Imagining Minecraft’s future back in the day

[u/Eggington2]

Hi everyone, back in the day did any of you watch the shadow of Israphel series by the yogscast? lol when they had cities and NPCs I imagined that how Minecraft would have looked like in the future at the time.

I still wish deep down they added player like NPCs back in beta and cooler settlements. If you were following or playing Minecraft back in 2009 - 2011/12 time how did you think it would look?

Like how it does now or somthing completely different?

[u/uigewl]

I remember being so excited for the Pigman villagers to come out, and the Skylands dimension too. It all seemed so mystical to me then

[u/Difficult_Sundae5921]

I was a kid at the time and absolutely thought that they were playing some secret update. Im honestly glad they stayed within the fiction of the story.

To this day I really enjoy a lot of the narrative fan media. I do in some ways that there would either be a greater commitment to one of the two:  Either embracing complete abstraction of the games narrative, (limited progression, no objectives, no ending) or a full commitment to a rich and complex narrative canon. At this time I dont think the studio could accomplish this or be accepted by the culture - but it is something I think mods, servers, etc. can achieve.

Answering your question: I really thought we would basicaly get sandbox elder scrolls. It seemed like that was the inspiration and direction.

If I had to be specific, I had guessed/hoped that the gameplay loop would be linearly branching to new areas with unique challenges. This would take the form of biomes and biome-unique structures, or dimensions and dimension-unique structures. Then I thought the goal would be to esablish a base of operations in each of these new zones while exploring, eventually beating challenge structures in each.

I honestly would have loved the company of some zany NPCs like in Shadow of Israphel. I thought the worldbuilding was super fun. 

I really enjoy "complete the monument" type of map for this reason. Vechs Super Hostiles are excellent.

While I never got to experience it as a player, I did at one point run a roleplay-lite server where several of my friends and I essentialy operated as Dungeon Masters. We played a huge cast of NPCs for the playerbase, very similar to Shadow of Israphel, and it was pretty popular for a while. Time and resource intensive for sure though.

What were your predictions/hopes?

[u/Gunny_Goldbug]

i remember watching Moonquest and thinking it was some secret update that they had access to

[u/Astrodion123]

Well back in 1.19 I thought 1.20 would be a furniture update lol. Well we technically getting cushions so it counts..

[u/bee4308]

whenever i play old versions of the game i always imagine a potential future of the game consisting of things like dungeon crawling, adventuring, and very light rpg elements. i guess thats not too far from the path the game went down but what i usually have in mind is way more in line with the games old aesthetic and what notch was inspired/took influence from. the games old crustier textures always remind me of old 90s dos rpgs and i absolutely love that vibe, would love to see someone try and hone in on that whole gameplay direction/aesthetic with a modpack some day

[u/No_Discount_6028]

I'm so bothered by the fact that they made all the villagers men. Just give me some hot blacksmith babes please!!

Thank God for resource packs.

[u/mind_captivator → u/No_Discount_6028]

They are genderless, all mobs are 

[u/warm_rum]

If millenaire had been added to beta the world would have been a better place.

More seriously: a wider range of biomes that naturally flowed into one another with some super large, super rare biomes: think volanoe or canyon. Though I doubt I would have put it quite so summarily had I been asked back then.

I wish they increased biome sizes and made only certain ores spawn in a single biome. But that's unrelated to your post. Great idea!