Hey HN! I know this has been done in many different ways before, but I wanted to show off this modpack installer/bundler I created that enables you to build/maintain modpacks as well as install them! This is intended to only be used with the vanilla minecraft launcher, since I find most people prefer that one. Check it out and please leave feedback (aside from why another modpack installer... and other variations of that)!

Hi there, I was really into modding and running servers back in the 2011-2013 days of Minecraft. A friend and me ran a handful of “for profit” servers in high school as a bit of a business venture.

Curious how the tooling for mods / Minecraft core server components have changed since the Microsoft acquisition?

I've found that, in general, the tooling hasn't changed much _because_ of the acquisition (for the Java edition). It's mostly been down to the developers working on such tools maturing and producing better software, not to mention larger companies like Twitch/Curse producing their own stuff as well. I can't speak much for the Bedrock edition community (Windows 10/Console/Mobile versions) since it's a very different beast, but the Java side of things is still alive and well. I'm not sure if I can comment on the popularity of larger for profit servers, but from my casual observation they seem to have taken a slight hit in terms of player numbers.