Hoo boy! The recent Halloween update is certainly dividing opinion on the Minecraft forums!

I downloaded it last night, and with it came biomes (mini climates that I'm excited to see further developed), an underworld (with new enemies and blocks/materials) and a fishing mechanic.

Unfortunately (this is where the butthurt comes in) it came with some very serious/irritating bugs including armour that doesn't work (it doesn't matter if you're butt naked or wearing full diamond armour, those pigmen are going to ruin you just as fast) and an odd bug whereby - on death, your items disappear from the world altogether - you can't return to you point of death and pick them up again. Furthermore, mob spawning seems to have been ramped up - handy if you want to slaughter 100 chickens in an in-game morning for their feathers - not so handy if you want to make your way through a cave, and find yourself battling a crowd of zombies, skeletons and spiders along the way.

The portals that transport you to the underworld are also confusing in that you create one, enter it [into the underworld], and when you exit back to the overworld, you end up in a different place - despite using the same portal.

Finally, there seems to be a few glitches including monotone sprite animations (animation of leaves being destroyed), grass surface not matching the tone on a side of a block, and leaves not disintergrating on their own.

And Survival Multiplayer hasn't been fixed, although at this point in time, I could care less.

My personal feelings are that the combination of ineffective armour and losing all your items on death (the former being THE worst of the two) are what spoil it for me, but I'm confident an update will fix these issues and look forward to how the developer can improve on these concepts over its development. In particular, I'm looking forward to more defined regional resources and effects (maybe rainfall and heat damage).

It is an alpha after all...

[EDIT: also, some people are having performance issues and program crashes]

@edhe

I've been getting into those glitches apparently. When I went into my mining area, I found some mobs waiting for me inside. When I saw this, I was confused of how they spawned in a well lit area, so I went off to kill them. After fighting them for a bit, I died with only a zombie and skeleton left. I went back with some bow and arrows to kill the rest of them off. After I killed them, I search for my stuff, but was unable to find them. Got a little upset and went back to replace them. I went back in deeper to search for more mobs after I replaced my items. I didn't find any more mobs, but I did found an area that was oddly lit. Right next to a torch, a black line was on the wall, as if there weren’t any torches lighting it. I fixed this problem by taking the torch off the wall and putting it back.

I hope Notch fixes these glitches soon…

What exactly IS Minecraft? Ive heard so much about it, people on Gmod are always talking about it, and just recently, 2 of my friends started playing it but they wont tell me any details.

It's a sandbox-style game, kinda like g-mod. You can add block or remove blocks on the terrain, which can lead to making bulidings or exploring underground caves. There's other stuff you can do too, but I only tried the free version of the game for a few minutes :/

The second one (lighting) is superficial, but it's been around for a few months now - at least since I've been playing.

But you'll be happy to know an update for the dropped items bug has been successfully patched. Just be careful when you meet enemies, because as far as I know, they still spawn everywhere, and their attacks still ignore armour.

Further updates will apparently have to wait as the developer takes a few days off. But to be fair, he's had to deal with coding this update and releasing it for the Halloween "deadline" in the face of fans with unrealistic expectations (who are currently BAWWWing that this massive update wasn't bug free on release) and a shortsighted (if it did indeed originate from a disgruntled user) DDOS attack on the website.

I don't know if any of you heard about it, but if you've followed the minecraft community over the last month, you probably have...

It's a freeform 3D game where you start out with nothing, and have to gather resources to craft the tools and blocks - initially to survive. After you're comfortable with surviving, (moot if you set it to "peaceful mode"), you can do what you want - spelunk for rare materials, fighting off relentless monstersduring the night (which in turn open up more opportunities for crafting items), build fantastic structures (fighting off relentless monsters during the night) or just explore the randomly generated (now with mini environments like tundra) earth that is potentially something like 8 times the size of our planet - while fighting off relentless monsters during the night.

The graphics are pixelly and everything is pretty much cube shaped.

There is also an in development (and thus glitchy) multiplayer for creative mode and Survival - the current Alpha mode, although the latter isn't near finished yet (with some notable bugs) - but I'm not the one to ask on any aspect of multiplayer in Minecraft.

It's free to play in creative mode (in which you can just punch away blocks with no pickaxe and are supplied with infinite coloured blocks), but requires a fee for the Alpha version currently in development.

When Beta comes around, you won't have to pay the full price, and you'll be eligible to receive updates and bug fixes up until the programmer stops making money and releases the source code.

Look it up on youtube, and this wall of text will begin to make sense. I recommend this guy's videos:

Although he isn't the best player, he's hilarious - especially in later episodes, and you'll get the gist of minecraft in no time.

I'll warn you though - watching minecraft videos (for me at least) is almost as addictive/fun than playing minecraft.

My friend got this. Should I?

If its something you might like than yes.

It really is quite different from anything else, so it is hard to compare it to anything else. You can get the Creative mode or whatever its called. But that is really just making stuff, there is no survival in there.

I started playing Minecraft a little bit ago, and its pretty awesome, even when Im only playing the free version and I cant save

Just one question, so will this game ever be out on steam? Because Id rather not buy it if its going to come out later...

I wouldnt count on it, but you never know

What would one gain from getting it on Steam anyway, other than the arbitrary addition of achievments.

They'd be cool, but other than that, I'm glad 100% of my purchase fee went to the developer studio.

Well, I tried to buy it, but the paypal thing it links me to is in German...?
How odd... now what

That happened to me when I bought it. Just look around the page and you'll find an option to change to other languages.

Minecraft is going into beta on the 20th of December.

Alpha customers are eligible for free updates for life, but once it goes into beta, anyone interested in minecraft would have to pay a higher price and any DLC to be released in the future.

Therefore, it's a good opportunity to buy it now while it's cheap.

Wow, thats good news since Im buying beat for my bro and I on his birthday (tomoro)

I really should get back into this game now that exams are almost over for this semester.

@Megsy This will not be on Steam _{for now}, as shown here.

Also, Minecraft enters BETA on the 20th of December, and you need to buy Minecraft in the next 7 days if you want free updates FOR LIFE!! Once BETA is released, the price will increase, and not all updates shall be free.

It just says that it isn't on Steam; not that it won't be. It has said that for a good while now. I can see it being released on Steam once it has made it to the final release.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Check out this super awesome performance of "Still Alive" using the new note blocks!

@Sylverstone: I saw that a couple days ago. It would be awesome if Minecraft's Portal mod had that at the end.