In late 2010 and early 2011, I began to get into this game called "Minecraft". I had one of the best gaming experiences ever finding out all the things to do in the game and even moderating a server during the summer of 2011. I was pretty much addicted to it.

Then Beta 1.8 came out.

It's not that I don't like the game anymore, but what 1.8 added was mostly stuff that didn't interest me much. (Who wants to go to the end, I mean really?) But what the update took away was devastating. If you're a long-time Minecrafter, you might already know what I'm talking about.

The terrain.

Apparently someone thought it would be a good idea to consolidate practically all the elevation deviations into a single biome (extreme hills). Besides the once-you've-seen-one-you've-seen-them-all ravines, the rest of the Minecraft world was ironed out into boringness.

And the oceans. Don't even get me started on the oceans. The things were so huge that I could fly over them for 10 minutes straight on creative mode and not reach a mainland. (That's not an exaggeration. I timed myself.)

So... That, and the fact that I lost my very first single player world that I had played on every day for months (when my old computer bit the dust), caused me to drift away from the game.

Since then, I've been semi-following the updates. Horses look interesting, but a lot of the changes are mainly for map-makers, and I have never had much interest in playing custom maps.

So... Why might I start playing Minecraft again? There is a bit of 1.7 news floating about.

I'll list the main points here:

Acknowledged problems:

• Too large oceans
  
• Too uneven/random biome placement
  
• Not enough variation
  

Steps taken:

• Tweaks to add more islands and checks to avoid huge oceans
  
• Biomes have been put into four main categories: snow-covered, cold, medium, and dry/warm. Biomes will avoid getting placed next to a biome that is too different to itself (sometimes this still happens, but it’s very rare now and not all over the place)
  
• We’ve added a whole bunch of new biomes…
  
• … and most biomes have uncommon/rare variations that you may run into
  
• We’ve also added a bunch of new terrain features, such as new flowers and trees
  

This is, to say the least, very exciting. On the one hand, I want to slap Mojang in the face for taking 2 years to finally fix these problems. On the other, maybe when 1.7 rolls around it will be another whole new playing experience.

I hope for the best.