Minecraft: Get Creative

Minecraft allows users to create their own world and play with friends, while providing frequent updates to the system.

Build your own worlds with Minecraft.

minecraft
Photo by Scott Kennedy for The Montclair Dispatch.

Minecraft is a game that was started seven years ago by Notch, then known as Markus Alexej Persson, who had an idea to create a game. Two years later, an online version of the game was released on Nov. 18, 2011, and it is still very active to this day.

On March 23 of this year, it has reached 23 million in sales. The Pocket Edition, which is the release for the smart-phone, reached 30 million sales in 2015, and that version is still growing. With the hassle of keeping Minecraft supplied with updates, Notch finally sold his game and Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. It isn’t surprising that such an immersive game has become so popular, but it isn’t just its blocky world and its landscape-altering abilities that make it such a great production; it is that you can do so many different things with it. And yes, there may be some bugs, glitches and other issues, but Mojang is always keeping it up to date. They also add lots of new stuff every major update.

There are many things to enjoy in this wonderful sandbox/survival game in its 3D blocky world. First of all, the simplicity of its block design is wonderful. While some people would complain that it has terrible graphics, it was supposed to be laid out with the blocky style textures. Another thing is its gameplay, where it can be both a game where you build and also be a game where you survive.

With the player being able to change modes between “survival” and “creative,” they can choose the style of play that suites them. If you are the type of person who doesn’t enjoy solo games, Minecraft also has its multiplayer servers that can keep you hanging around with your friends and playing some games.

Two popular Minecraft servers are Mineplex and Hypixel, with them having multiple lobbies in order to keep up with the large amounts of players they get. And, you can do things on servers that you couldn’t play in the basic survival and creative mode. Games such as Spleef, where the objective is to make people fall by digging blocks under them, and Survival Games (also called SG), where you can simulate a “Hunger Games” style match with PvP (Player versus Player) and chests with loot.

With the relatively recent 1.9 Combat Update that came out on Feb. 29, PvP is different than it was before, but fans haven’t reacted in a positive way. Now, instead of just being able to spam click the attack key, you have to wait for the weapon to recharge its power, and then you can attack at full power again. You could also just spam click the attack key in the new update as well, but you won’t get much damage out of it. While most players are upset about this update, I actually enjoy it because it provides more of a challenge when dueling another player or entity with you having to time your strikes. Also, axes do more damage in this update.

However, the update that made Minecraft a lot more expansive than before had to be the 1.7 and 1.8 updates. With the 1.7 update, 12 new biomes appeared, along with new fish, new flowers, stained glass and clay, two new trees, a water breathing potion, Twitch streaming and the funny but deadly chicken jockey. A chicken jockey is a baby zombie that is riding a chicken.

What the 1.7 update mostly did was change the way the world looked, especially with biomes. In 1.8, there were 32 completely new blocks added, along with an underwater dungeon and three new mobs, including a bunny. This update added an expansion of blocks that can be placed in order to make more beautiful structures that can go with the 12 new biomes.

With all the good parts to the game, what could possibly be bad? There are just a few things that could be changed a little bit, such as the damage timer from the new 1.9 update. Instead of just saying “1.6 Attack Speed” as for a sword, you could also put “0.6 Second Attack Speed” to make it easier to see which one is better and it might make it easier to time your attacks with you knowing how long it takes until the attack recharges. Along with that, the auto-jump button shouldn’t be automatically activated when a person creates a new Minecraft account for it being a little unnatural for the character to jump automatically instead of on-command, and it also makes the player jump at times when they don’t want to.

There are always new things being added and fixed whenever an update for Minecraft comes out, as the very recent “Frostburn” update came out on June 8, adding mobs and blocks to both the winter biomes and the nether biomes, along with the Husk to the desert. However, there are some things to be added to the game that would make it better, such as a levitation potion that could be crafted with a brewing stand, which is an item used to create potions. This could be achieved by adding a drop to the Shulker mob that was added to the 1.9 update, such as a “levitation particle” like the ones that trail behind the projectiles they fire. This along with an awkward potion could be used to create a levitation potion. There could also be an “end bullet” of some sort that is also dropped by the Shulker as that could be also used to fire at mobs. And to make travel from the end just easier in case any gear is forgotten before the fight with the ender dragon, there could be a portal added near to where the player spawns.

I have had many good experiences with this game. Just because I have a total of about 2,190 hours over the last two years doesn’t mean I’m an addict. Minecraft is such a great game where you can do so much. When you feel like it, you can play survival and try to gear up to fight the Ender Dragon, which is the final boss. Once you get tired of that, you can freely build in creative mode. Once you can do that, you can play spleef, and it just goes on and on with what you can do. This is why I love the game, and that is also why you should start getting into it if you haven’t yet. It costs just $26.95 to get the game and make an account, and it isn’t a membership. Once you get the game you have it forever, and it is really worth it.

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