A Return to Minecraft Beta?
Towards the end of my last large server I started thinking about Minecraft Beta 1.7.3. I am writing about it because I want to explain something. I have felt like some of the recent versions of the game lost an aspect of what they once had; in place of the feeling one used to have in alpha and beta, it became more about accumulating more and more vertical progression towards predetermined goals, which stands as very opposite to the original game design, something I once cherished.
Really, to this end, a lot of earlier players have noticed this, and up sprung projects like Canyon, and Poseidon, but most relevantly for this post, Better Than Adventure. BTA!, as it is also known, expanded on the open-world exploratory feeling that was present in alpha and beta, which is hard to describe in words. It simply was a different experience to play; there was no grinding and no focus on getting ever better armor and gear, it was about enjoying the experience of mining and building and being creative. Part of the benefit was the lack of linear progression.
You could, for example, build a cool cave house and cherish it because it was your base. That was the mindset. The concept of trying to achieve something through grinding was not present. There were diamonds, of course, but they were part of mining which is not grinding.
Not only has BTA! recaptured the earlier gameplay and made it work on the latest Java, but they have introduced an entirely redesigned overworld and nether, complete with biomes and new mobs, blocks, and monuments everywhere! It solves one of the only issues with Beta: it's that, in a sense, the game was incomplete. There was not enough to do. This is remedied with this mod:
Also part of Better Than Adventure is the ability to load up worlds made in any version. For example, below is a screenshot of Beta 1.7.3 generation, but with the new mobs added from the mod:
BTA! represents going back to a time when it was more simple and more, in Space’s opinion, more fun. Not that release versions are boring, but they lack what I have explained here. For this reason, I support the direction Better Than Adventure has taken their mod, which has blossomed into a full version.