“weren't you going on about “minecraft is boring” like 5-7 months ago”
– Nameless Rumia

Minecraft is a sandbox game by Mojang Studios that began in 2009,¹⁾ started sales in 2010,²⁾ fully released in 2011,³⁾ then it was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014.⁴⁾⁵⁾ Over time, the game would be split into the “Java Edition”⁶⁾ and the C++ “Bedrock Edition”.⁷⁾⁸⁾

In the beginning, Minecraft was a simple game with a lot of potential, growing into an online phenomenon as word spread through bulletin boards,⁹⁾ games like Runescape, or YouTube videos, and its community was invested enough to establish its immense modding scene. After dominating the early 2010s, Minecraft mostly fell out of relevance with Microsoft's acquisition in September 2014 for many reasons.

People were generally unhappy about recent updates breaking mods, development stagnating as they were juggling the Bedrock Engine,¹⁰⁾ and how it felt that Microsoft assumed the target audience was children¹¹⁾ instead of appealing to a broader audience. In other words, Minecraft was becoming uncool as people shifted their focus onto games like Fortnite or Roblox.

Then in 2019, Minecraft saw a revival for its 10th anniversary as popular YouTube personalities revisited it, allowing streamers on Twitch and YouTube to feel more comfortable with Minecraft content,¹²⁾ then casual multiplayer gaming was in demand with the pandemic lockdowns. During this time, Microsoft began urging legacy Mojang accounts to migrate from October 21, 2020¹³⁾ to September 19, 2023.¹⁴⁾

You don't have to stick the official Minecraft launcher, or bear through the bloated CurseForge launcher, as there are many open-source alternatives. If you choose to pirate with a cracked launcher,¹⁸⁾ do be mindful that server owners would have to make an exception¹⁹⁾ and every player on the server would have to install something like OfflineSkins or SkinsRestorer on their client.

Third-party launcher		Java	🔑	Notes
MultiMCGitHub		Manual	✔️	The classic launcher. As of 2022, CurseForge and FTB modpacks will require a workaround to install.20)
	PrismLauncherGitHub	Manual	✔️	An active fork of MultiMC that has more features. Most of the former PolyMC developers moved here.21)
	PollyMCGitHub	Manual	❌	Cracked version of Prism Launcher.
ATLauncherGitHub		Auto/Manual	✔️
GDLauncherGitHub		Auto/Manual	✔️

The launcher will usually let you select a “Java Runtime Environment” (JRE) required to play Minecraft, but some may force you to be aware of this decision and manually install one, rather than grant the option to automatically install OpenJDK for you and avoid further confusion on an already complicated process. Below is a handful of distributions that you may choose from, though it's specifically for Windows.

If you wish to play a modified version of Minecraft, there are two main mod loaders: Forge and Fabric. “Forge” is the older of the two and slower to develop, while “Fabric” is intentionally lightweight and recent since it came out of “Forge” spending months on a 1.13-compatible version. As a rule of thumb, “Forge” is for additional content and “Fabric” is for performance and quality-of-life.

• Minecraft used to be priced at €5 during Indev/Infdev, €10 during Alpha, €15 during Beta,²³⁾ €20 on release, $27 around May 2016,²⁴⁾ and now it costs $30. Sadly, it almost never goes on sale.
• I didn't own Minecraft growing up. I just never felt the need to have it since I had a Windows Vista, modding and booting up the game looked complex, then it became “uncool” once I had income.
  • I would eventually have a valid reason to buy the game in November 2020, though I still stand by the opinion that Terraria is much better and more reasonably priced than Minecraft.
  • For my personal reference, I have the “GUI scale” set to 2 and the “FOV Effects” set to OFF.
• During his early marketing attempts, Notch would notably visit 4chan's “Video Games” (/v/) board with the tripcode of !!pvnhARpwdMO around October 20, 2010,²⁵⁾²⁶⁾ explaining the “Woo, /v/!” splash.
  • On October 3, 2016, Notch joked about buying 4chan for a quads GET,²⁷⁾²⁸⁾ but rescinded this²⁹⁾ since he had realized the contradictions in “free speech” and deemed it too chaotic.³⁰⁾
• Minecraft and RuneScape were both Java games. The overlap really shouldn't be a huge surprise.
• It's important to remember that shields didn't exist until 2016, which may explain the abundance of old creeper memes (e.g. “S” spam, “shame if something happened”, etc.) at the time.
• “SMP” (Survival Multiplayer) is a server type, but it can be further categorized into game modes like: vanilla, semi-vanilla, modded, peaceful, anarchy, economy, factions, skyblock, roleplay, etc.
• The exact split from JRE 8 to JRE 17 for Minecraft is debatable. The official pages claims that it starts with 1.18,³¹⁾ but MultiMC says 1.17³²⁾ and a benchmarking page says 1.16.5.³³⁾
• In the Minecraft Franchise Fact Sheets, the average Minecraft player age is 27 in 2021,³⁴⁾ a gradual increase from the average Minecraft player age of 24 in 2018.
• You can find so much drama around Minecraft in general, my god.

Toggle day/night cycle chart.

• Minecraft - The official website for Minecraft.
• Minecraft Wiki - As of 2023, the wiki has become independent again, under Weird Gloop.³⁵⁾³⁶⁾
• Seed Map - A map viewer that lets you analyze Minecraft world seeds.
• CurseForge / Legacy CurseForge - The older resource for modded Minecraft content.
  • Curseforge Search - Alternative search engine for said content on CurseForge.
  • Old Curseforge Please! - Userscript that redirects you to the “legacy.curseforge.com” pages.
• Modrinth - The newer alternative resource for modded Minecraft content.
• Modpack Finder - Self-explanatory.

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