On Sept. 8, 2024, Minecraft Live, the game’s annual interactive live convention premiered virtually worldwide at around 10:00 a.m. EST, introducing several new features, including a new biome, a new mob, and even changing the frequency and size of updates to favor the community.

The new Pale Garden biome was announced during the event. Structured similarly to the Dark Oak Forest, this new environment shows off several new items, including the new pale oak wood type, the pale moss block, the pale moss carpet, and the pale hanging moss, all textured with a desaturated color palette that sets this biome apart from the otherwise bright and colorful world of Minecraft.

To complement the monochromatic biome, Mojang added a new hostile mob: The Creaking, to fit the eerie feel of the forest. Sharing the same textures as most of the blocks in the forest, the creaking strongly resembles a tree with three glowing saffron eyes that players can see in the dark.

Only spawning during nighttime in the pale garden, the creaking’s behavior is special in a way that distinguishes it from other hostile mobs: they can only move when players aren’t looking at them, which is when they attack, dealing one and a half hearts of damage on hard mode.

If you think that’s too easy, the creaking is also immune to all sources of damage, the only way to defeat it being to hit the mob until a trail of particles leads you to the Creaking Heart, buried within pale oak trees, which upon destruction would cause the creaking to despawn.

While breaking the heart normally would just kill the creaking and not drop anything else, tools enchanted with silk touch will allow players to pick up the creaking heart, which can be placed to summon the creaking outside of the pale garden.

Additionally, the Resin Clump item was introduced shortly after the live event. Now, when hitting the creaking, it not only shows a trail of particles to its corresponding heart but also generates pieces of resin that the player can gather from the tree trunk by simply punching it. Clumps of resin can also be used to decorate solid blocks and armor, as well as being smelted in a furnace to make resin bricks, with a whole line of craftable slabs, stairs, and blocks that can inspire cool new builds.

Being a game that has been constantly growing since its release, Minecraft had several updates, which ranged from weekly
“surprise” updates made by Markus “Notch” Persson, the original creator of our beloved block game, to yearly updates created by teams of graphic designers, artists, and coders, under the management of Jens “Jeb” Bergensten after Notch finalized Microsoft’s purchase of his company and chose Bergensten to take over as lead designer and developer.

Mob, short for mobile entity, is an AI-driven commodity resembling a living creature. From regular pigs to monsters inspired by fantasy elements, each creature’s behavior is coded uniquely, essentially making the game more lifelike.

Starting in 2017, Mojang used a “Mob Vote” as a fun way for players to choose what should be added to the game since mobs have such a big impact on the overall experience of Minecraft. And what did the community think? They HATED it. According to online polls hosted by creators and complaints set to the developers, people didn’t like how they only get to vote for one mob, while getting all three is very much available. This also tears the community apart, since players are divided over which option they want to be added to the game.

After seven years of pressure, Minecraft officially abolished the mob vote on Sept. 8th, 2024.

Besides the Mob Vote, significant changes were also made to how updates are released. As I mentioned before, Mojang had annual updates with a year’s worth of new content, introduced through Minecraft Live. Still, ironically, during this year’s show, developers announced that instead of hosting one event per year, usually during October, there would be two, while also providing more insight about game drops, features that are still testing, and the most recent news about Minecraft-related events, merchandise, and more.

An example of this is a native version of Minecraft that will be coming to the PlayStation 5 sometime during the upcoming year, along with promises of exploring changes to multiplayer, since, like most of the community, Mojang believes that the Minecraft experience is always better with friends.

“I’ve met a friend on Minecraft once,” said Freshman Mark Corrigan. “We were playing on a server, well, I was playing on a server, and I helped him and taught him how to play.”

These changes show how much Minecraft cares about its community, especially since most fans have been here since the Alpha and Beta versions came out on PC in 2009, and have been providing feedback since then, Mojang has never listened as much as now.

This is shown when Mojang altered the design of the armadillo, a mob that was introduced a few months ago after players agreed that its eyes looked better on the side of its head instead of the front. Another example is mentioned earlier in the article: Resin Clumps.

It was introduced shortly after the live event, likely from player feedback from how empty the biome feels. Minecraft has had a significant impact on our generation, not just from being a unique experience, but by phenomenally changing what defines a video game.

“I remember playing it with my brother when I was very young,” said freshman Samuel Bradbury. “It was a major influence on my perception of games at that age and how much I played them.”

Important life lessons were also shared through Minecraft, like how the game doesn’t have a clear path for you from the start to the end, so you have to rely on your decisions and creativity to succeed, similar to real life.

“Like it’s telling you to basically go and venture in life,” said freshman Steve Lee. “Do what makes you happy, and like um, wake up into the world and experience it for all its glory.”

It’s incredible how far Minecraft has come, not just from the game itself, but also in the impact it created in the real world: art pieces inspired by the blocky structure of the game, nostalgia from decade-old players and popular creators like DanTDM, PopularMMOs, and Stampylonghead, not to mention there being a seemingly endless tunnel of media inspired by the game:
dedicated servers, viral videos, and most of all, the creativity.

We can’t wait to see what Minecraft has for us next.