The HIDDEN Theme Of 1.12 That Everyone Forgot

As time has moved on, it's safe to say 2017's sole update, 1.12, has not aged well at all. People who were around to see this update - what actually do you remember about it? Coloured beds? Concrete? Glazed terracotta? If you thought about it long enough you may or may not have remembered Minecraft has Parrots - which were added in 1.12.

You may love the parrots, you may hate them, but probably you won't remember they existed. Speaking to people on Discord, one thing is clear: almost nobody can remember 1.12 that well. We all remember 1.11 added Illagers, Woodland Mansions, Shulker Boxes and Totems - even if that update wasn't the best received, we still remember its features. But 1.12? It added some colourful blocks and that's about it... right?

Looking back, I've come to realise something about the most bland, forgettable and uninspired update of Minecraft: it was never really the so-called "World of Colour" update to begin with. That theme was merely a bit of a distraction - like the bees - to a less content-driven but very necessary update. I've come to see now that 1.12's primary focus was accessibility, and the colour stuff was really its secondary theme.

In a world where everyone deserves a fair shot at life, and Mojang literally refusing to add sharks because they're worried about animal rights, it's no surprise Mojang would keep with the times and make Minecraft fair for all. The original game definitely was very inaccessible to a lot of people - until 1.9 you couldn't even enable subtitles!

Minecraft will never have an outright tutorial stage, as this would go against the free nature of the game. But before this update, every single crafting and smelting recipe had to be memorised. Nobody ever really questioned it, as it had always been a part of the Minecraft experience. In hindsight it's amazing that for EIGHT YEARS there was absolutely NOTHING in-game that told you how to craft anything, and you had to consult external pages and MEMORISE all the recipes.

Adding a recipe book FINALLY gave the game some sort of internal crafting guide - and this was HUGE. People who couldn't access a crafting guide (i.e. the internet) or had really bad memories were now able to enjoy the game a lot more. And in my experience, it opened up certain facets of gameplay. For a long time, I never bothered making pistons or droppers or many redstone components, because they generally had quite complex crafting recipes and I couldn't ever remember them and was often too lazy to look them up. Having the crafting recipe laid out in front of me definitely made me a lot more willing to build these redstone components.

But crafting recipes given in-game wasn't the only way accessibility for noobs was improved. Seriously, Minecraft used to be a REALLY unfriendly game for noobs!

Achievements were replaced with Advancements, which basically gave players a sense of working towards goals. Recipes would get unlocked too, when certain criteria were met. This gave early-game players a sense of progression. Does this go against the totally free nature of Minecraft as a sandbox game? Maybe a little, but it does make that first play session a bit less overwhelming. Especially as Minecraft has continued to grow and grow since the days where it was very simple and had very few mechanics.

With Minecraft getting much more complicated and larger, with so many more blocks, systems and crafting recipes, this change was absolutely necessary, if not already several years too late.

Not only did 1.12 add subtle guides to help the new player out, the update also added a chat narrator for those with visual impairments. Subtitles had been added a couple of years before, so it absolutely made sense for a narrator too.

So all in all, 1.12 was on the surface a builder's update adding several new coloured blocks, but ultimately, this update made the game a little friendlier for the newcomers.

Did all these early-game hints and tutorials take away from the experience of being a noob that we all remembered and loved from the early 2010s? This question is impossible to truly answer, as an individual can only experience being a noob once - either before 1.12, or after. We can never have experienced both sides of the fence. And do remember the game was a lot simpler in the early 2010s, too.

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