📜History

A short history on the origin of PvPTiers and the 1.9+ PvP community.

PvPTiers, originally called the PvP Network, and was founded on the 18th of November 2018. This was founded by a player with the username AlMusabPatawe, now known as Enrico, who was originally a known player in the semi-vanilla survival community.

Despite the 1.9 combat update already being out for a few years by this point, there were very few major adopters of it which, even then, did not really champion its competitive community, putting a lot more focus on minigames and attracting casual players, as most large servers do. The 1.9+ community had barely had any competitive recognition; no media presence and no form of centralized ranking.

Originally playing the Sword kit through early iterations of free-for-all servers, Enrico ideated, created and managed the first version of the Tier List concept using Sword as a pilot gamemode with the advisory of xYuvalx (the best player at the time). This took the form of a manually updated spreadsheet, which many of you will remember, and no real official brand or team.

As the concept grew in popularity and thousands of players were added, a team started to form around it and the concept of 'Testers' was introduced to mitigate the workload. Additionally, the prospect of new game modes started to present itself. The first new addition was the Pot PvP gamemode. The project continued to scale as more players joined and the staff team grew.

Through 2020, small embers of other gamemodes started to spark. The 1.16 update introduced Netherite armor and additionally, the concept of vanilla PvP as a kit (beyond fighting on survival servers) started to grow around this point, with players inventing things like the tipped arrow strategy, 'hit crystalling' and so-on. However, all-in-all 1.9+ combat was still far from mainstream.

This all changed around 2021-2022 when Minecraft content had a huge resurgence on YouTube with the likes of Dream, Technoblade and others becoming immensely popular creators boasting millions of views. This completely changed the dynamic of competitive Minecraft PvP forever. For a long time before this, nearly all Minecraft content that was popular was either: not PvP related, or, it was focused on 1.8 gamemodes only. To further put this into perspective, between 2016-2019 the only real recognised 1.9+ PvP YouTuber only had a few thousand subscribers.

This was even further exacerbated when MrBeast, the largest YouTuber in the world, hosted the famous Technoblade v.s. Dream duel. Players flocked to 1.9+ PvP servers to be part of the action. In turn, they began trying new kits including Axe, UHC and more, trying to emulate their favorite creators. With an ever expanding staff team of passionate players, the team coordinated with key players in all these emerging 1.9+ modes to centralise and found Tier Lists for Axe, UHC, Netherite Pot, Vanilla and later, SMP. The Tier List became a core concept of the entire competitive 1.9+ community, which now was truly blooming.

As the demand of the workload of managing this project grew, the idea of developing it into a more advanced concept began to form. This included forming a hub, centralised ticket systems, a website and introducing the concept of a 'network' and Network Owner roles whilst Enrico temporarily stepped back from the project (most notably attained for some time by Lurrn and Marlowww). Marlow (who would later leave the project) was able to bring many contributions to the project, including upgrading the testing system, the concept of blacklists and more; Lurnn was able to overhaul, scale and grow the game modes he managed significantly and refine the network team. As the project developed, this led to the branding change of what was once coined the 'PvP Network' to 'MCTiers' and then later to PvPTiers, the project you all know and enjoy today.

Despite humble beginnings, PvPTiers has gone on to become the most universally recognised competitive PvP community in the 1.9+ combat space on Minecraft, with hundreds of thousands of players across 10+ Discord Communities. Even the phrase 'Tiers' in reference to Minecraft is coined everywhere.

PvPTiers has created a platform for players to truly enjoy 1.9+ PvP competitively, meet other players, report cheaters and malicious players, try different gamemodes and have a centralised reference point for all their PvP activity on this sandbox game. This project was made with one vision only- by the players, for the players. This is something we can all appreciate.

The project has continued growing through 2023 onwards, and as of 2025, Enrico is once again managing it at full capacity alongside his partners. The project will continue to scale and accommodate players for the foreseeable future.