Minecraft since 2015, before I knew what an IP was.

As a kid, I watched a lot of YouTube. Minecraft videos from CrisDevilGamer, YthienTV and other Vietnamese Minecraft PE creators were what pulled me into the blocky world. Many of them barely make Minecraft now, or have moved somewhere else entirely, but back then each video felt like a doorway.

I watched until I was hooked. Then, like many kids at the time, I found a pirated copy of Minecraft because I did not have money for the official game. Copyright felt like something from the adult world. The closer thing was a phone, an APK file and the feeling of entering a world where I could mine, build, break things, fall to my death and still laugh about it.

Playing online before I understood IP addresses

When I first installed Minecraft, I barely understood servers. I did not know what an IP was, what a port was, how connecting worked, or where people found server addresses. My first online sessions did not come from a proper server list. They came through apps like MCPE Master, Multiplayer Master, Master for Minecraft Launcher and Omlet Arcade.

Those apps let players join one another’s worlds, or open small worlds for a few people to enter. Looking back, it was simple, messy and probably not very stable. But for a kid at the time, having another player run around in the same world already felt huge.

Some worlds and small servers back then ran on command blocks. There were prison servers, fishing servers, homemade minigames and systems that now look rough, but they were fun. I learned commands and command blocks, then tried hosting tiny servers through those apps. Not because I knew I was learning anything technical. I only wanted a place that behaved the way I imagined.

Old names from server lists

Later I learned about servers that used IP and port, then found Minecraft PE server list pages. That was how I reached FunCraft, SurvivalCraft, MineFRK, FCA, LOR and a few other names tied to the Minecraft 1.1 period. Not many people probably remember or even know those servers now, but for me they hold an entire piece of childhood.

On a few small servers, I moved through roles like Builder, Helper, Police, Admin and OP. The titles sound bigger than the work really was. It was mostly building a few things, watching chat, reminding players, handling small issues and sometimes just being online so the server did not feel empty.

Those tiny roles made me notice that a server was not only a map. It had rules, ranks, permissions, commands, plugins, happy players and people trying to break things. I did not understand the technical layer yet, but I started to see that there was more behind the screen than I thought.

Then I wanted my own server

After enough of those small experiences, I started wanting my own server. It was not fancy. I once hosted a server on my mother’s Samsung phone and left it running like a tiny server at home. It is funny now, but it felt serious then. If someone could join my server, my whole day was made.

YouTube was full of videos titled like “how to create a Minecraft PE server with PocketMine”. I watched, followed along, then met the legendary wall called port forwarding. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. Sometimes the server started but nobody else could join. Sometimes fixing one thing broke two more. A small school, paid for with time and stubbornness.

PocketMine-MP, Genisys Pro, plugin packs from the internet, config files, permissions, economy, shops, ranks, worlds and backups entered my vocabulary slowly. At first, I only downloaded things and followed instructions. Later, I learned to read files, translate English text into Vietnamese, find error lines, change settings and understand that every feature on a server had been written by someone.

A server felt like a small home

The Minecraft PE era in Vietnam was genuinely fun. YouTubers reviewed servers, taught people how to install plugins and showed how to forward ports. Each video brought more players and more motivation for small server owners. Survival, Skyblock, Prison, fishing, shops, ranks, islands and plots became a shared language.

Some nights were not about anything big. Just standing in the server, talking, changing cobble sell prices, finding out why a rank could not use a command, adjusting spawn, or backing up a world before trying a new plugin. A server felt like a small home. Not perfect, but alive, with people coming in, chat moving and something worth taking care of.

That taught me very practical habits. Back up before editing. Test before updating. Red console errors do not disappear if I pretend not to see them. And “it should be fine” is usually the first sentence of a slightly long night.

Then things became harder

Minecraft Bedrock changed a lot later. Version 1.2 brought Xbox Live, older devices started struggling, the protocol kept changing and servers had to chase the game. Players updated first, servers caught up later. Some core plugins for economy, permissions and game modes stayed broken longer than anyone wanted.

The darker side became clearer too. A small server hit by DDoS was almost helpless. Many servers appeared during summer or Tết, sold ranks and items, then closed quickly. Skyblock became over-copied. Downloaded plugin packs sometimes still had the old server name inside. Players slowly felt that every place looked the same.

Technically, the move from PM3 to PM4 was a major break. APIs changed, old plugins broke and server owners who could not code had a hard time continuing. The story moved from “keep tweaking the config” to “you need to understand code”. For a community of middle school and high school students, that was not a small wall.

The destination moved beyond the game

Looking back, Minecraft gave me more than a game. It gave me reasons to learn things that sounded dry at first. IP addresses, ports, files, permissions, backups, logs, DDoS, plugins, PHP, GitHub and open source. I did not learn because a textbook was on the table. I learned because the server would not run, because players asked questions, because one small bug could ruin the evening.

By ninth grade, I already knew I would study Information Technology. Not because someone told me it was a bright career. The answer had been sitting there for years, inside servers, plugin edits and the very satisfying moment when an error disappeared and the server finally ran again.

So when PocketMine-MP appears often on this website, it is not only the name of a software project. It is a trace of a path. I keep the more technical explanation in What is PocketMine-MP?. This post keeps the beginning, before I knew what an IP was and still wanted to play online somehow.

- NhanAZ - 01.07.2026