Minecraft Rants

Being a Minecraft dev is tweeting out anything.... ANYTHING.... and someone, somewhere will take that as a potential confirmation of a new feature coming to Minecraft. A dev tweets that they like rats? RATS CONFIRMED!!! A dev tweets that they're eating pizza tonight? PIZZA CONF1RMED in M1N3CRAFTE!!!! A dev tweets their laptop is broken? Well OBVIOUSLY they're adding broken laptops to Minecraft! Seriously, they could tweet ANYTHING and someone would try and take it as a confirmation of a new Minecraft feature. This is a testament to just how much hype there is in the community about new features being added to Minecraft. As Minecraft is an ever-evolving game and new features are semi-frequently added, it's no wonder people get so hyped about new features, and will look into any sign of new features that could be on the way. Not so much now, but back in the "middle" generation years, particularly around 2014-2015 when Searge was an active developer, it was not uncom...

The Wither is quite possibly the worst side-quest in Minecraft. All of it. The Problems (There are a LOT) Let's start with the actual boss fight itself. The Wither is a really awesome-looking skeleton-type mob of ultimate destruction. That's where the positives end for this whole quest. In order for a player to fight the Wither, they have to summon it themself. Once the Wither is spawned, it... flies around and fires an endless barrage of explosive skulls at you that inflict you with the Wither effect. Endlessly. There is no cool-down, no other attack.... just endless bullet spam. Your options are basically to hide and shoot it with arrows until the thing dies. Except after you've taken it down half its health, it loses the ability to take projectile hits. In some contexts, this would be a really good thing. But in the case of a boss that just flies around shooting endless projectiles at you without cooldown, it's TERRIBLE. It is PURELY a gear-check, and just testing wh...

Those four words. In that exact order. It's what absolutely no Minecraft fan ever wants to read. For those who follow the snapshot cycle and count down the days till Wednesday, having all their hopes and dreams dashed with those four words is akin to the average person in 2021 reading "new strain of covid". Today, Wednesday March 24th 2021, our Twitter feeds have once again been graced with the Four Words of Doom TM . We all had it marked in our painfully empty calendars - "21w12a release date today!" It's the only thing in the nuclear covid winter we have to look forward to, and yet for precisely the 9th time since 1.17 snapshots begun, Christmas has been cancelled. With nothing to live for and a whole 7 days until the next snapshot being totally unbearable, the apocalypse is upon us and we all start a riot against the sorry soul who has to actually put the FWoD to the world. I'm Sorry But You Kinda Brought This on Yourself. I get it. Yes it's frust...

This "rant" was originally posted on my Reddit. Introduction Lately, I have been playing a lot of survival Minecraft, and one thing I have noticed is how broken enchanting is. How poorly balanced and outdated and luck-based it is. Enchanting can turn the pretty good diamond sword into an absolute god-slayer that literally never breaks. The same can be said for just about every tool in the game. Enchanting is extremely overpowered while at the same time is of very little skill. Enchanting is one of those mechanics that has had such a lack of updates since its inception. There have only been a handful of changes in fact, outside of adding new enchantments. The reduction of 50 levels to 30, anvils and the lapis requirement are the only three changes I can think of. Some Enchantments are now Treasure Enchantments Some enchantments you can get from the enchanting table are WAY too powerful. Others are novelty perks which don't really make a lot of sense and would be better as ...

In this long and extensive post, I will be ranking every single mob in Minecraft from worst to best. All 69 of the current roster. Minecraft's mobs have come a long way, even since I started playing in 2012. There were only about 25 mobs then. I will be taking a few factors into account when ranking these mobs. Unique/interesting mechanics, originality, design, "fun factor", and usefulness will all decide where I rank these mobs. I do not count baby mobs, different skins, or certain states such as charged creepers as separate mobs. "Close cousins" such as Zombies and Husks will be considered separate if I consider them distinct enough. Llamas and Trader Llamas I am not counting as separate as they are too similar. I am also not counting compound mobs such as Spider Jockeys or Chicken Jockeys. This list will include bosses, golems, and 1.17 mobs that have been added to Java or Bedrock as of March 12th 2021. So without further ado... 69 - Endermite This is the wor...

Themed updates. Are they helping or hurting Minecraft at this point? Is it time for Mojang to give us a general update or another "bits and pieces" update? With a single exception, every update since 1.4 has had a central theme. The majority of features in the update have, in some way, related to the central theme. A few updates have had multiple, or "hidden" themes. For example, 1.9's "Combat Update" also featured a large revamp of the End, and 1.10 focused on both "hot" and "cold" features. 1.12 was a huge accessibility update masquerading as the colour update. And of course, 1.13 was literally two updates that were merged into one. But really, with the exception of 1.8, every update has had the majority of the features centre around its main theme. But is it time to retire the themed updates? Some Aspects of the Game Are Left Lacking in Updates For a LONG Time! This may be a rant for another time, but as the game is soon to enter...

Every year since 2017, the "MineCon" event of the year has included a very special event. A chance for the fans to influence what content gets included in the game. This comes each year in the form of a mob to be added, or a biome to receive new content. For die-hard Minecraft fans who follow the updates religiously, this must be like CHRISTMAS. On paper, this sounds like a really awesome and wholesome event for Mojang to hold each year.  On paper, the Phantom sounded like a really cool idea. As the above comment suggests, the reality of these annual votes has been a little less rosy than imagined. "This is why we can't have nice things" really ensues here when you look at some of the toxicity, controversy and backlash these votes have caused. To the point HelenAngel herself is contemplating scrapping these votes outright. I want to discuss here: are these votes a good idea? Is it their execution? Or is the Minecraft fandom simply as bad at handling democracy as...