Minecraft Rants

Caves & Cliffs is getting nearer to becoming part of Minecraft's history, however, some of it already IS history. Comfortably in the rearview mirror is 1.18's younger brother, 1.17. With almost 5 months of hindsight for this particular release now, I feel enough time has passed that I can talk about how some of its features have oxidised. Let's talk about a certain feature of Caves & Cliffs that has sparked much discussion, and dare I say, controversy - Copper. A Requested Feature... HEAVILY! Copper. It's such an obvious thing to add to a game called MINEcraft. Why didn't Minecraft have copper from the very start? Why did a game where mining is half its title, for almost 10 years, only have two mineable metals?? On paper, it seems like a really obvious choice for a new feature to add to the game is a third metal ingot, and due to its distinct colour and widespread uses in real life, the standout no-brainer choice is Copper. On Minecraft's suggestions sub...

As of me writing this, it is October 23rd 2021, a whole week has passed since the reveal of 1.19. I wanted to hold off for a week before writing my thoughts on the reveal of 1.19, and 1.19 itself, until the dust had settled, and the "hype" had worn off. I wanted to give my calculated thoughts, and not my knee-jerk reactions. And I wanted to come up with how to explain why I was initially very disappointed with this year's reveal. So what I will do is go through each section and explain my thoughts, then I will talk about my overall thoughts on 1.19: The Wild Update. But before then, let me just say that this theme of a more "general" environmental update for the Overworld was actually something I posted on the Minecraft Suggestions Reddit, and it gained quite a lot of traction. That was until the mods removed it for being a wishlist. An Environmental Update was actually something I'd been wanting to see for a LONG time. And although there are themes I REALLY...

MineConCraft Live Earth Festival 2021 has officially been and gone . And yes, there WILL be a rant about the reveals and my thoughts on 1.19. But for now, I want to focus on the more controversial aspect of the events - the Mob Vote. One of my very first rants on this blog was about why the 2020 mob vote was complete testicles. I pointed out how there was SO much wrong with the mob vote, even without you know who doing you know what. To summarise that rant: 1) The mobs themselves were unoriginal. They were all taken from other spin-off games. 2) They pitched two passive mobs against a hostile mob. People with different play styles are likely to vote a different style of mob. A hostile mob is likely to appeal to adventurers, whereas passive mobs are more likely to appeal to builders and people who like the scenery. Putting both in the same vote was ludicrous. 3) Almost nothing was said about the mobs we would be voting on. The videos were very vague. 4) You know who did you know what. T...

Introduction - NEW MUSIC!?! The snapshot which dropped yesterday, 21w42a, took us by surprise. It added more MUSIC to Minecraft's normal, Overworld, survival, gameplay. For the first time in over TWELVE YEARS. Certainly, this took me by surprise. Hearing a new track ("Comforting Memories", for the record) while dancing around a mountain with my one reader last night was surely an experience, to say the least. It was actually very unsettling, hearing a song that sounded Minecraft-esque, in Minecraft, but wasn't one of the 12 traditional songs I am oh so familiar with. It was a bit of a case of the uncanny valley. It's Minecraft. It's a Minecraft-sounding song. But it's not one of THE 12 minecraft songs. It was weird, it was unsettling. It was also the first time in 8 years I played with the music on. As I mentioned in an entire rant before , I stopped playing with the music on after one of Minecraft's most game-breaking bugs materialised in the snapshit...

MineCon is less than a week away, and we now know that, alas, the mob vote will still be on twitter. We know that there will be three mobs. We know that people are still salty about last year. But what we still don't know, with just 5 days to go, is the actual mobs we've been voting for. Mojang released a video on Sunday called "Introducing new mobs", but in classic clickbait fashion, no mobs were revealed. Instead they denied us that information with a big ol' PSYCHE in the form of a distraction that led to the video cutting off right when we were about to get the juicy information.  So with the mobs being revealed fuck knows when, I thought I would speculate on what I think the mobs could be this year. The Quest to Find Agnes? So first, that BS trailer that came today which was basically a man firing blanks anorgasmically DID give us a HINT of what mob A could be. LadyAgnes' mini avatar was shown falling underground - presumably down a hole into a cave. This...

For my actual speculations on what I think 1.19's theme could be, check out a dedicated post for this topic I made in May this year, my thoughts haven't really changed since:  https://minecraftrants2.blogspot.com/2021/05/speculations-for-119.html Well, well, well. We are just a week and a half away from the big epic 1.19 reveal that has us as a community on the edge of our seats. In just 11 days, all shall be revealed in what is often considered the biggest Minecraft event of the year, or even the Minecraft fan's Christmas. Last year's reveal was certainly an epic one, finally quelling literal YEARS of memes and genuine requests for Minecraft's most long-awaited Cave Update. But whoa hang on, the update revealed in 2020 wasn't just the Cave Update... it was the Caves & CLIFFS Update. And oh my god has the Cliffs part shone through in the last few months. They did SO much more than just update or add Cliffs. 1.18 has basically been the update that changed the...