As I’ve mentioned a bit on here, I’ve gotten back into Minecraft after many many years ignoring the game. I’m sure I’ll eventually tire and step away from the game for a while, but as it stands 2023 has been a very Minecraft heavy year for me, it being the main game I’ve been playing.
With me having spent this past year involved in that scene once again I, of course, had to learn what I had missed over the past, what 8 years or so since I had last played, and one of those things was the Minecraft live event, and all that it entails, including the Mob vote.
To get to the point quickly, I had quickly learned about the controversies of the mob vote in previous years, and about how outright cringey the presentation itself can be, but I was honestly expecting a bit better than what we had here. I’ll open with that — I get it that Minecraft is a very child loved game. What was once every geeks beloved indie project has since become the most popular video game in history. Can’t change that, nor would I necessarily want to. It’s just an unfortunate side effect where, once the game was being discussed on 4chan and only played by a few hundred tech geeks online, it’s now so loved by kids that official media made for it now has to almost exclusively be kid friendly by design, and events like Minecraft Live really have to be made with kids as the target audience, resulting in incredibly drawn out segments with presenters talking in a voice that’s just a few steps above the “preschool toy” voice that everything made for little kids has.
There were some cute moments this year — I did enjoy the Camel / Sniffer skit, as I’m a bit of a sucker for those kinds of cute things, but most of it was truly fluff, with them not getting to the good bits until near the end (as always.)
That being, firstly, the new structure, the Trial Chambers, which I think will certainly add some quality combat challenge for single and group play. Add in the new MOB, the Breeze, and I see a good addition to the game overall.
The rumors of automatic crafting were proven true with the aptly named “Crafter” block, and apparently to help shape crafting recipes in this automatic system slots on hoppers will be toggle-able. in a way that you can properly shape the items for the crafter to craft. Cool.
Putting items in pots will be neat, too, and there were a few other minor mentions but let’s get to the thing we all cared about: the MOB vote.
Armadillo won. Out of the Crab and his building-reach extending claw, the Penguin and its ability to make your boat move faster, and the Armadillo, with its scute used to craft dog armor, we got the Armadillo.
I was honestly in crab camp, but that’s not to say I didn’t like all 3 options. I’d love to see penguins in the game but their mechanic just wasn’t fleshed out well in the presentation. The Crab looked cool and I, and many others, seemed to find the ability to place blocks at further distances quite promising, but it looks like dog armor won out. That’s fine, I do think dogs need a boost in the game, but I’m just a little bummed I won’t get to have a pet crab in Minecraft anytime soon.
I guess I could go back to Guild Wars 2, I know there are crab mini’s in that game… haha.
So, yeah, I’m not going into super details because that’s honestly done way better by far more skilled and more dedicated creators than myself — I’m just writing on my general thoughts.
That being said, if you would like to see what I thought in real time, you can follow this X/Twitter thread for those thoughts.
Yeah, it just was super childish in many parts, could have been a lot shorter, but did have some cute moments and it did get me excited for Minecraft 1.21.
With that said, I’ll end with this: ALL GLORY TO CRAB!
Shit, if Minecraft ever gets some kind of guild system in “vanilla” then I’m naming my guild that. Haha.