Minecraft Is Finished

[The Wooster]

Minecraft Is Finished

"Finished" in the technical sense of the word; the indie world-building hit Minecraft has left beta and gone gold.

Thus tweeted [https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/136078211284090881] Minecraft creator and Mojang AB founder Notch early this morning. Minecraft 1.0 [http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Minecraft_1.0], or simply Minecraft, will be available to download on November the 18th. Though this technically means the game is ready for release, it doesn't mean it's completely done, as Notch has promised Mojang will continue adding features for "a long time after the full release."

The end of the beta does Minecraft will now be sold for full price. If you want that 25% discount for purchasing the game during its extended beta, you've only got a couple of days left to come up with the ducats.

While Notch has called the 1.0 release a "huge milestone," he's also voiced worries that now the game is finished, it's going to attract professional game reviewers and their pesky opinions. Notch doesn't seem to have much faith in the great video-game-journalism machine.

As he said on his blog [http://notch.tumblr.com/], last week:

"It does feel like the game has already proven itself. Lots of people play the game, and we receive a lot of friendly and positive emails from players. We've won several amazing awards, so several people in the industry seems to enjoy what we've done.

Now it's just the press left.

It's a bit weird, but gaming scores have become so big and bloated, I can't help but feel like I would be disappointed with a score that would be a great score for something like a movie or a music album. And even if the score means relatively little compared to the players and the awards, it's a distinct number people will use to compare the game to other games."

While I don't think any journalist worth their salt will find much fault with Minecraft, it'll be interesting to see how the game fares now that "it's a beta" is no longer a blanket excuse for its various quirks and/or bugs.


Permalink

 

[TimeLord]

To me this really doesn't mean anything. Features will still be added and updates made. So no real difference from the current situation then.

 

[Scarecrow]

Well...that's pretty good I guess. I was never much a fan, but good on him for making something different.

 

[JochemDude]

It will get a 8/10 and the internet will explode.

 

[JoJo]

Honestly Notch should just ignore whatever score they give it, I only pay attention to review scores if they are really high or really low, otherwise there's little correlation between whether I'll like a game and what the score is.

 

[Sixcess]

At this point it seems almost redundant to review Minecraft, given that it's had over a year of phenomenal success in which to build a fanatical fanbase, and nothing any reviewer says will be of any consequence to that.

On the plus side it does mean that this year we can legitimately vote for Minecraft in all the inevitable GOTY polls.

Yep. Minecraft GOTY 2011 (take that, Skyrim fans!)

 

[Atmos Duality]

While I don't think any journalist worth their salt will find much fault with Minecraft, it'll be interesting to see how the game fares now that "it's a beta" is no longer a blanket excuse for its various quirks and/or bugs.

Well...to keep this brief (since I have to go):
A few examples of AAA games with notable glitches/bugs:

-Fallout: New Vegas (do I really need to explain the details?)
-Call of Duty 4.3: Black Ops (for the PS3 and PC users. Black Ops became multiplayer Blackout)
-Rage (in which a full HALF OF THE PC MARKET couldn't play the game at all, on launch)

I'm sure there are others; and to be fair, most of these are mostly issues that stem from porting them between systems. Yet, that hasn't stopped them from making boatloads of cash anyway.

"Launch now: Patch (and apologize) Later" has just become more accepted as time has gone on, it seems.

 

[Mischa87]

Heh, not sure if any of you ever played Wurm online (A MMORPG Notch co-founded) But if Minecraft's anything like that, as soon as it's gone gold, he'll get lazy, stop/slow updates have an argument with one of the other staff members, and then go and make a simpler version of the same game (Minecraft really is a simpler version of Wurm online, anyone who's played both can really see it)

So yeah, I'm looking forward to a Wurm/Minecraft Roguelike next year!

*Sets flameshield for rabid-fan-mode*

 

[omicron1]

I could see review scores being substantially lower than they would have if, say, Minecraft had launched from relative obscurity.

Why?
'Cause it's a known quantity now. A year and a half ago, there was nothing else like it out there. Now, it has been playable and played for a long time, probably even by the potential reviewers, and the novelty has worn off. How do you grade it? By its technical competency? Its gameplay? Your memories of its sense of wonder? Do you get a neophyte to review it, in order to capture that initial splendor?

When a truly original or innovative game comes out, its novelty tends to have a bolstering impact on review scores. See also: Ocarina of Time. I fear that Minecraft's long pre-release cycle may have irrevocably harmed it here; I only hope that reviewers the world over will do their best to do it justice not just as the game it is, but as the innovation it represented.

 

[The Random One]

Finally I can give it 4 out of 10 blocks of dirt.

 

[xPixelatedx]

If 'The End' is really the end of the game, and the Enderdragon really is the last boss; then this will be my greatest disappointment in gaming ever. It also shows a great deal of laziness that everything got so bland towards the end. In a game that started out so imaginatively, I don't want 'a wasteland full of nothing' to be the final destination. This game needs more mobs; what happened to the underwater ones they keep hinting at? And when they mentioned bosses, they said BOSSES, not just a single boss at the end of the game.

At this point it seems like they are just trying to finish it so they can sweep it under the rug and get back to work on their dozen+ new projects they seem much more enthusiastic about. I also like how regular people can make new worlds with wider selections of mobs and items in 1/4th the time it takes the actual minecraft creators. Whats worse, The Aether is much more impressive then The End. I really don't know how this game could have ended on such a whimper.

What someone made after Notch said there would be a sky land

What we actually ended up getting from Mojang

 

[redisforever]

Now, the Lego Stalker comparison is more evident, because of all the bugs and glitches, but, just like Stalker, the fun is learning to deal with all the bugs. Actually, I must be really lucky. I never had either game crash or majorly glitch out (Although saving stopped working in Stalker on my old PC, but that was due to the fan patch).

 

[The Great JT]

Minecraft...complete?! That's not true!! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Now I wonder what Yahtzee will say about this then.

Also will 1.0 be the same as 1.9 pre release but without the bugs?

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Minecraft...complete?! That's not true!! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!

Search your feelings, you know it to be true!

OT: Yay! Now continually make it more awesome like TF2 XD

Spoiler

 

[Steve the Pocket]

To me this really doesn't mean anything. Features will still be added and updates made. So no real difference from the current situation then.

Except, as far as we know, those new features will no longer be free unless you bought the game way back when it was in alpha. So basically this is just an arbitrary cutoff period for the lower price and free updates.

Personally, I have been kind of disappointed in the rather abrupt transition from Minecraft-as-a-creativity-toy-that-happens-to-contain-monsters to Minecraft-as-a-"real"-game-with-RPG-elements-and-boss-fights-and-an-"end". It all happened so suddenly that I can't help but suspect that Notch just suddenly changed his mind about what he wanted the game to be like, possibly after discovering Terraria, and rushed a major change to the arbitrary deadline he'd already set for himself.

I'm getting the feeling that the tradeoff for buying the game when it was cheaper is getting hooked on a game that's very different from the finished product and which I can never go back to now, unless someone who feels similarly and has more Java savvy than me decides to make a mod that basically adds the old "mode" back in as an option (with all the bug fixes and new block types still in place, of course).

 

[VladG]

I wonder if the game will have more structure, like Terraria, because as it is now, I play it for a few hours once or twice a month and then get bored of it real fast.