By Jim Rossignol on October 7th, 2011 at 11:36 am.
Infinite dragons, perhaps? I can’t tell if this is some kind of meta-trolling of the Bethesda court case that Mojang are currently facing down, or whether Notch is actually teasing the appearance of dragons in Minecraft.
Anyway, we don’t want dragons, Notch, we want bees. Christ.
07/10/2011 at 11:40 ScarthCaroth says:
And his name is Trogdoooor!!! Burninating the countryside! And the lovely house you build…
07/10/2011 at 11:49 westyfield says:
Get your hand off my tail, you’ll make it dirty.
07/10/2011 at 13:33 ReV_VAdAUL says:
“I was only very badly burned” laughed the boy.
07/10/2011 at 17:36 Duke Nasty VI says:
An infinitely racist dragon?
07/10/2011 at 21:19 Grey_Ghost says:
Hey Albi!
07/10/2011 at 11:43 Xiyng says:
Shut up, Jim! I want dragons, not bees!
07/10/2011 at 12:18 thegooseking says:
I want dragons, too.
And in the game.
07/10/2011 at 12:33 aircool says:
No… I want big bees so I can toast my bread and put honey on it. Plus I’d like to see all the honeycomb in a giant bee hive made out of square blocks.
07/10/2011 at 20:53 Wulf says:
I want dragons too! If Notch does it right.
07/10/2011 at 11:46 Teddy Leach says:
Enderdragons, actually.
07/10/2011 at 12:28 nodd says:
And they inhabit the new sky dimension, which is accessed by repairing the broken portals now found in dungeons with endermen eyes. Or something like that was what I read on reddit yesterday, and notch confirmed it :O
07/10/2011 at 12:36 LionsPhil says:
But then how will dragons burninate the countryside, and the thatched-roof cottages?
07/10/2011 at 13:37 MCM says:
The commute from the sky dimension isn’t that bad, actually.
07/10/2011 at 11:48 Sabre_Justice says:
Dragons with bees in their mouths so when they roar they shoot bees at you.
07/10/2011 at 12:03 RaveTurned says:
Bees with dragons under their wings so when they buzz they launch hundreds of dragons at you, which breath fire and burn down your house.
Done!
07/10/2011 at 12:52 Sami H says:
“Dragons with bees in their mouths so when they roar they shoot bees at you.”
I love you.
07/10/2011 at 14:33 Berzee says:
dragons with bee breath?
there are these rare moments in life where you realize your imaginative landscape has been impoverished for YEARS and you didn’t even realize it, but now everything is going to be okay, because you find what you were missing before you knew you missed it.
that’s how I feel about dragons with bee breath
08/10/2011 at 02:52 caesarbear says:
Not just any bees, but LAVA BEES!!
07/10/2011 at 11:53 SteamySashimi says:
Bees, please. Blease.
07/10/2011 at 19:21 The Tupper says:
Just as long as the tedious puns don’t all come back. These things drag on for far too long.
07/10/2011 at 20:31 Hodge says:
You mean the BEE-dious puns, yeah?
07/10/2011 at 11:59 godgoo says:
badly burnt albanian boy
07/10/2011 at 12:03 PJMendes says:
You want Bees in Minecraft? Here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSv7mATn3CE
Bees, honey, wax, and much more.
Now let us have our dragons.
07/10/2011 at 12:06 Bull0 says:
Yeah, dragons are something he’s talked about one day including since early on, if my memory serves me. I’d love it if he was trolling, but it’d be a fairly stupid thing to do with a court date set
09/10/2011 at 18:01 Torgen says:
I’ve always thought the dragon talk regarding Minecraft was a play on his assertion as co-developer of Wurm Online that ” we will never include dragons.” (There are dragons in Wurm.)
07/10/2011 at 12:14 AbyssUK says:
If he calls the Dragon Scrolls I will personally send him $30 to help with legal fees :P
07/10/2011 at 13:43 MCM says:
That might cover 5 minutes of legal work.
07/10/2011 at 12:18 Zeewolf says:
I hope they’re not only out at night.
07/10/2011 at 12:26 diebroken says:
Maybe originally, but you’ll have to wait for an expansion pack (+rep for guessing the games I’m thinking of!)… ;)
07/10/2011 at 12:31 McDan says:
Now this can only be a good thing, I want to run away from a dragon burning down the forest to find me, or trying to defend my village from a dragon who’s trying to burn it down, or jumping into tue sea to stop a dragon from burning me… Hmm, I just don’t like out of control fire in my minecraft.
07/10/2011 at 20:51 Wulf says:
Well, maybe he’ll include a system where we can hire our own dragons, with various expensive tributes, so we’ll have our own friendly dragons which will chase off the rival dragons for us.
07/10/2011 at 13:01 hjd_uk says:
Dragon-Scale Armor Ho!
07/10/2011 at 13:05 Chris D says:
Obviously there should be either tiny stripey honey-making dragons or a gigantic fire-breathing bee.
07/10/2011 at 13:22 LionsPhil says:
Dragons: they can crossbreed with ANYTHING.
07/10/2011 at 20:50 Wulf says:
…there are actually books out there which have toyed with this concept, much to my amusement.
09/10/2011 at 17:27 Josh W says:
I can see the attraction, more dragons for your storytelling money, and I would quite like a dragon-dog.
You may think that is impractical, but I could train a few up, take them to canada, and produce a whole new verion of santaclaus.
07/10/2011 at 13:09 Cinnamon says:
What if the dragons were decorated with yellow and black stripes and built gigantic communal honeycomb lairs?
07/10/2011 at 13:31 Quxxy says:
Be careful what you wish for, Jim.
http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/11/lazy-sunday-gif-oprah-releases-the-bees/oprahs-bees
(Bonus points for anyone who photoshops Notch’s head into that.)
07/10/2011 at 15:34 Jim Rossignol says:
That’s pretty much my favourite gif ever.
07/10/2011 at 13:41 Gap Gen says:
I typically log into a Minecraft server, punch old women out, steal their bikes and then when they burn me alive / ban me, I shout “MURDER! MURDEEEEER! AAARGH”
07/10/2011 at 14:16 hjd_uk says:
*opens black-list*
*adds “gap_gen”*
07/10/2011 at 15:01 Tei says:
I trough dragons where planned for minecraft from the start. Even before multiplayer was added.
07/10/2011 at 15:33 Dominic White says:
This is true. Not stopping people from being stupid and playing the ‘Notch is a troll infinite dragons hurrr lol’ card, though.
07/10/2011 at 15:36 Jim Rossignol says:
First I’ve heard of it, I have to say.
07/10/2011 at 16:47 Dominic White says:
He was talking about it middle of last year.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/28193-minecraftcon-2010-gamestick-stream-transcription/
07/10/2011 at 20:47 Wulf says:
Dominic is right, I remember this! There was so much talk of it back around… hell… 1.4 or 1.5? I remember being excited about their eventual inclusion, and I was talking with friends about all the unusual things you could do with dragons in Minecraft.
I’d like the option to actually bribe a dragon, by bringing things to his lair, to come and patrol my lands. Sort of an inverse of Choice of Dragon. And eventually perhaps even get the chance to ride said dragon once a strong business relationship has been built up between myself and said dragon. Games with dragons in them need more business relationships with dragons.
(If I was the archivist sort, I’d dig out the tweet in which Notch confirmed their eventual inclusion, too. That particular Twitter tweet was about a year back as well. And apparently I always forget how one is supposed to use Twitter vs tweet.)
07/10/2011 at 15:20 rustybroomhandle says:
OH, NO! NOT THE DRAGONS!! NOT THE DRAGONS! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY’RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES!! AAAAEEHHHHH! AAAAAGUGGHHH!
07/10/2011 at 15:29 Simas says:
Some suggestions for Minecraft 1.9:
- Dragons and dragon shouts!
- Vampires and Thieves Guild
- Fast travel
- New glass crafting recipes
09/10/2011 at 09:44 The Infamous Woodchuck says:
fast travel is already available on practically every minecraft server out there. its called ‘Warps’
07/10/2011 at 15:48 Stormdancer says:
Bah! Phooey on dragons… everybody and their warthog has dragons.
I want GRYPHONS!
07/10/2011 at 20:44 Wulf says:
There’s room for dragons and gryphons. :p I have no small amount of love for both.
07/10/2011 at 16:47 GoodPatton says:
What? no Nick Cage?
07/10/2011 at 17:25 frame says:
Can’t wait to play Elder Scrolls! Good job, Mojang
07/10/2011 at 18:36 scoopsy says:
True story: I have a pretty serious phobia of bees, and the thought of even absurd pixellated versions entering the game I love saddens me, as I would have to stop playing.
Strange.
07/10/2011 at 19:32 MythArcana says:
I love how Notch says his Internet connection is slow. Doesn’t Sweden have the fastest Internet in the world or something like that? I suspect his XBOX Live account is probably bringing the entire Mojang intranet down to its knees.
07/10/2011 at 20:43 Wulf says:
Parts of Sweden. Or so says Swedish friend types, anyway. Other parts of Sweden are still left wanting in regards to supernets.
07/10/2011 at 19:38 Synesthesia says:
god, no, not dragons. Not medieval fantasy, please. The people have lotr, and all the uninspired clones for that. Ursula le Guinn did it first, as well.
What is this obsession with half naked, red haired, bearded, sweaty dwarves holding heavy axes? I can only guess.
07/10/2011 at 20:26 Creeping Death says:
I am very confused as to what you are claiming Le Guin did first. Dragons? Or medieval fantasy? Either way you are wrong on both counts. Using Tolkien as an example (because, well, you dragged lotr into this) The Hobbit came out about 30 years before Le Guin’s first book and it contained both dragons AND medieval fantasy.
The earliest reference to dragons in modern literature that I can find goes back another 100 years before The Hobbit, in one of the Brothers Grimm fairytales.
07/10/2011 at 20:31 Wulf says:
@Synaesthesia
You know, it shows a certain cultural ignorance to think that the only dragons that exist are medieval ones, or those of a few chosen authors who do dragons which are very much like that. In the rest of fantasy literature, and in many cultures around the world, from many different eras, there are dragons and dragon stories that make those look incredibly boring. Tolkien’s dragons are boring, yes.
Hell, the only interesting dragon of Tolkien’s was Glaurung in The Silmarillion. And that was just Tolkien barely pushing the envelope of what a dragon could be. He was terrified of innovating too much and that was clear, he was also scared of the notion of creating a creature that could have that much power. And he was even more perturbed by the notion of a dragon that could co-exist. Tolkien was an incredibly limited writer, limited by his own notions of what could and could not be.
But others have taken the notion of what a dragon could be and done even better with it. I mean, good grief, even the dragons of The Longest Journey were more compelling than Tolkien’s stuff. Just because someone can take something fantastic and strip all the imagination away so that it becomes the most uninspired, boring thing that it could be (Tolkien was good at this), doesn’t mean that all dragon stories have to amount to such.
Here’s a great example within the gaming field: Does Dragon Commander look like your typical ‘dragons in a fantasy medieval setting?’ No, it does not. It’s actually taking what a dragon can be and doing interesting things with it. For every Dragon Commander you’ll have 50 Skyrims, I’ll be the first to admit that. But that’s a lack of imagination more than it is anything to do with dragons.
I’m going to be facetious and flippant here and say that even How to Train Your Dragon and The Neverending Story pushed the envelope on what a dragon could be more than Tolkien did. (Talking about both the books and the films, here.)
It always makes me sad when someone judges something by its most boring examples.
Though I think what is happening here is that there is some literary elitism and potential intellectual wank going on, wherein the person who writes with the most rounded vowels (so to speak) is valued above the person who presents the more incredible, imaginative world. I’ve seen a lot of that, but it also means that such people do tend to bitch about how boring those books are – the same people. Well, yes, of course. Whilst articulately perfect, Tolkien and company are rather creatively challenged.
Anyway, I’ll finish up by noting that TVTropes has a whole bunch of examples, including some of my favourite books, that would save me from writing anything further.
Conclusion: Can a dragon be a mind-numbingly dull creature of an uninspired, insipidly boring medieval land? Yeah, sure. Do they have to be? Hell no!! Give a concept like dragons to a half-decent talented writer and you’ll see some real magic spring up from the union.
Some writers take the notion of what a dragon can be beyond ‘big lizard that maybe can talk a bit wot we fight,’ thank goodness.
(EDIT: Okay, I have to make a note, here. Did anyone else notice that I managed to do this without noting how strange and bizarre the dragons of Guild Wars 2 are? Yeah. Well, now I have. Because I fail. But at least it was in an edit. I couldn’t resist!)
10/10/2011 at 17:54 Krauss says:
Shadowrun has dragons and that’s in a cyberpunk setting.
07/10/2011 at 19:56 Wulf says:
Here be dragons. Hopefully they’re ridable and will result in proper flight sim controls in Minecraft, which would be incredibly entertaining.
There’s already a mod out at the moment that adds dragons, after all, and it does it very well.
It’ll be interesting seeing if Notch manages to top that.
07/10/2011 at 20:50 Vinraith says:
I have to agree with the general anti-dragon sentiment. More stuff like creepers, less stuff like skeletons. That is, more original, unusual monsters, fewer old fantasy cliche’s.
08/10/2011 at 09:18 FROmatoe says:
Oh ho ho ho, Mojang. You can put down the middle finger toward Bethesda now :P
09/10/2011 at 03:11 MellowKrogoth says:
I hope they are a fearsome enemy and not easily tameable by feeding them a bone or some random crap.
10/10/2011 at 16:47 Fartango says:
Newer Dragon image from notch: http://i.imgur.com/FMAhp.jpg This one’s in daylight and textured!
10/10/2011 at 16:48 Fartango says:
oh and here’s another angle! http://i.imgur.com/yYKzZh.jpg