that caused the splinter. lets disconnect 'main' from 'popular' please. it was especially important for people like me who were adults and couldn't sit through a tommy stream without wanting to pull their hair out. i got into dsmp more BECAUSE there were plotlines that were more my style. i believe lore and storytelling-focused smps should be treated like a 'choose your own adventure' that allows people creative freedom to do what they want. you follow what you care about. you watch what you want. if you dont care about egglore, dont feel pressured to watch egglore stuff. if you dont care about tommy's disk stuff, dont need to watch that either. i know i didnt. watching dsmp is watching dsmp. views are views. engagement is engagement. if you need a central plot to follow, that honestly feels like a personal thing born from fomo. i dont see it as a problem that caused its downfall. its not like marvel where studios want you to watch a whole bunch of stuff because they want money. its not a tv series or a movie and it shouldnt be. its just a whole bunch of amateur storywriters and roleplayers having fun and playing minecraft with no focus on a collaborative overarching narrative. yes, i agree there was a big issue in the INTEGRATION of plotlines. i remember being frustrated at the ownership retcon of one of tommy's disks just so the final conflict could happen. skeppy had the disk, and he still had the disk when he got corrupted. hell, even during regular non rp streams skeppy had AFTER the finale THE DISK WAS STILL IN HIS INVENTORY. that right there was an easy plotpoint they could've used so dream could get the disk back and set up for the finale and let egglore be involved in the disk plot also. but hey, what did they decide to do? retcon it so ranboo had the disk. it never made sense. and people just.. accepted it. also, something you criticized that i liked was the differentiation between characters and content creators. if anything, i think its a REALLY good thing that needed to happen when you also factor the fandom into it. a lot of hate, even in qsmp, stems from people not being able to differentiate between rp and reality. you can't have your cake and eat it unless youre able to swallow down the massive amount of death threats. i wasn't involved (still not) in the fandom because twitter stans are the bane of everyone's existence and i was a filthy egglore lover. i understand it as something the creators had to do to protect themselves. people are gonna complain about continuity if dream during whatever was going on in the exile arc suddenly started making funny bits with tommy without it. sure, people who watched it for the content creators themselves mightve not liked it, but it was necessary, and arguably, the logical conclusion from wilbur's lmanburg storylines. anyways, rant over. honestly good shit mate. good job edit 1/12/25: badboyhalo deserved better for literally hosting and paying for the goddamn server.
@@coler7952egglore wasnt that bad, maybe im biased since the first minecraft youtubers i watched and loved in dream smp are bad and skeppy but the lore in this story arc isnt terrible. i agree with this comment though with the bad integration and execution of the dream smp with its different side stories
While I agree with your take on the "forcing characters into their own supporting cast" take, I'm gonna be honest, Jack's lore didn't tie to Tommy, it was kind of a kick starter but afterwards he kinda did his own thing.
I know you wrote this a while back so don't know if you'll see it. My issue with eghlore was that even at its peak there where like 4 5 people corrupted so it never felt like a threat to the server. Honestly i think a general issue with the lore was that nobody wanted to be the bad guy so a lot of the events where 1 sided. Last thing i wish the fights weren't scripted because Honestly, the best war was the first one, and it all went downhill after that.
You just summed up perfectly what I've been trying to say to people. I always say something along the lines of "It had such great potential, but it just started going downhill after the button room." But it kinda felt flat because I really did enjoy certain other aspects of the later lore, especially the exile arc when Tommy teamed up with Techno. This video made me realize that my original way of explaining was only just breaching the surface of what I truly felt on the topic, and that this explanation is much more thorough and true to what I was trying to say. Thank you. The symphony is forever unfinished. And I think that's the way it is meant to be.
I was shocked the SMP ended so long after Techno's death. In my opinion, since it was already losing popularity by the Techno passed, it should have ended soon after his death. It would have been a good way to go and keep a sort of bitter sweet fair well compared to the random drawn out ending that eventually came.
I personally think the reason the DSMP faded off into silence is because people started disliking Dream and not wanting to support him in any way. Yeah, there were other streamers to watch, but I really lost interest because Dream soured it for me (and, of course, it wasn't as enjoyable without certain people who left, like Tommy). That's just one of the biggest things I've noticed in the fandom, as well as outside the fandom.
i hope you've watched dream's video explaining everything that happened. not saying you have to like dream again, but it's unfortunate that so many people let misinformation and slander color their opinion of him.
@@MonAhgasInsomniAroELF the dream video is boring and as a lot of useless Yapping, Like wow yeah the dude is not a groomer dont change the fact he has ego issue and it took year to admit he cheated
@@aoki6332except he literally admitted to being in the wrong about situations where he was actually in the wrong… also, how is proving that he’s not a groomer “a lot of useless yapping” when that was the biggest thing people were accusing him of? You sure are a special one…
This is good. You’re not one of those people that are just ranting about how the DSMP sucks with unrealistic reasoning. You praised the good things and explained realistic flaws without opinion. Just a simple informational video :D
dsmp pretty much was the thing that carried me and a lot of other ppl through covid and hard times. it's so sad that techno is gone and there was a lot of drama between the creators, otherwise it might've continued for a much longer time. even though the smp is over the it was a lot of fun while it lasted and i'm proud to have been part of the community :D
I like the fact that the dream smp has inspired millions of fans to make their own server. there are so many fan servers, with amazing storylines, which will never see the internet because the story is fully kept private in a solid friend group. There likely could be a server out there that is greater than the dream smp, but its just better not shared.
SO TRUE! I had a small friend group and we created an SMP, with a mod I created. The story all came from us, we wrote it together, and it was great. Then a 1.20 patch came and broke the mod, I didn’t know how to fix it and I didn’t want to go through recoding months of work, so we voided it. I still have the world and I log in from time to time, it was fun, and I’m working on something that won’t be connected to it at all but will hopefully allow us to still play together once more. CoreSMP was great, and I’m glad it ended, but I’m still sad it’s gone, like everything in life. Ok I’ll stop typing now I need to eat somethin
Funny you say that, because my friend group and I actually created a whole looping universe and each our own original character to play, both mostly inspired by DreamSMP lore (one out of the three of us didn't watch DSMP). But it became much bigger than the DSMP universe, even after Karl's expansion of the general timeline. One of my personal favourite things one of my friends did, was connect this world we created with a version of the DSMP where Technoblade was an actual godly entity called the Blood God, and had a well-explained and reasonable allyship with one of my friend's characters.
Techno once said that if they became too lore focused people would realise that they're not that good at it because what got them into the dsmp was light hearted jokes. That's just foreshadowing atp
if i were a bit younger in 2020 i would've been obsessed with dsmp. i am forever grateful that i went through my weird rp phase and shipping-real-people phase back in 2016 because i would've been genuinely unbearable for anyone who knew me
posting that short story was very brave. couldn't bring myself to read past the screenshot that you posted. i am terrified my writing still sounds like the shit i wrote in high school lol
One of the most depressing part about all this was that dsmp streamers *were* excited, and *wanted* to keep going. Erin and Michael McChill talked before about how they brought up ideas and asked for collaboration, but never really got a response from Dream or anyone else
A lot of people says techno is the main show, yes. And the reason he is the main show was because he was genuinely having fun and just messing around with other. The “plot” for him is just a suggestion he will go through it on his own terms which is why he is enjoyable. He is unpredictable and keep us guessing, unlike other who just follow the lame plot and doesn’t improvise. Heck Jschatt make the SMP more enjoyable too. Honestly they shouldn’t have gate keep a bunch of people and have a boring ass plot too follow.
To start out, the video was really good and pointed out valid shortcomings without being overly harsh or mean spirited. It’s always refreshing to see. I did want to comment that I think the disconnectedness came from the lack of central locations. At the beginning of the story you had the community area where most of the dream team lived and had Tommy’s house and the prime path. Then you also had L’manburg witch was also fairly close. Most of the members acting out stories were all in close proximity and the stories naturally overlapped. Even if they didn’t connect narratively they were still in the same location and felt connected. This allows for smaller creators to make their own storylines without feeling disconnected from the rest of the plot. Even Pogtopia while farther away had the members moving back and forth between there and L’manburg. After L’manburg was destroyed, (the second time) everyone became disconnected. They had the community house but not a lot of people lived around there anymore. I think Quakity almost had a new location with Las Navadas, but it was to far away from everything else. Techno and the syndicate were super far away. The egg lore took place in the community area. Tubbo and Ranboo ran out to Snowchester (i think that was the name) and many other small areas. There was no center for community. People were to spread out to naturally interact so you lost the connectedness of earlier storylines. the different storylines have always been a part of the DSMP, and it was a good way for smaller creators to get attention and stand out. I don’t think there needs to be one story line, but I think having a central location plays that role in this kind of story telling. Anyway that my 2 cents, I’ll stop rambling.
I think this is also why other smps like Hermitcraft, Empires, the life series, ect, work so well. No matter what conflict goes on you never stop getting the sense that it’s just a bunch of friends having fun.
Probably the best example of the creators making too many plotlines is in one of Techno's streams when during a walk a bunch just encountered the "egg" from BadBoyHalo's thing, well its vines, and they were genuinely confused on why it was even there as they worked to dismantle the roadblock, then realized it was BBH's thing and had to try and put it back together. Nobody knew what the heck was going on.
There was a stream before the egg stream, in which Techno was walking in L'manberg when he found an Egg poster. It was the first time I heard of the egg arc and I was so confused, I was like: What? New government? Didn't they learn from the doomsday????
oooohhhhh 16:20 aged like milk ouch I will also say that Dream's horrendous "management" (incredibly sarcastic) of the server was a nightmare for all of the members. I think that you're too hard on the SMP members here; we know now that so many members including Eret, Niki, Ranboo and Hannah, tried and failed to put together any kind of narrative because every time there was an attempt, Dream was essentially a roadblock. Not mentioning the absolutely awful treatment the few women on the SMP recieved, Dream was almost completly absent from the server which really put a halt to so many members' lore plans. In becoming the main antagonist, Dream's role was involved in everyone's stories, so when he decided to bail, there was only so much everyone could do on their own before they needed other people and also Dream. Eret has been very vocal about the mismanagement on Dream's part ever since the server died; I respect her a lot, and also, she was on the server since the beginning of the L'manberg era, so she knows what she's talking about. The finale ended, Dream was no longer a main character, and so he of course lost interest and abandoned it for the most part, leaving the rest of the SMP hanging. He's notorious for letting his ego make his decisions, and this one, at least in part, was no different. I am a firm believer that the server surviving past the finale, and even before to an extent, was possible DESPITE Dream, not because of him. The server didn't get popular because of Dream; it got popular because Tommy brought in an element of fun and chaos that people were entertained by. Wilbur introduced a narrative, and the Election arc was so fun because it allowed everyone to be goofy while also having some crucial story elements thrown in there. Dream played the antagonist, yes, but the majority of people followed the storyline for Tommy, not Dream. Dream didn't have a character, not really - he wasn't sympathetic and didn't have any motivations past "let's harrass the annoying kid". Yeah, there's some stuff he said on twitter and streams during the Prison arc about how "if you grab a snake expect it to bite back" or something, but he NEVER built on his character other than being an exaggerated extension of himself. Dream was not an important player, his role was, and honestly, could have been filled by pretty much any other SMP member, and much better. As an avid viewer that kept up with every possible streamer I could, it was very frustrating and disappointing to see people try to build their stories and characters only to get sidelined by Dream trying to drag out his own relevancy in the plot (the revive book) which basically nullified a lot of the consequences in the earlier story and also overshadowed and butted out any other people's narratives that they were trying to create. Also, yeah, the artists absolutely carried. Sadist alone is single-handedly responsible for launching the server into popularity; the artists, writers, and cosplayers were so passionate, a level of involvement I haven't seen in a fandom since Undertale.
@@VendoProstis I'm gonna be so honest with you. This has nothing to do with dream as a person nor as a content creator. It fully has to do on how a person singlehandedly attempted to carry a story project that featured 40+ members and therefore 40+ storylines all on his own with little to no help on it. He, as a human couldn't have POSSIBLY done that. And the fact that Dream held the reins all on his own made any form of lore integration for all the members impossible and unaccessible. Op is right on their rant.
I love how you acknowledge that you just didn’t have some finer details of the video, like the examples at 13:50, decided at the time of recording. Very funny, very honest, I like it.
something id like to say as a dsmp fan veteran, was that until this the beggining of august, when I saw a kid where a hoodie of khorne from warhammer, did I realize "blood for the blood god" came from warhammer. And I feel like most techno fans also don't no that, which just goes to show, how popular, both techno, and the dsmp was, that it over shadowed WARHAMMER, ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS AND CONVELUTED TABLETOP GAMES OF ALL TIME. Anyways banger video, keep up the good work my man
I’m just gonna say this now, I regret joining the fandom a year ago. I wished I had been watching them from the beginning, when the dream smp was genuine and improvised. And it’s really sad to know that now most of the members have either picked sides or completely cut each other off.
i found tommy's first dsmp video by chance while i was having breakfast, and it ended up taking me on for a ride that i would never be able to ever forget. the hype i felt in the first lore stream i watched despite knowing nothing, the first mcc streamed that kick started my habit of staying up. the friends that i made because of these streams, everything came together like a perfect storm it was my first fandom that i felt that invested in too i dont think i'll ever forget the impact and joy this silly server brought me, for all the cracks and perfection it had
i think it's also important to remember that it wasn't some grand idea to begin with. dream didn't set out to create a roleplay server with storylines and seasons. it wasn't a "great idea that was terribly executed," because it was never a planned thing in the first place. it was nothing that became something that slowly ended. the SMP ultimately did serve it's entire purpose. dream was never trying to create the DSMP as we know it from the start, it was just a server he made to check out the new Minecraft updates with george, and then they added sapnap so they could all hang out, and slowly added more of their friends to hang out and play on the server with. once it became popular, dream used it as a way to help streamers he became friends with to grow their audiences too, since the opportunity presented itself. it had evolved into a roleplay server unintentionally and organically, was amazing for a while in particular because everyone was trapped at home due to the pandemic and had nothing better to do anyway, but once people were able to start going out again, everyone got busier, trying to coordinate 30+ creators was too hard most of the time, one of their dear friends passed, and i think everyone's motivation just fizzled out after that. it was never meant to be anything more than a server for friends to hang out on, so it fully accomplished that and more, and now it's done. that's all there is to it imo. 🤷 it was fun while it lasted and it's a great memory for many, but everyone moved on.
ngl I joined the dsmp fandom right after the lmanburg era and being IN it during that time (w the arrival of all the new streamers, mixing multiple new stories) was what got me to stay in the fandom at that time. The ideas were so rich and we loved when stories crossed or joined from time to time between all those streamers. You say that the streamers started roleplaying as changed characters that had nothing to do with Wilbur's writing or with their usual online personalities, but following them at that time would make you realize that those streamers were absolutely more than "the cheerful young wreck" or "the funny lighthearted one". Actually their dsmp personas had full character arcs that mostly made sense. Quackity becoming a mafia boss with his casino is the result of many events that led him to that point. Same goes for almost everyone else in the server. What I'm getting from your video, which is great by the way, is that you mostly had an issue with change! You liked the dsmp as it was when you got into it and didn't really adapt to the changes that happened, along with the fact that you kinda got less interested in the stories. This is absolutely valid! but please consider that for people who didn't get interested in the dsmp for the same reasons that you did, or at the same time as you did, our perception could be much different than yours. You raised great points in theory as why to you this is why the server failed, but I just wanted to add this grain of salt! To me the dsmp fizzled out because of the people. Friendship between streamers made the server; fights, conflicts of interests and grief ended it. That's my take :) for being in the fandom until the server got closed.
The problem wasn't the characters, it was mainly the performance, some more than others. What we have to realise that these people aren't really professional actors or writers and when they really get down to the serious storytelling, it was never going to be at that level.
"their symphony forever unfinished." man that just made me emotional. Thank you for this video. Recent events have really soured my memory of the DSMP, this just reminded me why I loved it so much.
With the recent drama I've found myself coming back to this video a lot. Thank you for giving an actually nuanced perspective instead of just shitting on the smp because thats the popular thing to do. The smp was chaotic and kinda of a mess but thats why i love it so much and forever will. It was fun and helped me get through the pandemic and everything else that was happening at the time, so the fact that majority of the internet will remember it just for the constant drama and alligations (Wilbur being an abuser certainly made it worse) makes me incredibly sad. So again thank you for making this video.
One of the best outros I’ve seen. Truly amazing the way you weaved in the unfinished symphony part. I love when people do things like that. Thank you, this made my day ❤
outside factors also lead to the downfall of this server, creators moving on to other things, dream being constantly being engaged in controversy, people no longer had time to watch hours worth of streams for content and also technoblades unfortunate passing
i never watched all the dsmp livestreams, aside from the beginning till before the dream getting locked up plotline, i usually would watch techno's streams and add to the spam of "mic muted" during the start of streams at his cabin in the woods and watch the occasional upload of techno's pov during big fights or funny moments. im thankful for this video reminding me of this experience you did the smp justice.
Wilbur stopped writing when he became ghostbur tho, I thought Tommy and Tubbo did a pretty good job writing the exile arc. But some time down the line they did get Wilbur to write both their characters for them haha. (Which makes sense, Tubbo finally doing his own lore streams near the end with Wilbur that he's never really done before)
I actually think that people having their own separate plot lines CAN be still be good. I think Qsmp does it well, with creators having their own lore and other creators simply reacting to it.
I'm so late to the party it's not even funny! I stumbled onto the DreamSMP a few months ago and am playing catchup. From that perspective, it's hard to piece together the storyline and thanks to your video, I now understand why. That being said, there's something special there. The interaction between the characters, the plot lines, and such are entertaining. There is something watchable about it that does make you want to know what happens next. Now that it's over, I can skip between lore streams without having to wait for the next ones to be made available. Thank you for putting together this video. I found it informative and insightful!
I would recommend BlueberryTV if you’re a new fan looking to get into dsmp. Also avoid Evanmcgaming I know the video recommends him but theyre very biased videos which skip over plotlines and focus on getting views not giving the viewer s true idea of the story 👍
@@owlvo exactly right. He featured tommy more in his video about the eggpire than Ponk, An actual member of the eggpire who's lore was wayyy more important to the egg arc than tommy.
For me, Wilbur was how I first saw DreamSMP, and then Philza and Technoblade. The loss of Technoblade definitely put a wrench in things, I know Phil has said that the concept for the second 'season' of dsmp was going to start with a memory wipe- And Philza just couldn't do that to himself or his character, and neither could several others (I feel like at least Ranboo and Nikki, who left with Philza in a final lore video) I think QSMP is a great evolution of this idea, actually having a staff and NPCs to play characters and run storylines. See- I come from a place of RP servers. Where an 'Event Team' running small things and larger plotlines were a big thing. So QSMP is scratching that itch in a really amazing way. It's given structure to a sandbox. People have their own eventlines, call backs to their personal 'lore' or history. There was some of this in DSMP, but nothing to the degree that QSMP has been doing. The quality that Quackity brought to his own lore videos has been given to every creator in the space.
this captured the DSMP perfectly. many of the creators, like tommy, wilbur, technoblade, and dream himself were carrying the server on their backs, taking turns going up the mountain that was the fanbase and success they were hoping for. props to them for doing the best they could, they nailed it in the best way possible, even if it wasnt perfect.
I will not undermine every other creators efforts to say Techno was the only good one, but a death really just makes everyone realise how real everything is. And going back to almost 'childish' roleplays after such a big impact seems kinda nonsensical, especially since that was where everyone interacted with him. And besides, every show has some sort of end, the creators lives cant forever centre around 1 simple server. Even before everything, plotlines were beginning to generally separate and people were going their separate ways, and so it wasnt that difficult for everyone to just sort of move on. Eventually, everything gets too complicated and falls apart. And with so many things happening back to back, the server kind of just froze in time. Qsmp was simillar, but it turned into more of a business than a hangout and that too, got complicated and collapsed. It wasnt necessarily a bad experience, being in the fandom. And i really miss everyone being together. But it grew too fast and just ended.
In all honesty, I'm glad the Dream SMP had flaws. Sure, that might have meant that it was less enjoyable to watch for some, but it opened up a whole new playing field for creatives like me. I love to write stories and the Dream SMP has presented a whole new challenge for me to work with. So while I thank the creators for all the hardwork they have put in to this server, I commend them for pushing through all the stress and I congratulate them on their success and the ability to move on to new things, I also thank them for being human so that I myself can get through my issues with mental health and take their stories and shape them into something new.
The stories individually were good(Quaquity´s was a masterpiece, it made me afraid of a Minecraft character because his voice acting was just.... perfect!), but once you tried to weave them together it wouldn't create a scarf but a ball of incomprehensible yarn. Tommi´s story for example should have ended right there where he got his discs back. had the SMP continued with Quaquity´s (or Ramboo´s) story as a follow-up in "continuity" the story would have been a banger, the issue is they didn't. Don't get me wrong here I think Tommy is a great character still, but he pretty much got hamfisted in subplots where he had no stakes, BBH Red Egg, The Tubbo nuke (that one was a mess that led nowhere), and Jack Manifold´s story that also ended on a whimper that led nowhere, which feels disappointing, add onto this the fact that "new episodes" or "lore" took months to produce a follow-up and BANG! right there recipe for disaster (narrative disaster). All because they wanted to force Tommy into being the protagonist of the series (this is the same case with techno may he rest in peace) where he had nothing to do but repeat his past mistakes which he learned NOT to do anymore in the last arc he had, which made him frustrating to watch. Dream´s character motivation reveal was a huge letdown, it was shown when it didn't matter anymore, nukes exploded anyway was the most anticlimactic thing (in a bad way) I have ever seen! it is the equivalent of "rocks fall everyone dies". All the HYPE around how menacing he is just to be horribly written. Sam was a better villain for example but they did him dirty because "DrEaM hAd A pOiNt!" (no he didn't but the narrative says so so STFU), The egg was a better villain (but is not a dream so off it goes to the bin! also let mock BBH for putting on effort and giving us an interesting spin on a Lovecraftian story instead of recognizing how well made it was, memes, mockery and cutting the story short! because nothing shows more respect than doing that! bravo!). Dream had the same problem as Tommy, he got hamfisted in conflicts that were not of that character´s interest + he was a terribly written character wich pathetic motivation is only rivaled by Cinder in RWBY if you had seen that. "I just wAnTeD tHe SeRvEr To Be HaPpY aGaIn" -my ass! that´s the most unreliable shit ever, especially coming from a supposed leader of an ancient "cult" which got so powerful and influential GOD copied his shape to honor him. Foolish had tremendous potential, but it was cut abruptly, so did Puffy, so did BBH, and so did the Kinoko kingdom. Philza did basically nothing since he killed Wilbur, and Wilbur... oh boy WILBUR! same frustrating shit as a dream about a character that pretends to have a "plan" only to be nothing at the end.... why the fucking hype? it was all smoking mirrors but they wanted you to pretend they weren't and that sucked because it felt as if the writers believe you are STUPID, oh yeah also that time when everyone got an allergy to making lore, and rather than saying "Guys we don't want to do that at the moment we want to work on other projects" they instead began to bitch and moan about how STUPID lore was (my favorite is when Tubbo acted disinterested in Tommi´s funeral, got criticized by shitty voice acting, defended himself by saying he is not a "good voice actor", and then proving himself wrong 3 streams later)... this is like when Rick and Morty made the too many meta jokes to the point it got annoying. This connects to the point I brought up about continuity, which the writers apparently are allergic to, but simultaneously wanted to introduce Tommy, Techno, or Dream into all of the side stories, they lacked a vision past Lmanburg part 2, AND IT FUCKING SHOWS! TLDR: My two gripes with DSMP are: 1)Finish a story and don't use a character that already went through an arc just to do it again, you make them feel redundant. 2) Don´t overuse your "celebrities" and hype them as a BIG character if they can't fucking deliver something good (Even if the SMP has your name, you were the worst written character, and the best contribution was being a ghost on Ramboo´s head) mald over this point all you want but deep down (and it hurts) it is true. Dream as a character was a HUGE letdown and I would have preferred ANYONE as the big bad but him.
Tommy and Dream carried everything up to Wilbur joining, Wilbur carried everything from him joining until he died ingame. Techno carried everything from Wilbur stepping down until he died... Well, not in game.
I think what would have made things better. Tommy killing Dream, and a New Antagonist is brought to the story. Not Dream. He can just be desd and return whenever he is needed as Dreamxd or in the afterlife. That would still extend the story but not ake it seem like they don't have balls to kill their characters
I would agree with you; there were any cracks in the DreamSMP, and we can't blame the streams for it. After all, they are not professionals with the writing, and in a world where they were, I can still think of ways how it could have ended badly. Wilbur's revolution and Technoblade's ideas about anarchy still pull me back to DreamSMP's videos to this day, and this is why I am here in your comments today, lol. I really miss Technoblade, man... I quit watching Minecraft videos after he passed away.
dsmp video?? in 2024?? this was a fucking life saver dude!! as someone who loved dsmp since the server was made until now, this video meant a lot to me!! dsmp has always had a special place in my heart and seeing people still creating content around it makes me genuinely really happy :) loved this video man, keep up the work !!
This was a great video, thank you! I think we needed a retrospective on the DSMP. To be honest, this unfinished-ish state is what makes it finished for me. I wasn't the deepest into the fandom, but I followed the events (my favourite was the Election-era). I also was a young guy around that time and basically "grew up" in those years. These COVID years (2020, 21 and 22) may have been the most life-changing years so far in my life and not only because of the pandemic. I have so many good, bad but mostly just different memories from those years, it was a different era. I really appreciate them, even the bad ones. It was an era that will never come back, I will never be like I was before, I changed and the world changed. And I am thankful for this, that's how it has to be. I think of the DreamSMP the same (also EarthSMP that was my favourite, and SMPLive the first lol). My happiest years so far were during that and I can also thank this to the DreamSMP. The years had their flaws, so did the SMP, but it won't be remembered for them. Only for the uniqueness and the memories we made. The fact that it will never come back, it had no reason to be this great, but it still did. It is a great cultural pinpoint of that era and I bet it's gonna be viewed like how our parents can view some music or a movie from their youth, even if they had their own flaws. It's finished not because it's perfect, but because the time has come for something else, something new and we all had to go and live our lives. But the memory will remain for ever and that symphony was never unfinished
Honestly, I had the same thoughts and the same reasonings. I used to tell all this to my friends who continued to follow DSMP even after the Finale, unlike me. It’s just… it’s just that. You summed everything I reasoned my stop at watching DSMP with perfectly. Thank you for the video ❤
As a long time fan, In my opinion, the answer is simpler. The creators just wanted to do different things than play one single server every day for the rest of their career. No smp can last forever.
I'm so happy I got this video in my recommendations! I'm also working on a video essay about the dsmp (though I have no idea if I'll ever publish it lol) and I talk about lots of similar things with a completely different perspective. It's so neat to see such a different perspective!
One thing that people don't seem to get is that the conflict between Tommy and Dream wasn't just about the disks. Even before Wilbur started adding narrative structure to the server, Dream wanted the place to be peaceful and orderly. Tommy, and the chaos he brought with him, *threatened* the server's peace and order. The disks were only dragged into the conflict because short of banning him Dream had no other means of curtailing Tommy's anarchistic tendencies. They were a means to an end, never an end in of themselves- from Dream's perspective, anyway. Really, the Dream SMP was a story of the struggle between Order and Chaos, and in my mind one of the crew's biggest missteps was favoring one over the other instead of trying to find balance between the two.
"Wilbur's character is the one with severe mental health issues, but Wilbur as far as any viewer can tell is just a relatively healthy streamer." Ohhh that like MILK. That aged So poorly. That aged HORRIFICALLY
As a storywriter that has progressed a lot since the beginning of the DSMP, it is very clear that the narrative was flawed in many many different ways. Techno was the last glue, no one ever took that role.
after techno passed, i don’t think it could ever really be the same. if he was here, even just his character, im sure it would have ended much differently
I always thought the most fun era of the SMP was when it was mostly silly ad libbing but with the beats written for how the story was gonna go. It gave it a cute mix of friends dorking around and making gags together, and something truly theatrical. It was unique and charming. It reminded me of stuff I would do with my friends. Wilbur and Tommy making a drug van, fighting for the independence of the lot they parked it in, and then getting exiled and needing to overthrow the government with Techno-- all ending with the drug van exploding in a dramatic spectacle-- was glorious. When everything became scripted ALL the time and each streamer had their own complex solo plot that had to be super serious, including bizarre stuff that isn't even in Minecraft, it lost a lot of its creativity and clearly wasn't as fun to record. What's the point of a multiplayer server if nobody is naturally playing together?! The SMP 100% ended with the finale stream. I mean, it was called a finale for a reason! Afterwards it just evolved into a totally different thing and I remember watching very little of it. It was like a cartoon getting renewed for way too many seasons. 😂
Edit 7/24/24: Hello everyone coming from Tommy's video! Unironically, Tommy tearing up a little bit from the ending was genuinely heartwarming and will definitely boost my ego for a few days lol.
Welp, here it is, my DreamSMP video that took me down an emotional rollercoaster these past 4 months. This video is a couple months overdue and there's probably a whole bunch of editing errors that I haven't caught, but this video has driven me up the wall for far too long. Even if this video does horribly, I'm proud of what I made and I'm going to do my best to not let numbers dictate my emotions. I think I have a more solid grasp on what I want my identity to be and this video is a huge stepping stone for the future.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, subscribe, and comment below what you thought of the video!
bro please remember me when you get GIANT. This was an amazing video and I had genuine goosebumps when you referenced Wilbur's speech at the end of the video. This video perfectly balances comedy and seriousness, I honestly thought you had like 3 mil when I started this. Nice job!
hey in sword art online the part your looking for is season 1 final episode
@@NOTGGboy-dw8gm lol thanks
thank you for making this video :>
Ever though of checking out the Mianite series? You might enjoy it.
In retrospective Sadist animations carried more than anyone gives her credit for lmao
fr
She along with the other artists in this community made me interested in the plot of this story. I wouldn't have stayed for a long time if it weren't for them.
Given that Sad-ist’s views have dropped substantially since the SMP days.With a spike on the Technoblade video I’d say it was more of a symbiosis situation.
literally she was how I found out about the dream smp
So glad she got a good launch off because of this
I think that Techno was holding the server on his shoulders with only but a few and with his death, the server simply lost one of it's biggest writers and plot
everyone loved techno. He was literally a genius on every front
I love techno with all my heart but techno was actually not very important in the main lore, the reason why the server died after he did was because everyone was so heartbroken to continue without him.
@@notreal9220 I mean there wasn't much that was going on that didn't involve him in some way
@@snivydream The main story wouldn't have changed a lot other than just the second lmanburg explosion not being there
@@notreal9220 well the prison breach, destruction of lmanburg and creation of last Nevadas, the syndicate and the final waltz wouldn't have happened nor the escape of dream since he wouldn't have gone to war with the others since he would've been alone with ONE ally (not philza) that was a double agent so he couldn't really do much.the revolutionaries would've been less prepared even tho the end would probably be the same and tbus and the others of lmanburg would be much more chill since there wouldn't be any power close to theirs.dream wouldn't have been made publicly homeless and Tommy would have died in exile and Sam would've gotten away with his crimes
Now look at me
Look at me in the eyes and tell me Techno wasn't important
I dunno, I personally believe the Dream SMP really did die with Technoblade. He was really the only POV I'd watch, no one was as interesting as him. He was always coming up with something new and fun. RIP Technoblade.
It Died When Dream Was Getting All Those Accusations
@@hyperflame7255 Yeah, but Techno passed before that, for the most part.
@@CryTwink Now That I Look Back At It Wilbur As The Story Writing Lowkey Was Carrying And Dream Was Getting Allegations For Being Homophobic Before Techno Passed That And His Stan’s On Twitter We’re Too Much Making Dream Unlikeable To Some And That Was Bad Because He Was A Crucial Role In The Sever, But It Was Nothing Too Serious, Then Techno Passed RIP, But There Was Still Hope They Could’ve Kept Going And Ended It But Then More Allegations Came And Killed It For The Sever.
Yeah
@@hyperflame7255Isn't talking like that tiring? That poor shift key
I really do think it died with techno. If I remember correctly, Wilbur had stepped down as the main writer with techno taking on that role. Between the grief of his passing, and the fact that he was likely very involved in keeping the show together behind the scenes, it's not a surprise to me that the server did not survive his passing. I genuinely think that the server likely would have continued at least another year or two had he not passed.
They Could’ve Brought It Back When Techno Passed, But The Dream Accusations On Twitter Killed The Smp.
No, Dream was the one who picked up the role of being the main writer, you can tell because cDream really leaned into being a shit person over the morally grey approach Wilbur preferred. But I do agree that Techno was def the glue behind the scenes
@@hyperflame7255well some of members didn’t want continue for like a season 2 because it felt wrong for different reasons
@@Loifey Yeah Then Came The Drama
I totally agree. Also with him being locked up for 3 month because of his disease, which basiaclly halted the story for so long it also killed most of the momentum the server had gained
"Wilbur's character is the one with severe mental health issues, but Wilbur as far as any viewer can tell is just a relatively healthy streamer." Damn that didn't age well as fuck
What happened?
@@rexanator100 Domestic Abuse or something. I dont know the details, just looked it up quickly.
@rexanator100 I'm not sure but iirc, Wilbur Stalked and abused his gf/ex gf
@@rexanator100 wilbur had a pattern of abusive behaviors that hurt not only his gf at the time shelby (known here on YT as shubble) but he also hurt others like Nihachu (Niki). When dating shubble he would bite her all the time, not as like a playful love bite, it would bruise her and make her cry out in pain. She implimented a safe word so he would know when to stop biting, but he never listened to the safe word and he woud make comments like "oh you should probably cover your legs it looks like im abusing you". As for Nihachu. One the of the 1st times they met in person, wilbur (allegedly) picked nihachu up and threw her like against the wall in his office to "playfully assert dominance because she was just so small"
@@rexanator100 Abuse allegations, but without any actual proof and Wilbur denied those
At the end of the day, the biggest problem with the dsmp was the lack of communication and cooperation. Everyone ended up doing their own thing, which caused a lack of the fun interactions between streamers we had before and it made the story and the lore more nonsensical and full of plotholes. Although I still think that some of the lore that was made after Tommy's disc finale is really good and even some of the most interesting lore on the server. The prison arc, the syndicate lore, Las Nevadas, Ranboo's enderwalk lore, the eggpire, tales from the smp, Wilbur's revival, they were all pretty good story arcs with a lot of potential, they just felt completely disconnected from each other and also lacked that lighthearted and fun atmosphere the early lore had, being all too serious, which made it less fun to watch after a while. Also, the fact that the streamers themselves felt obligated to do serious lore instead of just have fun and casually hang out on the server after a while made it less enjoyable both for them and for the audience and it just felt like they were dragging out the plot. Those high expectations the fandom set for the story kinda ruined the previously mostly improved roleplay, setting the bar higher and higher, like you said.
12:00 Slight correction, Wilbur mentioned that he retired from writing the narrative of everyone in the smp I think around the time of the revival book arc, which is why the story started decentralising, so it isn’t entirely the fault of his writing. Creators like Wilbur and Tubbo have also mentioned that the plot progression and scheduling was severely mismanaged where they wouldn’t even know some important lore events are happening/have happened, and that obviously caused the main plot to fall apart really quickly.
Furthermore, creators themselves were starting to lose interest in/invested less time for the smp due to moving on to bigger things or due to the abysmally toxic subsection of the fandom cancelling and threatening them (death threats, harassment, bullying) for inane reasons such Quackity (latino) being cancelled for speaking Spanish, Eret being decimated for being a traitor to L’manburg, Tommy (a child then) being harassed on many occasions and needing to seek therapy just to name a few.
it's nice to see a retrospective that isn't just shitting on the dsmp/it's creators. it had a lot of good moments, and it had such a large and dedicated fanbase for a reason
gay ew
@@gamegoyang damn the toddlers are here too.
@gamegoyang get a load of this guy
@@VendoProstis gay ew
wtf do you expect? most of the mcyt fans are gay@@gamegoyang
Techno and Sadist carried that server on their shoulders like fr.
Tommy and Wilbur more like. Techno was entertaining but he didn't do much to make it better as a whole and he didn't stop it from getting worse
@@PengyDrawsnah, if you watched Techno's pov, his character was huge to influence other characters' stories, like Quackity's, Niki's, Philza's, Tommy's, Dream's, Tubbo's, Ranboo's, even got involved with the odd egg arc. His character arc was so important to progress the latter half of the server's story. Without him, we wouldn't have Doomsday and the Prison Break for the huge events.
And he did contribute to make it better, he did listen to other content creators to progress the story, something that wouldn't happen in the first half if you weren't part of the "protagonists".
@@PengyDraws Nah, Wilbur carried the beginning, but then he passed the torch to Techno
Techno would've loved QSMP
especially that he's good at speaking spanish
@@Coristic121 He actually knew portuguese pretty well and it's only made sadder when you realize one of qsmp's brazilian admins learned english specifically to watch techno's content, it would've been so sweet to see them interact
If he was on the server the lore would be completely different
I’m sure he would have. I miss him.
I get really sad yet oddly happy thinking about how he would've totally been invited to qsmp because quackity loved techno sm): and how he would've loved the concepts, the many jokes he would've made about making breakfast the eggs but would've taken care of it
I just really miss him
i think it's kind of poetic how to me dream smp's main theme was fall from grace and in the end it did the same despite everyone's best efforts.
nothing can last forever, things change, kingdoms fall and all that jazz.
i love this comment
All I'll say is Hermitcraft came before all and it's still standing strong🤷
@@soumyadiptasensharma2055 Hermitcraft has no competitions at this point. That SMP endured a decade-long highs and lows and are still standing strong among the most popular SMPs in UA-cam.
@@eclipsewaves exactly
@@soumyadiptasensharma2055 why do y'all bring hermitcraft into everything like it's great and all but you guys are not doing favors for the series
I have a small little correction, DSMP didn’t start narritive or RP Minecraft servers. It brought them into the lime light (and to streams) but they’ve been arround for along time.
The Yogscast did it way back when, the origins mcrp crew, Aphmau(if you want to include directly adjacent things) and there is likely many more small groups that most of us haven’t heard of.
I’d also include hermitcraft; that’s been going on for AGES and still is very popular within the mcyt community
@aboringredmop hermits have been arround for ages but it hasnt been too large in the RP front. Definitely has had the same vibe as early dsmp hyjink
rp type. But it barely kinda scrapes into Role Playing. Imo
But yeah i can see that.
@@Brenilla yeah no def not on the rp aspect. I think the life series fits that quota better, but in the "friends having fun" vibes I think hermit is peak
Yeah, there’s been a rise in RP Minecraft after DSMP (POW Creations, Kaboodle SMP) but it’s always nice to be reminded of older RP stuff /pos
Yes! Aphmau was my Minecraft rp channel all the way back in 5th grade! Entire alternate universes n shit, it was great
Even after Techno died I kept clinging to the scraps of the SMP because I didn’t wanna give up the feelings that the early story gave me. I stayed until the closing of the server and I’m never gonna forget the memories it gave me
I liked the lore and watching Techno's POV who was my favorite youtuber of all time. Dream's and Tommy's fight for the discs on that mountain but it felt weirdly acted which was completely fine for a bunch of streamers but as time went on the streams began to get more and more scripted. It became less about hitting story points and became more and more scripted down to the littlest word. It was crazy, the egg lore was completely awful and it truly shown how the DSMP turned into a shell of what it once had. If you look at awesamdude's lore you can see that they started scripting everything and even stopped playing normally and got other people to mimic their movements from a 3rd person perspective.
Even Techno's lore wasn't as natural as it used to be, Phil's lore suffered a bit as well. I liked when the server didn't know what was gonna happen next. Their bewildered expressions were the best to look back on, capturing the horrors of Wilbur blowing up L'manburg perfectly. As the server members tried to control the way their story moved after leaving too many plot holes to fill in from the constant lore breaks and direction changes. They managed to slowly tear the server apart and drive people away, Techno was the only person I watched on the lore and overtime I stopped checking in on the server because I had no care about the story anymore.
egg lore wasnt that bad
Wilbur Really Carried With The Writing
sorry if i'm misinterpreting, but as a correction the streamers did actually know that wilbur was going to blow up lmanberg! in tommy's tribute to dsmp video, he shows wilburs discord message b4 the stream which outlines every single plot point of the nov 16 stream, including the detonation of lmanberg. but the more scripting as it went on is confirmed by tommy saying so + the then shown 3 page long google doc detailing the fight at the community house stream.
I think the glaring problem is that they didn't realize they needed to stop. With a calculated stop, not just grow out of it. Its just impossible to have a story go on forever without at least some pauses in between. They needed to stop with the disc arc and maybe come back, if they wanted to, only after finding a new prompt.
Also im glad you're talking fairly about it, because yes, it was cringe, sometimes straight up nonsense, but it MEANT something to people. It did.
Yeah i agree sometimes less is bigger and bigger is better when handled lightly
16:25 one point of contention here, because I think you make some genuinely good points otherwise but make a mistake here. Will was no where close to ‘relatively healthy’. Though he never confirmed it as far as I know, it’s likely he made his character have mental health issues because he had experienced them himself. He mentioned in streams he’d struggled with anxiety throughout his UA-cam career taking off, and at one point would only really get up to talk to Tommy. If I remember correctly he also mentioned something vague about having come close to a drinking addiction. So I like the points you’ve made otherwise, don’t take this as being a negative Nancy, just a little correction, that no while he seemed cheerful and since then seems to be doing ok he definitely has had struggles which I think probably contributed to him giving his character mental health struggles too.
Damn, I never knew that about Wilbur. That's why I added the "as far as any viewer can tell" phrase just in case there was a chance that Wilbur actually did go through something, even if I couldn't find any relevant information confirming my suspicion. I really hope he's feeling happier with his band. Thanks for bringing this up.
@@ChunkyNosher he made some music about his struggles with mental illness under his personal spotify - my favorites from him are la jolla and saline solution !! definitely would recommend giving it a listen.
I was searching for this comment
Yeah ^^
@@ChunkyNosher if you listen to his music I think it gives a really good deep dive into what he was actually feeling vs what he portrayed. A lot of mentally ill people don’t show that they’re ill at all, and combat it with a bubbly and more fun person. His music is amazing!! You should give his newest album a listen :)
WELL wilbur apparently DID write himself after himself!
Just became aware of the allegations a few minutes ago, goddamn it why do so many content creators that I enjoyed turn out to be bad people
@ChunkyNosher ...they aren't allegations unfortunately ☹️ he made the shitties "apology" he could make on twitter? I think (and allegedly he used ai for it too) ;; same emotions man, really disappointed in him and also losing my faith in humanity
That's what I was thinking while watching this video...
? what happened
@@rotibakr He was discovered to be an abuser and all around horrible person. He did some pretty nasty things to his ex-girlfriend Shelby
The dream SMP felt like such a cluster of chaos sometimes
seeing the entire crew fall apart due to drama was pretty sad
Or shippers. Like Tubbo and Ranboo, they don’t talk anymore due to people shipping them :(
@@tr-st_me_bro fr it sucks
They might interact off camera, as they are in similar friend groups @tr-st_me_bro
@@ender4384 hope so
@@tr-st_me_bro They don't interact online no. But they might still be good friends. Will and Niki are still great friends, despite not having interacted publicly more than twice in two to three years.
Techno was the greatest person, he was just a funny guy who liked to have fun with friends and was just a really kind hearted person, Rest in Peace, TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES!!
This is why I love Hermitcraft so much. They have the perfect blend of everything that makes Minecraft SMP content so enjoyable. There are builders, experts in redstone, funny moments between friends, and even some cool storylines.
Grian is chaos incarnate and Ren is the theatre kid and everyone has their own little niche that works so well together.
@truckerdave8465 Grian is to hermathcraft as Techno is to the Dream server.
Many major events of each respective server have some involvement of the two.
ikr!! funny story i used to be a huge fan of dsmp and hermitcraft in 2020-2021 and eventually stopped watching them, then a few months ago i was reminded of hermitcraft again. i watched a few grian videos because i missed him and the other hermits and before i even knew it i became completely obsessed again LOLLL but im so glad to be back🙏
Seems like a lot of other people (including myself) got to a point where Techno was the only thing we bothered watching from the SMP. Everything else just felt so underwhelming that I was pretty much just watching Techno streams to watch Techno, the SMP itself was irrelevant.
Man, the Wilbur praise did not age well at all...
Also yes, you absolutely should watch Stein's;Gate. That show fucking slaps
as the minority of someone who disliked the more famous tommy and dream plotline while loving badboyhalo's egglore, a lot of what you said are things ive echoed about in my own praises and disagreements with how rp and storytelling were handled after the Manberg arc. its nice to see really. since you talked a lot about tommy and dream, i also want to talk about egglore because it really gets thrown to the side way more that it deserves.
i love egglore. i loved it because it was different, especially during that time when the main l'manburg plot was just rehashed stuff- plot for plot- what wilbur did. (ei ostracized community, being banished by a president, execution, over the top destruction of l'manburg)
apparently, i was one of the few able to suspend my disbelief for two seconds and enjoy the absurdity of a pile of minecraft blocks as a central antagonist. really brought me back to those old minecraft roleplay series' i grew up on.
it got a lot of unnecessary criticism for 'suddenly being relevant and in your face' when there was so much subtle buildup and blink-and-you-miss-it moments people never got to see. mainly because smaller creators were driving the boat.
like bad didnt just... suddenly decide to take over the server after falling into the eggs control. that was his main goal since formation of the freaking badlands. his chaotic nature was always there. its just that his family friendly-ness was an easy target for bigger streamers that it became what the fandom as a whole reduced him to.
at the same time, the direction of the 'bigger' moments of egglore was... really awkward to say the least (ei banquet and finale stream).
of course, the big streams is all what people saw unfortunately.
just like you said, creators focusing on 'bigger' streams is exactly where it was weakest. it was good when it was subtle, a few moments here and there. it thrived when it wasnt in your face, when you had to make inferences on behaviors and connect stuff yourself.
i will forever hold bad not showing the scene of him getting fully corrupted into his eggpire skin as one of the best writing decisions made during dsmp. people with basic media literacy dont need stuff spelled out for them to understand the gravity of what must've happened.
it was good usage of 'dont show dont tell'. left it up to imagination, but enough building blocks to infer. a decision, i feel like would've been ruined because hes pg had he chosen to show it.
bad's a good writer when hes focused on slow build-ups with big emotional payouts. which, thankfully, is all that he's doing on qsmp nowadays.
anyways, im gonna... politely disagree with having too many plotlines as being a mistake.
dsmp had a lot more creators other than tommy and co that can chose to do their own thing if they wanted to. its unfair to them to be sidelined to the Supporting Character to whatever tommy or dream was cooking up.
remembering correctly, it was a very inaccessible to creators who wanted to rp a more 'morally incorrect' character.
decided you didn't like c!tommy? receive hate from the toxic stan mob.
decided to like c!tommy? your character will now be reduced to whatever 'family position' they decide you fit in. god forbid you try to break out of that.
a lot of puffy lore was based on that iirc
the entirety of jackmanifold lore was that too!
i dont think it was selfish of them to branch off when it made total sense characterwise for them to do so.
i believe its unreasonable to point fingers at smaller creators for focusing on their own characters as if thats the problem.
in reality, it was the apparent existence that there was a 'main plot' to begin with that was the final nail that caused the splinter.
lets disconnect 'main' from 'popular' please.
it was especially important for people like me who were adults and couldn't sit through a tommy stream without wanting to pull their hair out. i got into dsmp more BECAUSE there were plotlines that were more my style.
i believe lore and storytelling-focused smps should be treated like a 'choose your own adventure' that allows people creative freedom to do what they want.
you follow what you care about. you watch what you want. if you dont care about egglore, dont feel pressured to watch egglore stuff. if you dont care about tommy's disk stuff, dont need to watch that either. i know i didnt.
watching dsmp is watching dsmp.
views are views.
engagement is engagement.
if you need a central plot to follow, that honestly feels like a personal thing born from fomo. i dont see it as a problem that caused its downfall.
its not like marvel where studios want you to watch a whole bunch of stuff because they want money. its not a tv series or a movie and it shouldnt be. its just a whole bunch of amateur storywriters and roleplayers having fun and playing minecraft with no focus on a collaborative overarching narrative.
yes, i agree there was a big issue in the INTEGRATION of plotlines. i remember being frustrated at the ownership retcon of one of tommy's disks just so the final conflict could happen.
skeppy had the disk, and he still had the disk when he got corrupted. hell, even during regular non rp streams skeppy had AFTER the finale THE DISK WAS STILL IN HIS INVENTORY.
that right there was an easy plotpoint they could've used so dream could get the disk back and set up for the finale and let egglore be involved in the disk plot also.
but hey, what did they decide to do?
retcon it so ranboo had the disk.
it never made sense. and people just.. accepted it.
also, something you criticized that i liked was the differentiation between characters and content creators.
if anything, i think its a REALLY good thing that needed to happen when you also factor the fandom into it. a lot of hate, even in qsmp, stems from people not being able to differentiate between rp and reality. you can't have your cake and eat it unless youre able to swallow down the massive amount of death threats.
i wasn't involved (still not) in the fandom because twitter stans are the bane of everyone's existence and i was a filthy egglore lover.
i understand it as something the creators had to do to protect themselves. people are gonna complain about continuity if dream during whatever was going on in the exile arc suddenly started making funny bits with tommy without it.
sure, people who watched it for the content creators themselves mightve not liked it, but it was necessary, and arguably, the logical conclusion from wilbur's lmanburg storylines.
anyways, rant over. honestly good shit mate. good job
edit 1/12/25: badboyhalo deserved better for literally hosting and paying for the goddamn server.
Ain’t no way you liked the egglore bruh
@@coler7952egglore wasnt that bad, maybe im biased since the first minecraft youtubers i watched and loved in dream smp are bad and skeppy but the lore in this story arc isnt terrible.
i agree with this comment though with the bad integration and execution of the dream smp with its different side stories
While I agree with your take on the "forcing characters into their own supporting cast" take, I'm gonna be honest, Jack's lore didn't tie to Tommy, it was kind of a kick starter but afterwards he kinda did his own thing.
I know you wrote this a while back so don't know if you'll see it. My issue with eghlore was that even at its peak there where like 4 5 people corrupted so it never felt like a threat to the server.
Honestly i think a general issue with the lore was that nobody wanted to be the bad guy so a lot of the events where 1 sided.
Last thing i wish the fights weren't scripted because Honestly, the best war was the first one, and it all went downhill after that.
You just summed up perfectly what I've been trying to say to people. I always say something along the lines of "It had such great potential, but it just started going downhill after the button room." But it kinda felt flat because I really did enjoy certain other aspects of the later lore, especially the exile arc when Tommy teamed up with Techno. This video made me realize that my original way of explaining was only just breaching the surface of what I truly felt on the topic, and that this explanation is much more thorough and true to what I was trying to say.
Thank you. The symphony is forever unfinished. And I think that's the way it is meant to be.
16:15 Well that didn't age well did it 💀💀
I WAS THINKING THE EXACT SAME THING
Lmaoo for real, I was literally thinking that.
Lmafo
Bro has to pin this 💀
I was shocked the SMP ended so long after Techno's death. In my opinion, since it was already losing popularity by the Techno passed, it should have ended soon after his death. It would have been a good way to go and keep a sort of bitter sweet fair well compared to the random drawn out ending that eventually came.
I personally think the reason the DSMP faded off into silence is because people started disliking Dream and not wanting to support him in any way. Yeah, there were other streamers to watch, but I really lost interest because Dream soured it for me (and, of course, it wasn't as enjoyable without certain people who left, like Tommy). That's just one of the biggest things I've noticed in the fandom, as well as outside the fandom.
also Techno death a lot was postpone before it and i believe that once they try to finish it off a huge part of the hype had die down
i hope you've watched dream's video explaining everything that happened. not saying you have to like dream again, but it's unfortunate that so many people let misinformation and slander color their opinion of him.
@@MonAhgasInsomniAroELF That's not even the stuff I was referring to 😭😭
@@MonAhgasInsomniAroELF the dream video is boring and as a lot of useless Yapping, Like wow yeah the dude is not a groomer dont change the fact he has ego issue and it took year to admit he cheated
@@aoki6332except he literally admitted to being in the wrong about situations where he was actually in the wrong… also, how is proving that he’s not a groomer “a lot of useless yapping” when that was the biggest thing people were accusing him of? You sure are a special one…
‘ but Wilber as far as any viewer can tell, is just a relatively healthy streamer ‘
Well that aged well
This is good. You’re not one of those people that are just ranting about how the DSMP sucks with unrealistic reasoning. You praised the good things and explained realistic flaws without opinion. Just a simple informational video :D
an unfinished symphony forever unfinished. as it should be
dsmp pretty much was the thing that carried me and a lot of other ppl through covid and hard times. it's so sad that techno is gone and there was a lot of drama between the creators, otherwise it might've continued for a much longer time. even though the smp is over the it was a lot of fun while it lasted and i'm proud to have been part of the community :D
I like the fact that the dream smp has inspired millions of fans to make their own server. there are so many fan servers, with amazing storylines, which will never see the internet because the story is fully kept private in a solid friend group. There likely could be a server out there that is greater than the dream smp, but its just better not shared.
SO TRUE! I had a small friend group and we created an SMP, with a mod I created. The story all came from us, we wrote it together, and it was great. Then a 1.20 patch came and broke the mod, I didn’t know how to fix it and I didn’t want to go through recoding months of work, so we voided it. I still have the world and I log in from time to time, it was fun, and I’m working on something that won’t be connected to it at all but will hopefully allow us to still play together once more. CoreSMP was great, and I’m glad it ended, but I’m still sad it’s gone, like everything in life. Ok I’ll stop typing now I need to eat somethin
Funny you say that, because my friend group and I actually created a whole looping universe and each our own original character to play, both mostly inspired by DreamSMP lore (one out of the three of us didn't watch DSMP). But it became much bigger than the DSMP universe, even after Karl's expansion of the general timeline.
One of my personal favourite things one of my friends did, was connect this world we created with a version of the DSMP where Technoblade was an actual godly entity called the Blood God, and had a well-explained and reasonable allyship with one of my friend's characters.
Techno once said that if they became too lore focused people would realise that they're not that good at it because what got them into the dsmp was light hearted jokes. That's just foreshadowing atp
Stream name: acquiring vast sums of wealth [Dream SMP]
Fr, the old arcs of the Dream Smp are amazing
@@_Doctor_14 wait are you greek
@@yiannicharitos1057 Ναι
@@_Doctor_14 I've been searching 4 some1 greek to talk dsmp with since 2022
if i were a bit younger in 2020 i would've been obsessed with dsmp. i am forever grateful that i went through my weird rp phase and shipping-real-people phase back in 2016 because i would've been genuinely unbearable for anyone who knew me
posting that short story was very brave. couldn't bring myself to read past the screenshot that you posted. i am terrified my writing still sounds like the shit i wrote in high school lol
In 2016, huh? did you do it to undertale instead?
@@gabrielc7861 yes indeed! i had an undyne rp account on instagram lol. being 13 was a weird time
One of the most depressing part about all this was that dsmp streamers *were* excited, and *wanted* to keep going. Erin and Michael McChill talked before about how they brought up ideas and asked for collaboration, but never really got a response from Dream or anyone else
all I gotta say is I wish we could go back to late 2020-2021 when there wasn't any *real* drama between everyone and it was much simpler back then. o7
16:20 honestly, in only three weeks, this has now been proven to be an untrue statement
A lot of people says techno is the main show, yes.
And the reason he is the main show was because he was genuinely having fun and just messing around with other. The “plot” for him is just a suggestion he will go through it on his own terms which is why he is enjoyable. He is unpredictable and keep us guessing, unlike other who just follow the lame plot and doesn’t improvise. Heck Jschatt make the SMP more enjoyable too.
Honestly they shouldn’t have gate keep a bunch of people and have a boring ass plot too follow.
To start out, the video was really good and pointed out valid shortcomings without being overly harsh or mean spirited. It’s always refreshing to see.
I did want to comment that I think the disconnectedness came from the lack of central locations. At the beginning of the story you had the community area where most of the dream team lived and had Tommy’s house and the prime path. Then you also had L’manburg witch was also fairly close. Most of the members acting out stories were all in close proximity and the stories naturally overlapped. Even if they didn’t connect narratively they were still in the same location and felt connected. This allows for smaller creators to make their own storylines without feeling disconnected from the rest of the plot. Even Pogtopia while farther away had the members moving back and forth between there and L’manburg. After L’manburg was destroyed, (the second time) everyone became disconnected. They had the community house but not a lot of people lived around there anymore. I think Quakity almost had a new location with Las Navadas, but it was to far away from everything else. Techno and the syndicate were super far away. The egg lore took place in the community area. Tubbo and Ranboo ran out to Snowchester (i think that was the name) and many other small areas. There was no center for community. People were to spread out to naturally interact so you lost the connectedness of earlier storylines. the different storylines have always been a part of the DSMP, and it was a good way for smaller creators to get attention and stand out. I don’t think there needs to be one story line, but I think having a central location plays that role in this kind of story telling.
Anyway that my 2 cents, I’ll stop rambling.
I think this is also why other smps like Hermitcraft, Empires, the life series, ect, work so well. No matter what conflict goes on you never stop getting the sense that it’s just a bunch of friends having fun.
Probably the best example of the creators making too many plotlines is in one of Techno's streams when during a walk a bunch just encountered the "egg" from BadBoyHalo's thing, well its vines, and they were genuinely confused on why it was even there as they worked to dismantle the roadblock, then realized it was BBH's thing and had to try and put it back together. Nobody knew what the heck was going on.
There was a stream before the egg stream, in which Techno was walking in L'manberg when he found an Egg poster. It was the first time I heard of the egg arc and I was so confused, I was like: What? New government? Didn't they learn from the doomsday????
oooohhhhh 16:20 aged like milk ouch
I will also say that Dream's horrendous "management" (incredibly sarcastic) of the server was a nightmare for all of the members. I think that you're too hard on the SMP members here; we know now that so many members including Eret, Niki, Ranboo and Hannah, tried and failed to put together any kind of narrative because every time there was an attempt, Dream was essentially a roadblock. Not mentioning the absolutely awful treatment the few women on the SMP recieved, Dream was almost completly absent from the server which really put a halt to so many members' lore plans. In becoming the main antagonist, Dream's role was involved in everyone's stories, so when he decided to bail, there was only so much everyone could do on their own before they needed other people and also Dream. Eret has been very vocal about the mismanagement on Dream's part ever since the server died; I respect her a lot, and also, she was on the server since the beginning of the L'manberg era, so she knows what she's talking about.
The finale ended, Dream was no longer a main character, and so he of course lost interest and abandoned it for the most part, leaving the rest of the SMP hanging. He's notorious for letting his ego make his decisions, and this one, at least in part, was no different. I am a firm believer that the server surviving past the finale, and even before to an extent, was possible DESPITE Dream, not because of him. The server didn't get popular because of Dream; it got popular because Tommy brought in an element of fun and chaos that people were entertained by. Wilbur introduced a narrative, and the Election arc was so fun because it allowed everyone to be goofy while also having some crucial story elements thrown in there. Dream played the antagonist, yes, but the majority of people followed the storyline for Tommy, not Dream. Dream didn't have a character, not really - he wasn't sympathetic and didn't have any motivations past "let's harrass the annoying kid". Yeah, there's some stuff he said on twitter and streams during the Prison arc about how "if you grab a snake expect it to bite back" or something, but he NEVER built on his character other than being an exaggerated extension of himself. Dream was not an important player, his role was, and honestly, could have been filled by pretty much any other SMP member, and much better.
As an avid viewer that kept up with every possible streamer I could, it was very frustrating and disappointing to see people try to build their stories and characters only to get sidelined by Dream trying to drag out his own relevancy in the plot (the revive book) which basically nullified a lot of the consequences in the earlier story and also overshadowed and butted out any other people's narratives that they were trying to create.
Also, yeah, the artists absolutely carried. Sadist alone is single-handedly responsible for launching the server into popularity; the artists, writers, and cosplayers were so passionate, a level of involvement I haven't seen in a fandom since Undertale.
@@VendoProstis None of the things I’ve said are made up - they all happened
I would not be “blaming” him if he didn’t actually cause all of it lmao
@@VendoProstis I'm gonna be so honest with you. This has nothing to do with dream as a person nor as a content creator. It fully has to do on how a person singlehandedly attempted to carry a story project that featured 40+ members and therefore 40+ storylines all on his own with little to no help on it. He, as a human couldn't have POSSIBLY done that. And the fact that Dream held the reins all on his own made any form of lore integration for all the members impossible and unaccessible. Op is right on their rant.
wait till he finds out the wilbur allegations
I love how you acknowledge that you just didn’t have some finer details of the video, like the examples at 13:50, decided at the time of recording. Very funny, very honest, I like it.
something id like to say as a dsmp fan veteran, was that until this the beggining of august, when I saw a kid where a hoodie of khorne from warhammer, did I realize "blood for the blood god" came from warhammer. And I feel like most techno fans also don't no that, which just goes to show, how popular, both techno, and the dsmp was, that it over shadowed WARHAMMER, ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS AND CONVELUTED TABLETOP GAMES OF ALL TIME. Anyways banger video, keep up the good work my man
Unfortunately wilbur also put in hours beating his girlfriend😭
BOOST THIS 😭😭
Wowwowow, not beating her up. He was biting her like a dog
Can someone explain what's happening with this dude ? Every time i see a comment about him its becoming worse and worse
@@maybe3568 he abused his ex-gf, shelby/shubble
people are now saying she had no bruises but this relationship was a year ago maybe 😭
@@maybe3568 go watch the Bowblax videos about him
16:18 welp, that didnt age well. I sure he didnt bite anyone of significance or anything.
16:12 wait till he hears about messed up Wilbur is in real life (if you don’t know he abused his ex girlfriend really badly)
wilbur is so disgusting oml, and to think some of us used to watch some of his content…
I’m just gonna say this now, I regret joining the fandom a year ago. I wished I had been watching them from the beginning, when the dream smp was genuine and improvised. And it’s really sad to know that now most of the members have either picked sides or completely cut each other off.
The dream smp will always have a place somewhere in my heart
i found tommy's first dsmp video by chance while i was having breakfast, and it ended up taking me on for a ride that i would never be able to ever forget. the hype i felt in the first lore stream i watched despite knowing nothing, the first mcc streamed that kick started my habit of staying up. the friends that i made because of these streams, everything came together like a perfect storm it was my first fandom that i felt that invested in too i dont think i'll ever forget the impact and joy this silly server brought me, for all the cracks and perfection it had
i think it's also important to remember that it wasn't some grand idea to begin with. dream didn't set out to create a roleplay server with storylines and seasons. it wasn't a "great idea that was terribly executed," because it was never a planned thing in the first place. it was nothing that became something that slowly ended. the SMP ultimately did serve it's entire purpose. dream was never trying to create the DSMP as we know it from the start, it was just a server he made to check out the new Minecraft updates with george, and then they added sapnap so they could all hang out, and slowly added more of their friends to hang out and play on the server with. once it became popular, dream used it as a way to help streamers he became friends with to grow their audiences too, since the opportunity presented itself. it had evolved into a roleplay server unintentionally and organically, was amazing for a while in particular because everyone was trapped at home due to the pandemic and had nothing better to do anyway, but once people were able to start going out again, everyone got busier, trying to coordinate 30+ creators was too hard most of the time, one of their dear friends passed, and i think everyone's motivation just fizzled out after that. it was never meant to be anything more than a server for friends to hang out on, so it fully accomplished that and more, and now it's done. that's all there is to it imo. 🤷 it was fun while it lasted and it's a great memory for many, but everyone moved on.
ngl I joined the dsmp fandom right after the lmanburg era and being IN it during that time (w the arrival of all the new streamers, mixing multiple new stories) was what got me to stay in the fandom at that time. The ideas were so rich and we loved when stories crossed or joined from time to time between all those streamers.
You say that the streamers started roleplaying as changed characters that had nothing to do with Wilbur's writing or with their usual online personalities, but following them at that time would make you realize that those streamers were absolutely more than "the cheerful young wreck" or "the funny lighthearted one". Actually their dsmp personas had full character arcs that mostly made sense. Quackity becoming a mafia boss with his casino is the result of many events that led him to that point. Same goes for almost everyone else in the server.
What I'm getting from your video, which is great by the way, is that you mostly had an issue with change! You liked the dsmp as it was when you got into it and didn't really adapt to the changes that happened, along with the fact that you kinda got less interested in the stories. This is absolutely valid! but please consider that for people who didn't get interested in the dsmp for the same reasons that you did, or at the same time as you did, our perception could be much different than yours.
You raised great points in theory as why to you this is why the server failed, but I just wanted to add this grain of salt!
To me the dsmp fizzled out because of the people.
Friendship between streamers made the server; fights, conflicts of interests and grief ended it.
That's my take :) for being in the fandom until the server got closed.
The problem wasn't the characters, it was mainly the performance, some more than others. What we have to realise that these people aren't really professional actors or writers and when they really get down to the serious storytelling, it was never going to be at that level.
Coming from tommy's video, this is a great view on the smp as a whole
"their symphony forever unfinished." man that just made me emotional. Thank you for this video. Recent events have really soured my memory of the DSMP, this just reminded me why I loved it so much.
With the recent drama I've found myself coming back to this video a lot. Thank you for giving an actually nuanced perspective instead of just shitting on the smp because thats the popular thing to do. The smp was chaotic and kinda of a mess but thats why i love it so much and forever will. It was fun and helped me get through the pandemic and everything else that was happening at the time, so the fact that majority of the internet will remember it just for the constant drama and alligations (Wilbur being an abuser certainly made it worse) makes me incredibly sad. So again thank you for making this video.
Update: Quackity himself JUST announced that Wilbur is Kicked out of the QSMP! It's so over for him! 💀
One of the best outros I’ve seen. Truly amazing the way you weaved in the unfinished symphony part. I love when people do things like that. Thank you, this made my day ❤
outside factors also lead to the downfall of this server, creators moving on to other things, dream being constantly being engaged in controversy, people no longer had time to watch hours worth of streams for content and also technoblades unfortunate passing
After the disc saga wilbur took a backseat in the writers room and it showed
After Wilbur's character died, Tommy and Techno really carried the SMP, and after Techno's death, everything went downhill
well the wilbur stuff didn't age well
"Wilbur, as far as any viewer can tell, is just a relatively healthy streamer"
NOT ANYMORE BUDDY
i never watched all the dsmp livestreams, aside from the beginning till before the dream getting locked up plotline, i usually would watch techno's streams and add to the spam of "mic muted" during the start of streams at his cabin in the woods and watch the occasional upload of techno's pov during big fights or funny moments.
im thankful for this video reminding me of this experience
you did the smp justice.
the server moving away from improv with plot points to just acting ruined it for me
As soon as wilbur stopped writing. It fucking DROPPED
Wilbur stopped writing when he became ghostbur tho, I thought Tommy and Tubbo did a pretty good job writing the exile arc. But some time down the line they did get Wilbur to write both their characters for them haha. (Which makes sense, Tubbo finally doing his own lore streams near the end with Wilbur that he's never really done before)
Wilbur's efforts really made the story nail-biting, or i guess arm-biting
I actually think that people having their own separate plot lines CAN be still be good. I think Qsmp does it well, with creators having their own lore and other creators simply reacting to it.
I'm so late to the party it's not even funny! I stumbled onto the DreamSMP a few months ago and am playing catchup. From that perspective, it's hard to piece together the storyline and thanks to your video, I now understand why. That being said, there's something special there. The interaction between the characters, the plot lines, and such are entertaining. There is something watchable about it that does make you want to know what happens next. Now that it's over, I can skip between lore streams without having to wait for the next ones to be made available. Thank you for putting together this video. I found it informative and insightful!
It makes me happy to see people still getting into the story now
I would recommend BlueberryTV if you’re a new fan looking to get into dsmp. Also avoid Evanmcgaming I know the video recommends him but theyre very biased videos which skip over plotlines and focus on getting views not giving the viewer s true idea of the story 👍
@@owlvo exactly right. He featured tommy more in his video about the eggpire than Ponk, An actual member of the eggpire who's lore was wayyy more important to the egg arc than tommy.
For me, Wilbur was how I first saw DreamSMP, and then Philza and Technoblade. The loss of Technoblade definitely put a wrench in things, I know Phil has said that the concept for the second 'season' of dsmp was going to start with a memory wipe- And Philza just couldn't do that to himself or his character, and neither could several others (I feel like at least Ranboo and Nikki, who left with Philza in a final lore video)
I think QSMP is a great evolution of this idea, actually having a staff and NPCs to play characters and run storylines. See- I come from a place of RP servers. Where an 'Event Team' running small things and larger plotlines were a big thing. So QSMP is scratching that itch in a really amazing way. It's given structure to a sandbox. People have their own eventlines, call backs to their personal 'lore' or history. There was some of this in DSMP, but nothing to the degree that QSMP has been doing. The quality that Quackity brought to his own lore videos has been given to every creator in the space.
"Wilbur was how I first saw qsmp and then techno and philza" techno was not on qsmp though?
@@V1DE0-STARZits a mistake, techno died a long time before the qsmp started
@@V1DE0-STARZ Yes as the other person said, I meant those three were who I watched in DSMP
They Could’ve Brought It Back After Techno Passed But Then The Allegations Came Up And Killed It For The Smp
This gave me the closure I was so desperately searching for. Thank you so much for this, I needed it.
“As far as anyone could tell, Wilbur was a very stable streamer”
Aged ljke milk.
I was just about to say that lmao
this captured the DSMP perfectly.
many of the creators, like tommy, wilbur, technoblade, and dream himself were carrying the server on their backs, taking turns going up the mountain that was the fanbase and success they were hoping for. props to them for doing the best they could, they nailed it in the best way possible, even if it wasnt perfect.
Wilbur was always his character.
I will not undermine every other creators efforts to say Techno was the only good one, but a death really just makes everyone realise how real everything is. And going back to almost 'childish' roleplays after such a big impact seems kinda nonsensical, especially since that was where everyone interacted with him. And besides, every show has some sort of end, the creators lives cant forever centre around 1 simple server. Even before everything, plotlines were beginning to generally separate and people were going their separate ways, and so it wasnt that difficult for everyone to just sort of move on. Eventually, everything gets too complicated and falls apart. And with so many things happening back to back, the server kind of just froze in time. Qsmp was simillar, but it turned into more of a business than a hangout and that too, got complicated and collapsed. It wasnt necessarily a bad experience, being in the fandom. And i really miss everyone being together. But it grew too fast and just ended.
In all honesty, I'm glad the Dream SMP had flaws. Sure, that might have meant that it was less enjoyable to watch for some, but it opened up a whole new playing field for creatives like me. I love to write stories and the Dream SMP has presented a whole new challenge for me to work with. So while I thank the creators for all the hardwork they have put in to this server, I commend them for pushing through all the stress and I congratulate them on their success and the ability to move on to new things, I also thank them for being human so that I myself can get through my issues with mental health and take their stories and shape them into something new.
The stories individually were good(Quaquity´s was a masterpiece, it made me afraid of a Minecraft character because his voice acting was just.... perfect!), but once you tried to weave them together it wouldn't create a scarf but a ball of incomprehensible yarn. Tommi´s story for example should have ended right there where he got his discs back. had the SMP continued with Quaquity´s (or Ramboo´s) story as a follow-up in "continuity" the story would have been a banger, the issue is they didn't.
Don't get me wrong here I think Tommy is a great character still, but he pretty much got hamfisted in subplots where he had no stakes, BBH Red Egg, The Tubbo nuke (that one was a mess that led nowhere), and Jack Manifold´s story that also ended on a whimper that led nowhere, which feels disappointing, add onto this the fact that "new episodes" or "lore" took months to produce a follow-up and BANG! right there recipe for disaster (narrative disaster). All because they wanted to force Tommy into being the protagonist of the series (this is the same case with techno may he rest in peace) where he had nothing to do but repeat his past mistakes which he learned NOT to do anymore in the last arc he had, which made him frustrating to watch.
Dream´s character motivation reveal was a huge letdown, it was shown when it didn't matter anymore, nukes exploded anyway was the most anticlimactic thing (in a bad way) I have ever seen! it is the equivalent of "rocks fall everyone dies". All the HYPE around how menacing he is just to be horribly written. Sam was a better villain for example but they did him dirty because "DrEaM hAd A pOiNt!" (no he didn't but the narrative says so so STFU), The egg was a better villain (but is not a dream so off it goes to the bin! also let mock BBH for putting on effort and giving us an interesting spin on a Lovecraftian story instead of recognizing how well made it was, memes, mockery and cutting the story short! because nothing shows more respect than doing that! bravo!). Dream had the same problem as Tommy, he got hamfisted in conflicts that were not of that character´s interest + he was a terribly written character wich pathetic motivation is only rivaled by Cinder in RWBY if you had seen that.
"I just wAnTeD tHe SeRvEr To Be HaPpY aGaIn" -my ass! that´s the most unreliable shit ever, especially coming from a supposed leader of an ancient "cult" which got so powerful and influential GOD copied his shape to honor him.
Foolish had tremendous potential, but it was cut abruptly, so did Puffy, so did BBH, and so did the Kinoko kingdom.
Philza did basically nothing since he killed Wilbur, and Wilbur... oh boy WILBUR! same frustrating shit as a dream about a character that pretends to have a "plan" only to be nothing at the end.... why the fucking hype? it was all smoking mirrors but they wanted you to pretend they weren't and that sucked because it felt as if the writers believe you are STUPID, oh yeah also that time when everyone got an allergy to making lore, and rather than saying "Guys we don't want to do that at the moment we want to work on other projects" they instead began to bitch and moan about how STUPID lore was (my favorite is when Tubbo acted disinterested in Tommi´s funeral, got criticized by shitty voice acting, defended himself by saying he is not a "good voice actor", and then proving himself wrong 3 streams later)... this is like when Rick and Morty made the too many meta jokes to the point it got annoying. This connects to the point I brought up about continuity, which the writers apparently are allergic to, but simultaneously wanted to introduce Tommy, Techno, or Dream into all of the side stories, they lacked a vision past Lmanburg part 2, AND IT FUCKING SHOWS!
TLDR: My two gripes with DSMP are:
1)Finish a story and don't use a character that already went through an arc just to do it again, you make them feel redundant.
2) Don´t overuse your "celebrities" and hype them as a BIG character if they can't fucking deliver something good (Even if the SMP has your name, you were the worst written character, and the best contribution was being a ghost on Ramboo´s head) mald over this point all you want but deep down (and it hurts) it is true. Dream as a character was a HUGE letdown and I would have preferred ANYONE as the big bad but him.
16:13 that did not age well
lol
Tommy and Dream carried everything up to Wilbur joining, Wilbur carried everything from him joining until he died ingame. Techno carried everything from Wilbur stepping down until he died... Well, not in game.
I think what would have made things better. Tommy killing Dream, and a New Antagonist is brought to the story. Not Dream. He can just be desd and return whenever he is needed as Dreamxd or in the afterlife. That would still extend the story but not ake it seem like they don't have balls to kill their characters
I was 13 when I watched those streams and cool animatics made by talented UA-camrs, now I'm 16, damn how time flies
Something being "Cringe" doesn't matter as long as it made you happy
I would agree with you; there were any cracks in the DreamSMP, and we can't blame the streams for it. After all, they are not professionals with the writing, and in a world where they were, I can still think of ways how it could have ended badly. Wilbur's revolution and Technoblade's ideas about anarchy still pull me back to DreamSMP's videos to this day, and this is why I am here in your comments today, lol. I really miss Technoblade, man... I quit watching Minecraft videos after he passed away.
Also @ChunkyNoster got any discord server for your community?
dsmp video?? in 2024?? this was a fucking life saver dude!!
as someone who loved dsmp since the server was made until now, this video meant a lot to me!! dsmp has always had a special place in my heart and seeing people still creating content around it makes me genuinely really happy :) loved this video man, keep up the work !!
This was a great video, thank you! I think we needed a retrospective on the DSMP.
To be honest, this unfinished-ish state is what makes it finished for me. I wasn't the deepest into the fandom, but I followed the events (my favourite was the Election-era). I also was a young guy around that time and basically "grew up" in those years. These COVID years (2020, 21 and 22) may have been the most life-changing years so far in my life and not only because of the pandemic. I have so many good, bad but mostly just different memories from those years, it was a different era. I really appreciate them, even the bad ones. It was an era that will never come back, I will never be like I was before, I changed and the world changed. And I am thankful for this, that's how it has to be.
I think of the DreamSMP the same (also EarthSMP that was my favourite, and SMPLive the first lol). My happiest years so far were during that and I can also thank this to the DreamSMP. The years had their flaws, so did the SMP, but it won't be remembered for them. Only for the uniqueness and the memories we made. The fact that it will never come back, it had no reason to be this great, but it still did. It is a great cultural pinpoint of that era and I bet it's gonna be viewed like how our parents can view some music or a movie from their youth, even if they had their own flaws. It's finished not because it's perfect, but because the time has come for something else, something new and we all had to go and live our lives. But the memory will remain for ever and that symphony was never unfinished
Honestly, I had the same thoughts and the same reasonings. I used to tell all this to my friends who continued to follow DSMP even after the Finale, unlike me. It’s just… it’s just that. You summed everything I reasoned my stop at watching DSMP with perfectly. Thank you for the video ❤
As a long time fan, In my opinion, the answer is simpler. The creators just wanted to do different things than play one single server every day for the rest of their career. No smp can last forever.
I'm so happy I got this video in my recommendations! I'm also working on a video essay about the dsmp (though I have no idea if I'll ever publish it lol) and I talk about lots of similar things with a completely different perspective. It's so neat to see such a different perspective!
They got me through middle school its sad to see that it will never be the same again now im lloking for something else to get me through high-school
One thing that people don't seem to get is that the conflict between Tommy and Dream wasn't just about the disks.
Even before Wilbur started adding narrative structure to the server, Dream wanted the place to be peaceful and orderly.
Tommy, and the chaos he brought with him, *threatened* the server's peace and order.
The disks were only dragged into the conflict because short of banning him Dream had no other means of curtailing Tommy's anarchistic tendencies.
They were a means to an end, never an end in of themselves- from Dream's perspective, anyway.
Really, the Dream SMP was a story of the struggle between Order and Chaos, and in my mind one of the crew's biggest missteps was favoring one over the other instead of trying to find balance between the two.
Thanks for making me cry and accept that time no matter how much we don’t want it to, continues to move forward.
It's gotta be a curse of big Minecraft youtubers to suddenly turn out to be groomers. Is being a normal person really that hard for them?
Technoblade was the only person there together with jslatt who didn't felt like a dream clone, without him the server wasn't worth it anymore.
"Wilbur's character is the one with severe mental health issues, but Wilbur as far as any viewer can tell is just a relatively healthy streamer." Ohhh that like MILK. That aged So poorly. That aged HORRIFICALLY
As a storywriter that has progressed a lot since the beginning of the DSMP, it is very clear that the narrative was flawed in many many different ways. Techno was the last glue, no one ever took that role.
after techno passed, i don’t think it could ever really be the same. if he was here, even just his character, im sure it would have ended much differently
You gotta consider that a lot of the main POVs were young kids / young adults streamers who are immature as FUCK
@@V1DE0-STARZ I can't tell what the tone / point of this comment is
They Could’ve Kept Going After Techno Passed h Unfortunately For Dream The Allegations Came And Killed It For The Smp
16:12 well, that statement aged poorly
I always thought the most fun era of the SMP was when it was mostly silly ad libbing but with the beats written for how the story was gonna go.
It gave it a cute mix of friends dorking around and making gags together, and something truly theatrical. It was unique and charming. It reminded me of stuff I would do with my friends.
Wilbur and Tommy making a drug van, fighting for the independence of the lot they parked it in, and then getting exiled and needing to overthrow the government with Techno-- all ending with the drug van exploding in a dramatic spectacle-- was glorious.
When everything became scripted ALL the time and each streamer had their own complex solo plot that had to be super serious, including bizarre stuff that isn't even in Minecraft, it lost a lot of its creativity and clearly wasn't as fun to record. What's the point of a multiplayer server if nobody is naturally playing together?!
The SMP 100% ended with the finale stream. I mean, it was called a finale for a reason! Afterwards it just evolved into a totally different thing and I remember watching very little of it. It was like a cartoon getting renewed for way too many seasons. 😂
Ah, damn
Now I’m nostalgic
Just be 2021 againnnnnnn
VERY well written video. amazing job
Hi