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So this weekend Minecon 2015 occurred in London, bringing many fans of the game to the ExCeL Centre to attend what ended up being the biggest video game based convention ever. It also brought with it a lot of news of Minecraft content to come.
Firstly, updates to the original version of the game, the PC version, were announced during a panel. The End, the smallest of Minecraft’s other dimensions is due to get a makeover, adding more to it then just the single floating island that you fight the Ender Dragon in. Now it’ll contain much more to find and do, as well as new recipes related to it including the ability to craft the Ender Crystals that you smash during the big boss fight and placing them atop the columns will respawn the Ender Dragon although it won’t be possible to gain another egg upon defeating it. These new areas can only be accessed through something called the Ender Gateway although details about that aren’t fully known yet. In other areas things such as dual wielding of tools (e.g. pick in one hand, torches in the other) or the ability to make your avatar left-handed are on the plans as well as ‘enchanted arrows’ although Mojang admit that they’ve still some thinking to do about the balancing of such a mechanic; future updates will also add shields to the game.
Then we move onto the two big other stories from the event, starting with Minecraft Windows 10 version.
The version was supposedly built to take advantage of Microsoft’s new OS and its features, and it’ll be offered free to all owners of the current PC version of the game while new players will need to play $10 to access the game and beta. That beta will start towards the end of this month on July 29th and will receive the same updates as the original Minecraft version which will also still exist as a separate game – Mojang have said that the Windows 10 version will not replace the original one that we’ve come to love.
Features for the new version will include:
Craft, create, and explore online with up to seven friends playing Windows 10 Edition Beta, through local multiplayer or with your Xbox Live friends online.
Play online and local multiplayer with other Pocket Edition players thanks to a free update, due to arrive soon after launch.
Multiple control schemes! Switch between controller, touch, and keyboard controls with little to no effort!
Record and share gameplay highlights with built-in GameDVR.
Help shape the future of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta with our built player feedback mechanisms!
Chickens, zombies, pigs, boats, armed skeletons, potatoes, zombies, baby squids, enchantment tables, villagers, naked sheep, iron golems, potions, ghasts, pickaxes, carrots, and all the weird and wonderful goodness you’ve come to expect from Minecraft.
The other big announcement of course was the details of Minecraft Story Mode, a Telltale and Mojang collaboration game announced a few months back. It’ll be a five part series based around the adventures of a group of friends led by the player character called Jesse, voiced by actor Patton Oswalt. The group is famed for slaying an Ender Dragon and look up to a legendary group called The Order of the Stone. Then a “Terror” is unleashed which sees the group called upon for their help for which they decent to seek out The Order of the Stone to save their world. The description on the video trailer says that the journey will take them through the Nether, the Farlands (woo!), the End and “beyond”.
Personally as a long-time player of Minecraft the only thing that has me really excited from this list of big things is the news of upcoming content to the version I play – the PC version updates. The ability to dual wield is something that players have been wishing was a thing for ages, and the addition of shields to the game just makes a lot of sense at this point. Anyone who has ever tried to charge a skeleton knows how hard it is to get close to them when they shoot you with knockback and maybe with a shield it’d be possible to finally block them. The redesign of the End is something I can get behind because I feel it’s been a bit sparse and underwhelming since it was implemented (I mean seriously, it’s not the greatest arena for a final boss fight in my eyes) and I look forward to seeing what new End resources get added to the game.
Windows 10 version is an interesting one. In a way it kind of reminds me a bit of Realms, a bit of the console versions (not surprising as integration with the Xbox versions are being pushed as a feature) and I feel it’ll attract a certain type of player, ones who still enjoy the vanilla game and the console versions over the heavily modded scene. As I’m not one of those players I can’t see myself being too attracted by this version of the game personally, but I can see the attraction for those players. The fact that there’s a cap on the number of players at one time does put me off too, even if I generally don’t play with that many other players at once. The ability to have many in one instance was one of the vanilla game’s drawing points in my opinion and limiting it feels a bit like a tiny downgrade. It’s not out yet though so I’ll save most of my judgement.
I’ll also be saving it for Story Mode, which is a game that while I’m curious about I must admit I find a little bit confusing as to why it exists other than for money. Minecraft was always about building your own story, not playing through someone else’s (unless it was an adventure map, and even then you could just blow it up if you felt like it… and sometimes map makers would booby trap a map to make something amazing happen should you) so… is this a necessary game? Do we really need this? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to have my mind changed when the game releases.
Of course, this isn’t all that happened at Minecon this weekend, but they are some of the most notable things. I have my opinions on them but then I’m biased as I am and will always be a PC Minecrafter, heavily involved with popular modpacks and what they can offer to me for story ideas. Minecraft is a lot bigger than that now though, and even if some of it doesn’t fully grab my attention I can see how big this once small indie game has grown to the extent that its own event hit around 10 thousand attendees and ended up setting a world record and be happy to be a part of it along with so many other people.
In the ‘rather cool’ news today, one streamer’s quest to do a thing just because they can.
Streamer Billyisms has embarked in a quest that he is currently showcasing on his Twitch and Youtube channels – become the first person ever to reach Legend ranking in Hearthstone without ever using his hands. This means no mouse, no keyboard and no touchscreen. Instead, he’s playing Blizzard’s card game using only his voice. That’s actually pretty cool.
No idea how well it’s going to work, but voice controls for Hearthstone and other similar cards would be an awesome way for those with disabilities affecting hands and arms to play the game. Maybe this should be an actual supported mod for the game, if not a proper part of it?
Either way, head on over to Billyisms Twitch and/or Youtube if you wish to watch his attempt at becoming the first handless-Legend in Hearthstone!
If you ever fall victim to a scam on Steam in the future and end up losing in-game items as a result of it, bad news I’m afraid. Valve have now shifted their position on item recovery; basically saying they will no longer do it.
“We sympathize with people who fall victim to scams, but we provide enough information on our website and within our trading system to help users make good trading decisions. All trade scams can be avoided.” Valve said about the change, also noting that rollback that add more of an item to the pool of items decreases the rarity of the items in question.
They have a point I must admit, but something about this still makes me feel a little uneasy. Maybe that’s me just seeing the negative though.
World of Warcraft has now been around for about ten years. In that time a lot of accounts have been created and with it, a lot of characters too. That means a lot of names so creating new ones must see some difficulties in getting a unique name on your character.
However Blizzard are planning to fix this by reclaiming character names from accounts that have been inactive for a period. The reclaim will come with the implementation of patch 6.2.
The accounts will be ones that haven’t been accessed since December 7th 2010, so if you’ve any names you’d want to keep on an old account make sure you log in before June 24th to be able to keep them.
“Our goal with this great name liberation is to make sure new and returning players have a large and varied pool of names available to choose from,” Blizzard wrote on the World of Warcraft blog. “So log in now if you wish to preserve your unused characters’ names for your ongoing journey through Draenor.”
