Minecraft Beta 1.9 Prerelease- Why so soon?

As everyone well knows, the Beta 1.9 Prerelease is already out. Naturally, I installed it- and I uncovered a plethora of new experiences. But with that come problems, as I will also discuss below.

Firstly, the way that the biomes generated was really cool. I love the addition of randomly entire giant mushroom areas. There are some comedic additions, also, such as 'Mooshrooms'- cows covered in mushrooms that drop more mushrooms upon death. They were a lot of fun, but I am yet to encounter very many.

The swampy biomes are very interesting, although the transitions between them and the standard 'jungle' type of biomes are very choppy, with one block being swampy and the one next to it being a bright green. It is the nature of the standard Minecraft textures, if you were to put a 128 pixel HD texture pack, it would be better, although it could not be alleviated completely without an entire recoding of the game.

I found the introduction of the NPCs extremely weird however. They all have the name of TESTICULATE above their heads, and you can't communicate with them. They also look like Squidward from Spongebob. In other words, they are almost completely useless. I was expecting them to be able to be traded with like in the Millinare NPC mod, although they pretty much appear to be just another neutral mob. *sigh*

There was the introduction of lillypads into the swampy biomes, also, but they are simply decoration, and when mined, drop an unnamed item into the player's inventory. Snow golems were also added, and must be crafted outside of a crafting table by placing a pumpkin on top of two blocks of snow. They are neutral towards player but will attack hostile mods with snowballs, which cause zero damage, making it a virtually suicidal maneuver.

All in all, that's pretty much it for the Beta 1.9 Update Prerelease. I will write up a post when the full version comes out, discussing any further changes or bug fixes. This update can basically be considered 'Part 2' of the Adventure Update, as it provides expansions of many of the features. Why so soon, you ask? Maybe it's because the full version is on it's way real soon? Maybe it needed to go along with 1.8? Or maybe Notch just felt like it...

Minecraft Beta 1.8- Official Release- Opinion

It was said that the Minecraft Beta 1.8 Update was the Adventure Update, and with all of the new features, it's easy to see why. Overall, I'm rather happy with the update, but I have noticed a few problems, so I thought might post them here.

1. Crashing- I'm not sure if it's just me, but ever since I installed the 1.8 Pre-Release, I have had crashing issues. they have become more frequent in the latest update, and it is starting to get on my nerves. The frequency ranges from 5-10 mins and the game just closes right out.

2. Lag- I have seen this with other people, in person and on YouTube. It one of the most evident changes since I updated, and appears most prominently on areas of elevation change.

3. Useless Items- Not really a problem, but stupid nonetheless. I have mainly found that Rotten Flesh has no use, as well as Vines. I don't mind, just food for thought.

4. Strongholds- I have had a couple of issues with the introduction of Strongholds. The main one being that they are so rare, that there is around a 0.1% chance of finding one in your world without an X-Ray Texture Pack. Also, once you do find one, my other complaint is the lack of anything significant in there.

5. Rare Items- There are sown really rare things on Minecraft, buy since the Update, I have found everything- even DIAMOND a hell of a lot more common. Just an observation.

All in all, the Beta 1.8 Update definitely lot of new content to keep you going until the population of the NPC Villages in 1.9, albeit with a few little quirks along the way.

Cheers,
Dylan