History of Hardcore Factions

Hardcore Factions (HCF) developed out of the wider Minecraft Factions genre in the early 2010s, adding a deathban and structured map cycles to what had been an open-ended land-claiming format. This page traces the format across five periods.

The stretch from roughly 2013 to 2018 is widely described by the community as the golden era, the point at which player counts, competitive faction play and outside attention all peaked at once. It spans the second, third and part of the fourth sections below, and is shaded gold throughout this page.

Parts of this article need sources. Player counts and closure dates in particular require citations. Forum archives, VODs and server-list history are all acceptable. Please do not add claims from memory alone.

Timeline at a glance

2012–2013 Origins

2014–2015 Expansion

2016–2018 Peak

2019–2021 Lunar era

2021–2024 Later

Gold segments mark the 2013–2018 golden era.

Origins (2012–2013)

HCF was created on a server called HCGaming. It distinguished itself from ordinary factions servers by two additions: a timed ban on death, and a map that ends and resets rather than running indefinitely. Together these turned a sandbox into a season-based competitive format.

HCGaming subsequently merged with the Shotbow Network, and in November 2013 HCF became an official game mode there. That gave the format its first large, established audience.

The same year, itsjhalt founded MineHQ. Within two years the format had three significant homes rather than one, which set the pattern of competing networks that defined it for the rest of its life.

• Origins of the deathban rule on HCGaming
• The Shotbow merger and HCF's arrival on a major network in November 2013
• Development of SOTW and EOTW as scheduled events
• First recognisable class systems
• Early YouTube coverage and its effect on player numbers

Needs: who ran HCGaming and when it launched, the exact Shotbow merger date, and when the deathban was first implemented.

HCFactions and the unsettled ruleset

HCFactions ran at least twenty-seven maps and is where most of the format's conventions were worked out. Its early maps show a ruleset still being tested rather than a standard being followed.

Map length was not fixed. Map 14 was announced as a two-week map and ran for eight.

Kits and enchantment caps changed map to map. Map 11 ran as a kit map, Map 15 with no enchantments at all, Map 16 on a Protection IV kit. Each drew markedly different reactions, and the arguments over which kit made for a better map are among the earliest recorded balance debates in HCF.

Alliances were unrestricted and enormous. During one Palace on Map 12, the Strawhats and Desonide alliances merged into a combined group of over forty players to fight nineteen from Badlion, got them to 2 DTR and then arranged a betrayal from inside to finish them. Alliance caps and no-ally rulesets on later networks were a direct response to this kind of map.

Subfactions were used to defend valuables. On Map 13, ReCharge went raidable but lost nothing, having moved everything into a second faction beforehand. The practice was later banned across most networks as a "stash faction"; see Rules and punishments.

Events beyond Palace existed. Map 16 ran the network's first base contest, judged on building rather than fighting.

Factions were also less permanent than they later became. Names were recreated repeatedly by the same players across maps, with RankXI rebuilt at least three times by ApacheBlitz, who handed leadership to UnPhair on Map 12 and to Johnzeh on Map 17.

Needs: dates for HCFactions maps, and when the network became part of Shotbow.

The Ohana lineage

One faction line runs from HCFactions all the way into HCTeams. Waterboys was created by Liftie on Map 17, renamed Mallcops after his ban, and became Ohana on Map 18, where it dominated. On Map 19 the same roster played as MegaMilk alongside Desolate, Cyanide and SoupSkidz.

Ohana reappears years later on HCTeams Map 9 as one half of the Amerinide split, opposite NoLimit.

Expansion (2014–2015)

The format consolidated and spread. Mechanics that had varied wildly between servers settled into a recognisable standard, and the largest networks began drawing consistent four-figure concurrent counts on map launches.

In 2014, itsjhalt opened HCTeams on MineHQ. Alongside Kohi, it became one of the two servers that defined the competitive scene, and the two networks between them account for most of the era's documented map results.

HCTeams ran its Alpha map on 26 October 2014 and Map 1 on 15 November, then settled into a cycle of roughly four to six weeks per map through to the end of 2016. On Kohi, EOTW was not held at all for the first six maps.

At the EOTW of HCTeams Map 6 in 2015, itsjhalt issued a wave of blacklists that removed a large part of the Amerinide roster from the network at once. Several did not return until Map X, and some played the intervening maps on alt accounts.

• HCTeams opens in 2014
• Standardisation of the class system across networks
• KOTH, Citadel and Conquest as scheduled events
• Growth of organised, roster-based factions
• YouTube and streaming as the main driver of new players

Needs: peak concurrent figures per network with a source, and when Kohi launched.

Peak and fragmentation (2016–2018)

Minecraft 1.9 released in February 2016 with a rewritten combat system: attack cooldowns, off-hand items, a swing timer. The HCF community overwhelmingly rejected it and stayed on 1.7 and 1.8. Servers became pinned to old versions, and the genre's technical base gradually diverged from the game most players were running.

This period contains both the format's largest maps and the beginnings of its decline. Kohi merged with Badlion between Maps 25 and 26, a move most of its playerbase resisted and which is generally treated as the point the scene lost its centre. On 16 December 2016, johnzeh founded HCF Revival, which ran its first map in April 2017.

Map X in February 2016 is generally regarded as the format's high point. itsjhalt promoted it with a trailer campaign that saturated YouTube subscription feeds, and priority queue access was granted to power factions rather than sold, so attendance did not depend on buying a rank. Amerinide took all four Citadels.

The slowdown is visible in the map cycle itself. HCTeams ran maps every four to six weeks through 2016, then stopped after Map 16 on 30 December 2016. Map 17 did not start until July 2018, eighteen months later, and was the network's last.

Arcane and the shift to monetisation

Around HCTeams Map 16 in January 2017, itsjhalt released Arcane.cc, a second HCF network running a softer ruleset built around crates, keys and purchasable ranks.

The model was contentious. A format whose appeal rested on gear being earned and losable now had progression that could be bought, and much of the competitive playerbase treated the pay-to-win elements as a departure from what HCF was. Whatever the reception, the model spread: later servers including FaithfulMC adopted the same crate-and-rank structure, and it became the default commercial template for HCF servers that followed.

Needs: Arcane's launch date, its map count, and a source for the community reaction at the time.

• The 1.9 combat update and the community's refusal to adopt it
• Version-locking to 1.7/1.8 and its long-term effects
• HCF Revival founded, 16 December 2016
• Arcane.cc and the arrival of crate-based monetisation, January 2017
• The Kohi–Badlion merger and its failure
• Peak map turnouts and the most contested seasons

Needs: exact date of the Kohi merger, and which networks attempted 1.9.

The Lunar era (2019–2021)

With Kohi and MineHQ both gone, the scene did not fragment so much as pass to a single successor.

Lunar picked up where MineHQ and HCTeams left off. Launched by Jordan and Physci with Map 1 in 2019, it ran nine maps through to its closure in 2021, making it the main competitive HCF server of the period.

Its origins were technical as much as competitive. HCTeams Map 17 in 2018 was the first HCF map to run a client-side anticheat, CheatBreaker, and Lunar launched on substantially the same system. When CheatBreaker shut down, Lunar Client took over that role and went on to become one of the most widely used Minecraft clients.

Player numbers still declined overall. Maps ran shorter, turnouts shrank, and the pool of active competitive factions narrowed to a smaller group of long-running names.

• Lunar launches in 2019 and runs nine maps to 2021
• Client-side anticheat arrives with CheatBreaker on HCTeams Map 17
• CheatBreaker closes; Lunar Client succeeds it
• Shrinking map turnouts and shortened cycles
• Migration of players to other Minecraft PvP formats

Needs: Lunar's exact launch and closure dates, its map dates, and closure dates for MineHQ.

Later period (2021–2024)

After Lunar closed, HCF continued as a smaller, more concentrated scene. Surviving networks ran established rulesets for a committed core, while revival attempts and nostalgia maps drew temporary spikes without sustained recovery.

HCF Revival illustrates the pattern: after three maps across 2017 it went quiet for over five years, returning in June 2023 and running four maps through to June 2024.

The scene also spread regionally. AU and AS factions such as Fruit ran across a dozen smaller networks between 2020 and 2024, a part of the format the older archives barely record.

• Revival maps and one-off events
• Community-run and open-source server implementations
• Reuse of historic network names by new owners
• Regional scenes outside NA and EU
• Present state of the format

Needs: which networks were still running maps at the end of this period.

Period summary

Period	Years	Defining development	Trajectory
Origins	2012–2013	Created on HCGaming; official on Shotbow, November 2013	Emerging
Expansion	2014–2015	HCTeams opens; class system standardised	Rising
Peak	2016–2018	1.9 rejected; Kohi merges with Badlion	Peak, then splitting
Lunar era	2019–2021	Kohi and MineHQ gone; Lunar succeeds them	Declining
Later	2021–2024	Revival maps; smaller committed core	Stable, small

Key dates

Date	Event
2013	itsjhalt founds MineHQ
November 2013	HCF becomes an official game mode on Shotbow, following HCGaming's merger
2014	itsjhalt opens HCTeams
26 October 2014	HCTeams Alpha SOTW
15 November 2014	HCTeams Map 1 SOTW
2015	Blacklist wave at HCTeams Map 6 EOTW
February 2016	Minecraft 1.9 released; the community rejects it
6 February 2016	Map X SOTW, the best-attended map on the network
16 December 2016	johnzeh founds HCF Revival
30 December 2016	HCTeams Map 16 SOTW, the last before an eighteen-month gap
January 2017	itsjhalt releases Arcane.cc, introducing crates, keys and ranks
8 April 2017	HCF Revival Map 1 SOTW
2016–2017	Kohi merges with Badlion between Maps 25 and 26
July 2018	HCTeams Map 17, the first HCF map with client-side anticheat
2019	Jordan and Physci launch Lunar
2021	Lunar closes after nine maps
June 2023	HCF Revival returns after five years
June 2024	HCF Revival Map 7, the most recent map recorded here

See also

• Hardcore Factions
• HCFactions · Kohi · HCTeams · MineHQ · Lunar
• Map archive
• SOTW and EOTW