Minecraft NEEDS Another Major Update…

Minecraft NEEDS Another Major Update…

Almost a year ago at this point, Mojang announced that they’d be changing the way that Minecraft updates worked. Before, there would be one major update every year and minor hot fixes that mostly fixed bugs with said major update. Now, there would be more frequent updates with smaller feature sets called drops with around four of these a year. This change was in direct response to many people criticizing Mojang for making the moy an entire year for a pretty lackluster update. I think the most prevalent example of this is 1.20. This update easily could have been a drop that we got in 3 to 4 months, but instead it was announced in October of 2022 and released in June 2023. That’s 9 months of development time for what we got in 1.20. While I’m not one to call Mojang lazy because I understand just how much of a pain it can be to add things to pre-existing code. 1.20 was the only update in recent years that I personally felt was kind of sloppy. Thankfully though, Mojang recognized that. And for the next update, 1.21, they went back to their usual ways of making good updates. Fast forward to today, July 2025, and we’re approaching almost 2 years since the last time a major update was even announced. We’ve had six drops in that time, and each of them are of uh varying quality. The main problem with the first couple drops was that they were so small that you could barely even consider them anything. Wolf armor and the armadillo was a drop. Updated bat textures and putting items in pots was a drop. And adding the bundle in hardcore mode, which by the way was only part of the bedrock version of the drop, was considered a drop. When they cited these as what drops were kind of going to be, I started getting very worried about the future of the game. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate new features or anything like that, but I didn’t believe and still don’t to a lesser degree now that drops, especially of the kind that we saw in 2024, could generate enough interest in the game to keep it alive and to draw new players in. Even in the spring drop this year, the main selling point of that was basically new animal textures. I just don’t see any world where that or one new kind of okayish item in the case of the bundle drop generates any hype around the game at all. Now compare that with past updates. Sure, they were once a year, but you were getting an entire ocean overhaul, an entire overhaul of the village and villager systems, a complete overhaul of the Nether, and completely new terrain generation with an additional 128 blocks of extra space. That is what can generate hype for a game. That is what can draw new players in. And if we’re still getting a big yearly update, then drops would be awesome and work great as little drippy drops of content on the side while they work on the next big thing. But what we’ve seen since the release of 1.21 in June 2024 are tiny and sometimes just kind of small drops. And if that’s all that’s going to happen, not only are we going to be on 1.21.17 or whatever by the time the next major update even gets announced, but the game is going to start dying. Oh, that’s a tall claim from a man with no evidence, I hear some of you saying. But that’s where you’d be wrong. I have evidence and it’s called the years 2016 and 2017. 2016 and 2017 basically gave us three drops and an actual update. If you’re curious, 1.9 was the actual update, which by the way came out after a full year of nothing but hot fixes, which is probably why people who didn’t like it really didn’t like it. The other three, 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12 were pretty much the equivalent of drops today. 1.10 1.10 and 1.11 were released in short succession of each other, and 1.12 was the only major update of 2017. What did these updates add, though? Well, funny as it is, 1.10 added mob variants of the zombie and skeleton and a couple new blocks alongside the structure block, which I guess was this update’s big kicker. Hm. Sounds kind of similar to a certain drop we got earlier this year, huh? I was never a fan of 1.10. I thought from the time its snapshots were coming out that it was extremely lame and boring. 1.11, on the other hand, was the much better one of the two. It added woodland mansions, the illers as a whole, totems of undying explorer maps, llamas, and most importantly, Shulker boxes. Thinking about it now, 1.11 would be an absolutely killer drop if it released today. Two absolute gamechanging items in the totem and Shulker boxes came in this update, and a cool big ass structure came in the form of the woodland mansion. And then 1.12 gave us colors and parrots, I guess. So yeah, two stinkers or three if you’re stingy about combat and an actually good update peppered in between. Mojang was below 500 in these two years for sure and that’s no good. I believe that they got just a little too comfortable after the initial Minecraft boom a couple years prior and thought that they could just kind of start to coast for the rest of the game’s life. But then a little game called Fortnite Battle Royale decided to release and dethroned Minecraft as the game that every kid was talking about at the lunch table that day. 2017 was probably one of the worst years for Minecraft and especially late 2017 and early 2018 was a very dark time regarding the future of the game. People were unsure if Minecraft could ever recover and come back out on top now that it had some actual popularity competition. Thankfully though, Mojang were sufficiently shaken by the prospect that people would rather do the floss than mine the diamond. And so in late 2017, we got the announcement of the 1.13 aquatic update. This update was of a scale that none had ever seen before. An entire overhaul of a previously bland and uninspiring place in the Minecraft world showed that Mojang was capable of breathing life into a game even at its darkest hour. And this update started the trend of Minecraft getting one major update per year. And it was fine that way because the updates were always good, always full of content, always bringing new ideas to the table and innovating on old ones. And after two updates, Minecraft was back. 2019 rolled around and brought the 1.14 village and pillillage update and people saw just how good Minecraft could be and is when Mojang actually puts their best foot forward and makes a good update. And that is one of the biggest reasons why me and a lot of other people get kind of frustrated with these small pitily ass drops. We all know what Mojang is truly capable of when they put their mind to an update. what they can cook up in those brilliant little brains of theirs are things so great that it brings another wave of Minecraft mania back to the internet every single time. But now we’re back in that era of complacency. We’re in our next 2016. Look around the community. It’s a little different, but history is repeating itself. The biggest indicator of the game slowly falling off in popularity like it did 9 years ago is that the YouTuber base is basically non-existent now. In both big Minecraft booms, those being 2011 to 2013 and 2019 to 2021, there were a set of YouTubers who were basically the Minecraft YouTubers at the time. Their reach went beyond Minecraft, too. Everyone kind of knew who they were, even if they didn’t play Minecraft because they were so prevalent on the platform. Creators like Captain Sparkles, DanTDM, Skidas, Minecraft, Stampy, and popular MMOs spearheaded the 2011 to 2013 boom. And we saw it again in the 2019 boom with creators like Technoblade, Dream, Tommy in it, Wilbur Sut, Ramboo, and Tubo. So similar in fact that the two groups even have their own dedicated women abusers. But look at the scene now. Who are the people now that you would consider the Minecraft YouTubers? Honestly, I can’t really think of any. And such was the case in 2016. There’s no doubt that one of the biggest factors in Minecraft’s popularity is its ability to stay relevant on platforms like YouTube. So when that goes down, the game’s going to be in a really bad spot where its only lifeline left is to make good and interesting updates. But it’s not even doing that anymore. It’s making mob reskins again and adding new things with no real meaning to them. History will repeat itself. So, what can Minecraft do to hopefully recover and have its next big boom? Well, the only thing in my eyes at least that they can really do at this point is make another major update. One on the scale of the updates that came before 1.19. There’s a couple options that they could go for, but I think that if they want to win back the popularity now, then they should go for the obvious choice, an end update. For a long time, the cave update was the most requested Minecraft update, and for good reason. But once that finally got done, the end update, which I imagine was probably second to the cave update, has assumed the spotlight. This update is really important, though. It’s more than just another update to the game because it may end up being the game’s only attempt to save itself from another dark area like the 2016 2017 era. So, this update has to be done perfectly. No matter what it is, for that matter, end up date or not, it has to be extremely good because the future of the game depends fully on it. But at the end of the day, the choice lies with Mojang. Can they see the impending doom approaching? Do they really care because they know what they have? Well, I don’t know myself, but all I can say is that I hope that they make the right choice and keep Minecraft alive because I love this game and I know you do, too. Minecraft needs another major update. Thank you all for watching and I’ll see you in the next one. Okay. [Music]

Minecraft desparately needs another major update. Drops just aren’t gonna cut it long term, so Mojang needs to go back to big updates! I also forgot to write a description when uploading it, so here I am doing it at 2:41am while watching Family Guy!

SOCIALS:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BaseminecraftG

Discord Server: https://discord.gg/3qKzGer3CJ