Minecraft’s Adventure Update: The End of an Era

Foreign T has seen a lot of updates throughout the years we’re coming up on release 1.20 trails and Tails which includes a lot of features that I never imagined would actually come to the game in the past three years we’ve had the Wild update the caves and cliffs update and

The nether update they brought massive additions and overhauls to the game rethinking some features that had been unchanged for over a decade while also adding in some pretty cool new ones many of which are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before and then there’s Buzzy Bees Village and pillage update Aquatic and

Quite a few more but following this Trail all the way back leads us to what may be one of the most pivotal points in the game’s history it’s where the game Left beta and was set on the path that we see it on today an update split not only across versions but different

Phases of development for the game so let’s talk about Minecraft Beta 1.8 and release 1.0.0 the adventure update it all starts back on June 6 2011. Mojang makes an appearance at E3 to announce Minecraft Xbox 360 edition and Minecraft Pocket Edition a mobile Port of the game initially exclusive to the

Xperia Play which was like a weird Sony phone console thing now these are both huge announcements for Minecraft and are very important to its history but there was something else four days later on June 10th Notch posts a recap of E3 in which he goes over those two ports of

The game plans for modding support and also his trip to the Playboy Mansion but in this post there’s something a little more intriguing there’s a subtle reference to Minecraft Beta 1.7 which he’s referring to as the adventure update yeah so originally the adventure update was intended to be beta 1.7 the

Update was planned to flesh out the game to make combat and exploration more rewarding and also add Pistons but come June 27th Notch would post to his Tumblr again saying that Pistons would be released separately but early and the rest of the features would be pushed to

Beta 1.8 the adventure update beta 1.7 would eventually come out on June 30th so now that the adventure update is their primary focus what actually is it well knots would hit at this question on June 28th and with this post Mojang seems to have some pretty lofty goals

For what they’re doing with this update they say it’s going to completely change the way the game is played it’s also going to make exploration and combat more rewarding and earning its namesake add a bigger sense of adventure to the game more specifically the update would make Terrain more complex it would add

At least one New Mob it would add in new combat mechanics update the lighting engine and it would include other various experimental features like new farming and Villages this is a lot especially considering that two days after this post beta 1.7 would release and its feature set was basically just

Pistons and shears well at least they were the most noteworthy features it wouldn’t end up being very long before we got more details about what was being added and what was being changed over the next few months we would get tweets from Notch and Jeb that would show new

Features like new food from animals a hunger system and a mysterious dark bar above your Hotbar we’d get sneak peeks from Jeb of glass panes and a new mechanic for food stacking Notch tweeted some pictures of Ravines the new lighting engine and one of the update’s new mods these are all features that

We’re pretty accustomed to nowadays and for the most part they didn’t change too much but the next teasers they would release would highlight a very interesting phase in development for the adventure update we see a dormant Village full of houses but no one to inhabit them at least not that we can

See and you know what we may have seen one of these villages in the glass pain reveal image well come to think of it there were buildings in the Enderman reveal image too and can I just be honest these old villages are creepy man maybe it’s the fact that it’s still like

The beta World Generation maybe it’s the lack of villagers I don’t know something about the way the world’s generated in these versions was just so lonely so maybe it’s the implication of life but the ultimate lack of it but they just look so like out of place also were

Those giant versions of the game’s mushrooms just out in the open do they have some kind of relevance to The Villages well probably not these mushrooms can also be seen in another teaser that shows a really wide river but this next screenshot may have just been the most mysterious at the time it

Was a new dungeon that broke the surface of the ground exposing its innards with an entirely new block set of stone bricks and iron bars if you saw this image posted back then you had no idea what this was even now it might be a little hard to tell but this is a

Stronghold the structure that would go on to house the end of the game but nobody knew that at the time and that’s all the community was given there were some smaller teasers and images that I left out just for the sake of being brief but those that I did showcase

Would end up being some of Minecraft’s most notable features so with this information speculation ran rampant back then they didn’t get snapshots for the game that test out these features instead there were just a couple of pre-release versions that were put out shortly before beta 1.8 would fully

Release on September 14 2011 but over the pre-release and the release of beta 1.8 there was something lacking these new NPC Villages didn’t have any inhabitants but the buildings had been redesigned making them look kind of less creepy I’m sure that wasn’t the actual reason but I think they look less creepy

And the strongholds were cool but they were empty save for a few chests and a lab Library the new mob was here in the form of the Enderman but it didn’t really serve any purpose because ender pearls didn’t have a use yet and the giant mushrooms were here but at the

Time they didn’t spawn naturally like the teaser suggested they might the player had to grow them on their own there were also mine shafts with their own New Mob the cave spider which could poison you which doesn’t sound like much nowadays but the game didn’t have status

Effects before this but beta 1.8 added hunger poison and regeneration there still weren’t any potions though so you got hunger from eating rotten flesh you got poison from being hit by a cave spider and you got regeneration from eating a golden apple oh and speaking of

Hunger there’s a hunger bar now as well as a bunch of new food and also sprinting as well as another main addition to the UI The Experience bar which at the time served no real purpose because there wasn’t enchanting or anvils or anything like that and there

Were a bunch more changes this was a huge update not only did it introduce a ton of new content but also set some new standards that we still see being built on today but it was obvious that some of the update’s largest features weren’t complete Villages needed villagers the

Giant mushrooms needed a home and the stronghold needed something this wasn’t the adventure update but it was a good start to it and there it was the announcement that beta 1.8 was only half of the adventure update this is the first named update to have its content split across two

Versions which is something we’ll see repeated in the future with the caves and cliffs update these are both scenarios in which the original scope for an update expanded too far during development and since Mojang doesn’t want to go forever without releasing an update they release some of the content

Early now I wasn’t active in the Minecraft Community during the release of the adventure update I was nine right no no actually I was I was eight years old I would have been eight but I did witness the entire rollout of 1.17 and 1.18 the caves and cliffs update and personally

I don’t think the half update idea worked very well here I think the whole update was a complete idea and splitting it into those two versions really destroyed the hype for it they teased an entire overhaul update more importantly a cave update but when 1.17 came out that’s not what the common player

Received of course some people kept up with Mojang and knew this but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people didn’t I’m also sure there were some people who appreciated having some of the features sooner but in my opinion it was a misstep so again I did not see the

Development of the adventure update with my own eyes so I may not be 100 accurate on some details but I bring all this up because the release of the adventure update was handled a little differently compared to the caves and cliffs update the full scope of feature editions wasn’t announced at least not

Specifically there were ideas teased like a new mob and an end to the game but that was all even if you saw the teaser image of a stronghold in a village or an Enderman you had no idea what their purpose was or what they even did for example example nobody knew that

The end Dimension was coming so I think it would have been easier to accept that weight for the actual end of the game to arrive with the second part of the update also the fan base didn’t have to wait very long for the second part at all they did pre-releases for beta 1.9

Which was going to be the second part of the adventure update and the first one came out just a week after the release of beta 1.8 on September 22nd 2011 and it pretty much fixed everything that was missing with 1.8 over the course of a month and a half they would release six

Of these pre-release versions for beta 1.9 the first pre-release added Nether fortresses villagers and mushroom islands the second added potion ingredients and hardcore mode the third would add enchanting baby animals and actually let you brew potions the fourth out of the end as well as the Ender

Dragon the fifth changed a bunch of textures and the sixth added the dragon egg and the end crystals with that beta 1.9 had its full feature set and it was ready to release and then it never did as these pre-releases came out Notch would post on Tumblr stating that the adventure

Update had grown so large that it would bring Minecraft out of a self-declared development age and finally exit beta and that with Minecon 2011 in Las Vegas the game would officially release as just Minecraft no beta or Alpha and he ends off the post stating that the release would feature a dragon dragons

Have always been a huge deal for Minecraft we don’t think about it now but there was a time when Minecraft fans were dying for them to add a dragon and this goes way back Once Upon a Time on September 23 2010 Mojang created an official community outreach and support

Page on getsatisfaction.com users could post topics ranging from ideas bugs or questions of these users submitted ideas one created on November 26 2010 discussed dragons and obviously there’s other examples of it going so far back but I just thought this was especially interesting because Mojang marked this

Feature as a planned Edition as like 1.9 was coming out or its pre-releases were coming out so I just think it’s really interesting to see that acknowledgment for a feature that had been requested for so long to be a key point of the adventure update Mojang wasn’t pulling

Any punches they knew that it was a big deal then on November 18th you would see Minecon 2011 Minecon 2010 was a Meetup of 50 people and a small meeting on a server Minecon 2011 was a full event I think it’s crazy that there’s only a year between these two considering just

How much more Grand and the latter ended up being but they had to make it big they had to make it memorable because it was time to release the game and with that Minecraft released 1.0.0 the second half of the adventure update which would also Mark the end of Minecraft’s beta

So did it live up to the hype well let’s look back at some of the first teasers for the adventure update it was a pretty big update it definitely changed how the game was played as now there’s a distinct end goal for the player at all times exploration was made more

Rewarding with nether fortress’s Village mushroom islands strongholds and mine shafts which would end up adding the stronger sense of adventure combat was also improved on by adding more movement mechanics Critical Hits and completely overhauling bows terrain was definitely overhauled not only in generation but in structure generation way more than one

New Mob was added the adventure update as a whole added silverfish Snow Golems Enderman the inner dragon cave spiders villagers mooshrooms magma cubes and blazes the lighting got changed many experimental features were added such as hunger experience and an implied story in a game that previously had nothing

Even close to resembling that and of course more farming and NPC Villages and there were a bunch more features that that weren’t originally teased like creative and hardcore mode there were definitely still some features that needed development though villagers still needed a reason to exist outside of just inhabiting their Villages Mojang

Had thought about adding NPC quests and trading but the adventure update didn’t have any of that but honestly I don’t think many people were concerned with the features that weren’t added because the sheer amount of content that the adventure update brought as a whole is just completely staggering and it didn’t

Even take long either beta 1.7 came out on June 30th 2011. the full release of the game came out not even five months later the wait for the adventure update may have felt like years back then but in retrospect that is an incredibly quick turnaround the rate at which they

Used to add features to the game was crazy in general Minecraft entered beta not even a year before the game would officially release on December 20th 2010 and Alpha had started only six months prior on June 30th that is crazy it makes sense Looking Back Now considering

The size of the team and the game and Community but it’s still pretty wild to think about if Minecraft had continued to get content in at that rate what we’d be playing right now would be probably really weird and also probably not very good the impact this update had

On the game cannot be understated if you watched my other video on Golden Age Minecraft you’ve seen that some people are developing further upon versions of the game that came out before the adventure update for some people they see it as a bit of a misstep a branching

Path and development of the game that shifts away from aspects that Alpha and beta presented and that’s a perfectly valid opinion to have I don’t think anyone is going to really argue that beta 1.7 and release 1.0.0 exuded a lot of different appeals again I’ve gone over this more on previous videos but

Shifting from a mostly building and excavation based game to one that still has those features but also has a lot of I guess RPG elements could have drove some people away but the vast majority of people accepted these changes with an open heart and an open mind Minecraft

Gained a lot of attention in the months following the adventure update most of the people who played the console editions or Pocket Editions or even just the Bedrock editions only know the game with the features added then and most people playing bedrock and Java are playing the modern versions of the game

Just looking at the percentage of time that the game has been out it only spent around 16.8 percent of its lifetime not having the features of the adventure update so I think it’s safe to say there’s a lot of people who weren’t familiar with this point of the game’s

Development which is fine no one’s going to give them a pop quiz on it but I think in retrospect it’s really interesting to see how much it changed Minecraft around the internet and even on the comments of my previous videos there’s a lot of discussion surrounding big Minecraft updates people discuss

Whether they like the changes or not or what they would have done differently or even what they want to see next good conversations can come out of this which I think is really healthy for the game it may not seem like it sometimes but Mojang really does try and listen to

Their Community it’s just that their Community is huge I say this because I’m trying to picture something how would people react today if the adventure update just came out with Minecraft at this level of popularity and exposure what would people think I can’t answer that question but I know that some

People watching this video right now might remember how they felt when the adventure update was coming out and if anyone wants to share in the comments I would love to hear some first-hand reactions and that’s the story of Minecraft’s biggest update sure there are some updates now that add a lot of features

Maybe some even more than the adventure update but there were just so many foundational ideas introduced here that without this update the game would be entirely different today I mean it was so Monumental that Mojang decided to drop the beta part of the Minecraft name

Which is like kind of crazy we see a lot of games in like Early Access now that stay in Early Access forever and essentially Minecraft still is technically beta I guess you could say because it’s still being developed on so much but you could tell Mojang really

Wanted to Mark a point in the game’s history and I just wanted to share some of that history with you here today through a scrapped beta version and a lot of weird and wacky early Concepts the final product was something that fans at the time could have never

Imagined but it’s one that fans now wouldn’t recognize the game without before the video is over I need to say a few things um first I hope you guys liked this kind of video it’s more of a historical documentary style thing when I know a

Lot of my other videos are like kind of essays or like pieces of insight so I thought this might be just a nice change of pace second I’m still not a Minecraft Channel I love this game a lot as you can probably tell but there is so much

That I want to talk about and share I still will mostly be talking about games because I am a gamer and I haven’t done much else with my life since I’ve been like six years old so I love a lot of video games I know you guys do too and I

Know if you’re subscribing right now you probably really especially love Minecraft and I really appreciate reading everybody’s comments I never imagined at any point that I would have this kind of community interaction with anything online so seeing all the kind words and personal stories and all of it

Is just it’s very it makes me very happy you guys are awesome and I wanted to take a while to get this video out because I wanted to make sure I put myself in a place that I can make more videos more regularly which is why you

See updated branding and stuff and it’s why I have like an Instagram and a Twitter and a twitch that all share my same handle so lastly the last thing I want to say is just thank you like so much YouTube has been a little bit of a

Dream ever since I was eight years old posting Lego videos and like flywheel stunts I took a several year-long break around like 2016 probably because I thought that I couldn’t do it it didn’t seem feasible in high school I was in audio video I’ve been making videos

Pretty much all my life I’ve been making stuff on Tick Tock for the past like three or four years pretty regularly video creation is something I care very deeply about and if you had asked me back in January of this year that I would have 4 000 subscribers right now I

Would have told you that you were lying I would have said thank you for thinking I’m capable of that but you’re lying I had 475 subscribers and that had been since I created this channel in like 2012. I could not have imagined that the past month could have gone the way that

It has I’m a YouTube Partner now and that’s something that I still kind of can’t believe I’m saying because when I first got the YouTube studio app I was looking at the requirements you needed and I was just thinking man like there’s I’m not gonna be able to do that

But here we are and it is totally thanks to you guys so just again thank you all so so so so very much this is what I would love to do for the rest of my life so thank you so much for helping me get

To that point I know this has been a pretty long tangent so far so I’ll end it off with my new outro I hope you enjoy foreign