The silly block game I spent my whole childhood with
(nostalgic & emotional read ahead)

It all started when I visited my young and hip uncle when I was small and he told me about a block game that's coming out called Minecraft, back when it had the OG website where you could sign up and play a bit online for free. That's when I saw the powerful OG Minecraft trailer, so powerful that even now it never fails to give me that feeling of wanting to try out survival mode for the sake of the good old days; I still remember the upbeat music playing and the following powerful words and visuals:

"Let's go to a place, where everything is made of blocks. With the only limits, is your imagination. Let's go, wherever you wanna go, climb the tallest mountains. Adventure down, to the darkest caves. Build anything you want. Day or night, rain or shine. Because this is the most significant sandbox you'll ever set foot in. Build a majestic castle! Invent a new machine, or take a ride on a roller coaster. Play with friends. Build your own little community. Protect yourself with the strongest armor that you can craft. Fight off the dangers of the night. Now, I can't tell you what you can or cannot do. With no rules to follow, this adventure is up to you."

The Golden Age of Minecraft Youtube

After that, I got into the golden age of Minecraft Youtube. Stampy was my first ever Minecraft channel whom I watched a lot, and I also knew DanTDM, PopularMMOs, ExplodingTNT, Grian, MagmaMusen, logdotzip, MinecraftUniverse, SwimmingBird941, TurtleDerp and so forth. I also remember watching a lot of informational fun fact videos to the point that I felt like I know everything about the game.

And all of this is happening without me ever playing the real game; I remember my family once told me it's kinda weird how I watch people play the game more than I play it myself and I agree. However can you blame me for doing that when Youtube was brimming with so much childhood Minecraft content when I couldn't get my parents to buy digital games for me as a child anyways?..

Cracked Minecraft

So what did I do? I eventually played the old cracked version of the game because my sister knew how to set it up (oh and btw my sister watched LDShadowLady and other girl Minecraft Youtubers). (Btw, Notch once said that he didn't mind if his game was cracked because he knew people would try it out that way and then decide to buy it). Anyways, I tried out survival mode a bunch of times but sadly, even now, I have never got enough courage to see the whole game through alone; I would get bored mid-game and scared of the nether and bail out of the world and delete it. I also experimented with creative mode sometimes (but I never finished big builds, it felt too lonesome). Sadly I don't have any of these worlds saved but they weren't significant enough to be kept anyways.

Another thing I did with cracked Minecraft was play and build together in a creative world with my two childhood friends from primary school (via a free Minecraft server hoster called Aternos.org which still exists today). (Btw if you don't know, it is possible to play multiplayer servers in cracked - you just need specific servers that allow unauthorized players to join). That world was somewhat significant because there I had spent time with those friends that I would later on stop seeing altogether; but tragically I wasn't able to get a world backup in time because the server was wiped due to inactivity. Since I never had a Playstation I was never able to play with most school friends either (╥_╥).

Bought Minecraft

Fast forward to 2018 or so and I finally convinced my dad to buy me the game (my first registered username was DanielPlayingMC), however the only problem being: I was a tad bit late to the party. I tried out survival mode a bit more but the same stuff happened: getting bored of the mid-game and bailing. I finally had what I wanted but I still never beat the game myself.

The Minecraft Youtube Revival

And in these years Minecraft Youtube would have a Resurgence (a.k.a. Renaissance or Revival) because of namely Dream starting the speedrunning/manhunt craze, Pewdiepie's funny survival letsplay series, and other things.

Scratch in Minecraft - DiamondFire Server

Also there came a point in time when CommandGeek had introduced me to a Minecraft server called DiamondFire where you could code minigames and I was hooked to that server: I liked the aspect of being able to code things using attachable blocks like in Scratch - I was eager to recreate games I knew and stuff. However I gradually faced the sad reality of ranks in servers where you couldn't do anything you wanted unless you paid real money, so my enthusiasm for the server died out there.

The Best MMORPG Server - Wynncraft

Another server I like (this time it's definitely better, if not the best) is called Wynncraft, which is a free Minecraft MMORPG with original unique music, story, everything. I was introduced to it by Grian when I was watching his first Hermitcraft letsplay series "Season 7" (and yeah, Hermitcraft is another rabbit hole of itself that I got into, and it's still going!). Wynncraft really deserves more recognition because it offers a free MMORPG for Minecraft players. (At that time I logged on to check it out but then I took a long break, but now I got back into it this summer and I love it!). Click here to see my account stats on the Wynncraft website.
Btw, I renamed my username to 'Danyeru' because I like that name better (I know 'DanielPlayingMC' was way too generic lol). Here's my account on NameMC.

The Best Nostalgia Mod - BTA!

Mods are another big thing in the Java community. There are many cool mods out there, but I'll recommend you my favorite one in terms of feels: if you're a sucker for Minecraft nostalgia like me, be sure to check out Better than Adventure (BTA for short). It's a fork of Minecraft Beta 1.7 (just before the Adventure Update) that aims to be an alternate timeline where 1.8 wasn't released and the game takes a different path. So if you love the old versions (which many do) but want to see new old stuff too, this is your best bet. I have tried it and I can tell you that it's wonderful; and the awesome devs are still updating it!

Those two servers and that mod I mentioned were the only reasons why I logged in to Minecraft those respective times - I basically gave up on trying to beat the game in vanilla singleplayer survival mode so instead I moved on to playing on servers or mods.

The calm before the storm

Despite not playing vanilla survival mode enough I still cared about Minecraft, its upcoming updates, and the "Minecraft Lives" (official livestreams). I liked the Aquatic Update 1.13, Village & Pillage Update 1.14 and Nether Update 1.16, and you should've seen the look on my face when they finally announced a Cave Update on Minecraft Live that fateful day.

Split Updates & Split Community

But then this and that happened and they couldn't drop the whole update immediately so they split it up into two parts (or four, since the Wild Update and Trails & Tails Update had more of those promised Cave Update features: the Deep Dark and Archeology). I know that the devs needed to take breaks and all but, it's safe to say that the community didn't respond well to the idea of having to wait years for one update to come out, and reasonably so. Speaking of community-not-liking-new-stuff, Minecraft is no stranger to it and I'll name a few more: the great Microsoft Migration (which I had to go along with), infamous Chat Reports system, devisive Mob Votes, and many more. I actually voted in most of the Biome/Mob Votes (apart from the Phantom one) and, surprisingly enough, my vote was always the winning one.

C418

As you (should) know, the original soundtrack of the game was composed by someone called C418 (or Daniel Rosenfield). This music he made for Notch proved to be the very soul of the game; inseparable from it. And I could make a whole separate page about admiring C418's Minecraft and personal music, but I'll make it short here. Basically this precious music composer was slowly being less and less hired to make music until he was kicked out and replaced by new music composers such as Lena Raine. This was because Microsoft (who bought the game from Notch's hands and frankly made everything worse) did not like that C418 didn't give complete rights to his music to them, so they replaced him with composers who give them the whole license to their work.

Conclusion

All in all, despite being disappointed at how Microsoft is ruining the poor once-indie game, I still care about it and cherish the memories I made with it. If I ever play Minecraft these days it's probably either on a server like the ones I mentioned or on an old and/or modded version.

P.S.

This summer (2024) I agreed to play in a multiplayer survival world (SMP) with some indirect friends I made via secondary school and so I did finally "beat" the game by killing the Ender Dragon together, however keep in mind this is on multiplayer not singleplayer, not to mention that I hardly played a part in slaying the dragon since there were many people helping. All this time I have skipped seeing the famous End Poem (which recently got into the public domain) because I have reserved it for when I actually beat the game by myself; that will be my reward - deep words from a silly block game.