Reworldening: Minecraft's 1.7 Update

"Creepers are stirrin', child."
"Ah ain't seeing nothing, Paw."
"Hmm. That's because you need to earn those eyes. You ain't never turned around and took a face full of green. But you will. Look yonder, the hill with the hole. See?"
"Ah see."
"That used to be a Creeper. And yer maw. She'll be mighty upset to lose her fineries, but ahm not going out there to get them. Come, ah expect she's respawned back at the camp. Let's go, and if you see a chuck, give it a punch. We can have a fine supper. Try and earn them eyes, okay? Something big's on the way."

What's coming is the Minecraft 1.7 update, aka the Update That Changed The World. Oh, and a restraining order from the Wild West Society to stop me from writing more awesome frontier Minecraft fiction. Meanies.

It's out this Friday. It's a fairly literal title, because a great deal of work has gone into turning the randomly generated blocklands into a more interesting place for Minecrafters to explore. They've reduced the amount of ocean, so there's more land for people to mine, and the transition between biomes should be more logical, with fewer deserts butting up against snowy biomes. There will be more biomes as well, and new trees, flowers, and blocks. Fishing has been tweaked, so you now have a chance of reeling in junk. That won't be help when you're hungry, but there might be treasure on the line.

I think the most interesting thing is the new 'Amplified World' option in the world creation: it creates a world where the height toggle has taken a holiday, so the size of the generated landscapes are unfettered by rules. I will be using that a fair bit. Here's a wee video of some of the other changes Mojang are dropping.

You can play with this right now. Just use the select "new profile" in your launcher and call it "snapshots". Checking “Enable experimental development snapshots” will let you see the magic.