Minecraft Rants

In a recent rant, I brought up and talked briefly about a bug that I found to be so game-breaking and so downright NASTY, I almost stopped playing Minecraft. I realised that the bug was SO nasty - to the point it was perhaps my worst ever playing experience - that it deserved its own rant. This one's personal. To others, this bug was a minor inconvenience. To me, it caused a very visceral, nauseating reaction. It made me feel like the game was truly broken. This bug caused such a strong reaction, I became anxious to use snapshots for a while afterwards. And this bug has had PERMANENT ramifications on the way I play. And you know the best part? It took Mojang literally YEARS to fix this bug. They kept SAYING it had been fixed... but alas, it hadn't been. It caught me out several more times. My First Encounter with Bug MC-35856 The bug, officially MC-35856 on the bug tracker, first appeared in the cursed 1.7 snapshot, 13w42b. The unlucky 13th snapshot for 1.7, this snapshot relea...

I ranted about things that bothered me from each Minecraft update, now it's time for me to do a positive counterpart to that rant. In this "rant", I will be listing my FAVOURITE aspect(s) of each update I have seen, going from 1.4 to the last complete update, 1.16. I won't be covering Caves & Cliffs as it's not complete yet. Some of these updates are REALLY great, so some of these have been some really tough choices!! 1.4 - Witches It was a tough choice between this and the Command Block. Whereas the latter has certainly been revolutionary in mapmaking, the Witch is SUCH a cool mob. Its attacks of weaponising potions whilst drinking helpful potions itself really makes the Witch almost feel like a bit of a mini-boss. It's one of the most unique mobs out there with one of the most unique combat strategies to beat. Honourable mention: Command blocks. 1.5 - Nether Quartz I'm a survival player, so nothing makes me happier than hearing of a new ore! Especial...

Let me just say right off the bat that I have absolutely loved MOST of the updates we've received to date. I can only think of a couple that I thought were genuinely lacklustre. That being said, no update is perfect. With each update I have seen in Minecraft, starting with 1.4, I have some gripes. Now, especially with the older updates, there is a discrepency between the gripes I had when the update was being developed, and how the update has aged. For the most part, I am going to try and ignore age-related gripes for older updates, and focus on what annoyed me most about the update at the time it was being developed and released. I will also not be covering Caves & Cliffs, as it's not finished yet. 1.4 - Wither Skeletons Confined to Fortresses I was so excited to hear about a new mob in the Nether. I joined the game when 1.4 was in development, and I had BARELY made it to the Nether for the first time when this update released. I'd heard a lot about the Nether, but was...

Minecraft has a lot of features. A lot of blocks. A lot of items. A lot of mobs. And therefore, a lot of surprises. There are a lot of things in Minecraft that make you go.... WHAT?! But there are some things in Minecraft that just make you go..... WHY!?! Why is this a thing?  There are some features in Minecraft that are so utterly pointless and forgotten about, you have to wonder... why was this EVER added? Today I am going to discuss some features that are so pointless you are left scratching your head wondering why on earth this is even a thing. Andesite, Diorite, and Granite are craftable.  Andesite is crafted with cobblestone and diorite. Diorite is crafted with cobblestone and nether quartz. Granite is crafted with diorite and nether quartz. You just have to look at this and think.... WHY!?! Why on EARTH are these STONE TYPES craftable??? Why would you EVER craft these when you already find way more of them than you will ever use. Putting Kelp in a furnace dries it out....

Perhaps one of the best things about Minecraft is the fact the developers listen to the collective fanbase. A feature, such as the Dripleaf plant, can be added with certain mechanics, such as the Dripleaf plant not tilting if you crouch on it. Fans wish this wasn't the case, and next week we see they have removed that feature. This is great as it feels like the game itself changes based on what the fanbase wants to see. Sure, ultimately they decide what features do and don't get added, but we can offer how we feel about certain aspects of that feature. The devs work so closely with the community there is even a dedicated feedback website where players can request new features and give feedback on old changes. What other game actually has a whole feedback forum for the fans to post their desires for the game?!? This feedback website sounds incredible for us fans........... in theory. On paper, this feedback site sounds incredible. But the reality is..... slightly less rosy. I...

2015. Minecraft's darkest year. Notch had officially resigned from Minecraft completely in late 2014 and sold Minecraft to Microsoft. In amongst all the business negotiations, the future of the game was completely uncertain, and updates ceased to be - even in snapshot form - for the better part of an entire YEAR. And Minecraft got banned in Turkey by the government because of its violence. Officially, Minecraft is rated E10+ for fantasy violence. It seems a lot of governments and content regulatory boards deem Minecraft to be a pretty violent game. But is it really? Is Minecraft really a violent game? When one first spawns into the blocky world of retro graphics, it seems like the Minecraft world would entail the opposite of violence. The only thing you'll be punching is trees, so that you can make some wood and craft it into a..... sword. Which you will then use to stab some innocent pigs to death and scavenge their meat. Then you will scoff that meat down your gullet in an ef...

This is a question I have wondered for a long time. Is the Nether REALLY more dangerous than the Overworld, or is it all an illusion created by the hell theme of the Nether? I mean, the Overworld has monsters that can one-shot you from full health and full iron armour, and there is the all-too-famous NEVER DIG DOWN rule for a reason... As I was compiling notes for this rant, I realised the more and more I thought about it, the harder this question becomes to answer. There is SO much to consider. The answer is complicated further by the fact you will never start in the Nether. By the time you get to the Nether, you will have progressed some. You will have armour and weapons and a plentiful supply of food. When you start a new game, you are in the Overworld, totally naked. No food, no armour, no weapons. The Dangers of Each... The Overworld and the Nether also have considerably different hazards. The Overworld's only substantial environmental hazards are occasional lava and accidenta...

It's crazy to think we've known of Caves & Cliffs for 7 months now. It feels like just yesterday it was October 3rd and we got that absolutely HUGE infodump of all these incredible new features we'd be getting! And it looks like Caves & Cliffs is here to stay for another 7 months, not being fully wrapped up until the end of 2021. The first "post-Caves & Cliffs" update, 1.19, is still a long way off, and will probably be 2022's big update. But what will the theme be? What could possibly follow up the Caves & Cliffs update??? Here are some ideas of what I think 1.19 could be, and what I'd like to see: The Archaeology Update For me, the most obvious theme for 1.19 is archaeology. This feature was announced to be part of Caves & Cliffs in October 2020. But when they split Caves & Cliffs into 2 updates, it was also announced the new Archaeology system was delayed beyond the scope of Caves & Cliffs altogether. This was to give them mo...

One of the most common complaints I see when some more "out-there" features are added or announced is that the feature "doesn't feel vanilla". It feels like it belongs in a mod. It feels un-Minecraft-y. It doesn't feel like it fits or gels with the rest of the game, and sticks out in some way. In this rant I am going to discuss the notion that certain features can feel "modded", why people think this, and why it's not always a bad thing for a feature to feel a bit out there. Why do Certain Features Feel Modded When First Added? One of the first features to attract this criticism was the horse, added back in 2013. Now, the horse is a special and highly unique case in that horses actually WERE  taken from a mod. The Mo' Creatures mod. It's perhaps the only time in the game's entire history a feature has been taken directly from a community-made mod, and likely the only time this will ever happen.  Before horses, almost all mobs had on...