Minecraft is probably the game I go back to the most. I bought it during beta and I was instantly hooked. It was a simple sandbox game with no major goals but the game quickly shifted from that premise with light survival aspects to an exploration game with RPG elements.
First, let me do a quick recap of what happened. The major changes were introduced in beta 1.8 with the addition of sprinting, hunger and experience. Later, 1.0 added potions, enchanting and a final boss. Fast forward to 1.20. What has changed? More blocks, structures and monsters were added but the core gameplay stayed the same since then. Minecraft also got some major updates to oceans, villages, Nether dimension and cave generation starting from 1.13 as these areas lacked content.
But in 1.18, Microsoft reintroduced telemetry. What’s the big deal about it? Well, this time, you can’t opt-out! You need to install a mod to disable it. Another bad move was the introduction of a chat reporting system. Added in 1.19, it can lead to the ban of your Microsoft account from all Minecraft servers! So, anyone reporting you could make you banned (even on private servers). The system also be abused using some mods to remove messages from a report and change its context. If you’re interested in the technical details, you should check out Aizistral’s videos, the author of the No Chat Reports mod which disables the reporting system and telemetry. This mod is the proof that players weren’t statisfied with these updates as it was downloaded over 3.5 millions times!
Now, why do I still play Minecraft?
I now consider modern Minecraft as an entire different game. I still have fun playing it in singleplayer with mods. Thanks to the Forge and Fabric mod loaders, Minecraft source code is easily accessible even if it’s proprietary. But I don’t really play in multiplayer anymore (I even merged my singleplayer and multiplayer saves).
I tried some beta/alpha mods like NSSS, New Frontier Craft, Legacy+, Better than Adventure!. But it lacked some quality of life features found in modern versions (and these are easier to mod anyway). So instead of trying to backport them, I decided to port my favorite features from these mods and create a modpack for MultiMC. It doesn’t contain these features yet as I just pieced together a bunch of already existing mods so I might write another article about my progress.
See you again, have a nice day!