JetraI myself do like the current terrain generation, but I much prefer Alpha which I'll get into later. For now, just note that I have been here a long, long time and seen many many things.

~ A Decade of Thought

JetraPlaying my Alpha world.

There's a reason to that, but TL;DR is "Play version I started because things then play newer cause creative." If you want to know more, I'll reply in a comment.

~ A Decade of Thought

In my last blog, I made passing mentions of how I have been playing on my Alpha World for the last few months instead of the current version. Once in a while, I will load it up to try out the new content, but for the most part it does not interest me as well as waiting until I "complete" the version I started on - Alpha 1.2.4, November of 2010.

While there's no way to "beat" a game that has no end, I had set some rules for myself not only to set a goal, but also in the hopes of breaking some bad Gaming habits which still persist to this day including my stubborn Perfectionist. The rules are as follows:

- Play on the Hardest difficulty
- Try to not reset on death or if something bad happens (can't tell you how many times I deleted a world simply because a creeper exploded or I lost a diamond or two)
- Add to above, use the best available equipment I can craft (diamond exception)
- Build something regardless of whether it's good or bad. Fill my world with random structures.
- Explore. The game is infinite, treat it as such.
- Find and / or craft one of every block and item. Yes, that even means wasting diamonds on a hoe.
- Display previous nicely in a museum of some kind.

After some grudging and pains, finally broke against the second point that was the main purpose of these rules. Through it, I've gotten better, learned to die less, and even had some interesting stories to tell through my time, one being an event that happened recently where I managed to survive on a heart, get hit by a spider to half a heart, and almost lost the mossy cobble and ore I gathered from my trip a few hundred blocks out in search for a Golden Apple.

The point of today's Blog is not to make a claim that Alpha is better and the new versions are terrible, more of one person's view of what they enjoy about playing something that is subjectively older and "worse." I think it's time to end a fight that still comes up every now and again because "It's not as great as it was before."

While Nostalgia may play some part of this, recent experience from playing my World is going to be the basis of my arguments so the argument of "Looking through rose-tinted" glasses will not hold much water especially as I start do break down some of the more common problems of gaming today. However, I am not immune to its effect and will try to make a case both good and bad in the hopes of balancing it out.

Perhaps someone at Mojang will look at this and think, "They bring up some good points, let's bring it for 1.15" ...Let me dream.

Now that we got all that out of the way, let's get right into it as we approach 600 words before even starting the actual article.

Simplicity in Design

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One of the biggest strengths of original Minecraft was...mining and crafting. While there is some fond memories of surviving your first night, I'm sure that many would could better recall times they built giant stairways to Heaven, houses of gold and diamond, and tiny villages of wood and stone. While they might not have been extraordinary as something like this Japanese Village by BlackCloverRP still they were interesting enough with how people managed some cool structures with limited resources. An example is this impressive creation by Halkun.

Today, you have things like sandstone slabs, eight different stones, 16 wools and even terracotta blocks. Back in Alpha, you have stone, plank, oak logs that could only faced vertically, and white wool. Though in classic version that was available on the minecraft.net website had I believe 8 or 10 colors? The palette that you see now is the closest to the original that was revealed there.

Back to the point, Minecraft was just dig a hole, find some diamonds, and that's about it. Not much in terms of replayability unless you made it yourself. And that is what people did; they came up with game modes such as Spleef, parkour, adventure maps, and capture the wool. Compare it to 1.14, there's really not much going for it and thus people did not hold interest for long unless playing on a server or with friends or, in some YouTuber cases, they made interesting series like getting to the Far Lands or digging out an entire chunk.

From above, you could see one of my goals was to build random stuff whether it looked good or not. The reason behind that is the fact I am not a creative person, like at all. Only recently I started picking up art such as painting and drawing so my creations weren't a bunch of potatoes. You would assume that having less to work with would make it harder to be creative, but in fact that is the challenge. What can I come up with personally and is there a way I can change it? There is no paint by the lines here as I figure out what looked good to me, where could I shove in some stone, add in glass, etc.

Best I have come up with so far is the house I built for myself basing it off many other similar designs alongside my own touches (Yes, clouds are glitchy, that's due to a graphics issue that cannot really be fixed)




Am I happy with it? Not really, but that was the point. When I get the time or motivation, I'll probably make something better since I have several stacks of bricks, glass, and even obsidian.

Challenge of being Handicapped

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Regenerating health, beds, potions of healing, enchanted diamond armor, all of these things ensure that you practically never die. When the full release of the game hit, I already knew that combat was going to be nearly pointless and it was. While I was not an avid PvPer, at least I can claim how dull it is and how little skill is involved when both parties are fully decked out.

"Oh, but the first to lose armor and can't get to god apple fast enough..." blah blah blah, it's a war of attrition of the highest caliber that would put even Starcraft pros to sleep. That's just my opinion so take it as you will.

Anyway, in Alpha you have to survive the night, monsters spawn based off light level and usually in ridiculous numbers. To add to that are mechanics including food doesn't stack, armor durability is busted (Diamond has the same value as Leather), and you only have bread, pig meat, and fish to restore your health. Granted the AI was pretty stupid, they still do quite a bit of damage, having almost died myself recently to about 2 or 3 skeleton arrows. You only have one spawn point and if you die far away, your stuff is pretty much good as gone making it feel that much more painful.

There were quite a few limited resources. Clay, coal, iron, mushrooms, and even flowers did not regenerate. What was there was pretty much what you had, the only infinite ones being water, stone / cobblestone (generator), and trees / saplings. That is not even accounting for mobs which, in that version, didn't have spawn rates tied to chunks which meant they'd spawn in your farms, destroying crops and appearing in lit up caves making it somewhat annoying.




Creepers, spiders, and skeletons spawn in roughly the same numbers, only in almost complete darkness. Night was terrifying especially if you didn't light anything up. There was no "Bright" setting, all you had was Moody and that was it. Not that it was really difficult, the lack of quality of life additions made it frustrating at times, you could just sit in a hole in the ground and call it a day, there wasn't anything pushing you like Hunger does. Balance was also pretty straightforward, a wood sword took about 5 hits to kill a Creeper while Diamond only takes 2 and one shot a pig or cow.

Over the Next Hill

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Here is where I will explain my most favorite part of Alpha which kept me playing for longer than usual. The terrain of Alpha is interesting and unique, at least I believe so. One of the things I adore in video games is what I like to call Verticality, a term that I've coined as anything that has ups and downs. This might be confusing because you would think that Extreme Hill biomes would be up my alley, but there's a bit more to it than "big mountains and deep valleys."

Just because a game has highs and lows does not mean it has verticality. It has to use it in such a way that makes you curious to climb those hills or fall down into the depths, it's that sense of wonderment of what could be hidden that defines verticality. A great example of this is by showing my favorite level from a game I loved playing: Banjo-Kazooie.

There are many areas I loved, but Tick Tock Wood remains the top of my list because it is exactly the thing I enjoy most.



Minecraft worlds always had that charm of randomness that always had you wonder what was over there. Sure, the only things to see were either forests, beaches, and deserts, maybe get lucky and find a surface dungeon, it pales compared to the current version and even modded that have so many different biomes like Mesas and Ice Spikes. However, there is a "predictability" to them that make it somewhat boring and uninteresting with annoyances that are oceans and jungles, that make exploration dull. There's a little bit of, and I'm saying this lightly, realism that doesn't really make you want to go over the next hill and rather dread it cause you fear seeing more roofed forests blocking the way to some plains where you can build in peace.






Not to claim it was perfect, in fact it was absolutely horrendous at times, this is the kind of stuff I personally like to see when I'm exploring. Making a house requires a lot of terraforming, snow would bleed into deserts, and there were floating islands everywhere and that's not even mentioning the old save system that caused World Holes everywhere, but I think that was a result of the bad client.

Plus...trees didn't decay. That's fun. Then you try to burn it and it has a ridiculous tick speed and in six seconds your computer is crying yeah it had its problems.

The Caverns Below

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So, this section took a bit of time, but I got the images from my world to really showcase the thing that current Minecraft needs to improve upon which was amazing back in the days of Alpha. When they updated how the land generated, one of the things that was lost was cave systems that have killed more people than ravines and creepers combined. Tunnels snaked every which way with waterfalls and lava everywhere. To add to the fear was the previously mentioned dark lighting were giant drop-offs that went down about a dozen blocks or so, branches that led to dead ends or even more random bits of rock and gravel.

If you didn't light up every tunnel, you were sure to get a surprise from up above. I can't tell you how many times I've minded my own business, entered a cave and "kchsss" creeper lands behind me from an unlit cave above. When people call for better caves, what they really mean is interesting systems like how it used to be, not just more caves. The current version of the caves are very natural, very predictable, and almost carbon copy when you enter each one. You know there's a hallway leading one way, then another, perhaps you'll find a mineshaft but that doesn't really add to the experience and I would say it could even harm it with how it generates.





For the last couple years, I've waited patiently for an update that would bring back the glory of mining and digging, to see crystal caverns, to haul up new ore, or even come across something other than a giant UFO section. I want to feel a sense of danger when going underground, the adventure of the surface only surrounded by darkness and an impending doom.

The best example of a game that was what I've been looking for in Minecraft was a small game by the name of SkySaga. While not as massive, it did have an impressive cave system that checked all the boxes for the perfect feeling of adventure. Finding vaults, fighting monsters and a boss, and seeing caves just packed with ore.



Every day I wait patiently for a reason to go back into the depths of the earth. Until that time, I never feel a reason to dig deeper than a couple blocks because of the abundance of other materials that fulfill the same, if not better, purpose such as charcoal and villager trading.


And that's about it for my analysis of my view of Alpha vs. Current Minecraft. Again, I'd like to say that this isn't an article of what is better, just what I personally enjoy that is lacking. For the creative of you, current is amazing. As for the survivalist, there's really not much other than just slight inconveniences or maybe too many conveniences that make it feel worthless.

Feel free to comment on whether you agree, disagree, or want to call me an Alphawunner with nostalgia goggles on too tight. I like what I like, there was a time that people told me how I should play until I realized...

Let me have my own fun, stop defining it for me.

With that, I bid you all adieu, Happy Crafting!