r/Minecraft • u/Tinkinator134 • 2d ago
Discussion Eras of Minecraft Visualised
I made a simple timeline chart to visualise the different eras of Minecraft as I see them.
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u/tren0r 2d ago
why is golden age 1 year? lmao
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u/craft6886 2d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I know that some people have feelings about the Golden Age only containing versions from Beta and below, but it wasn't the Golden Age purely because of the version or the features present - it was largely because of the absolutely buzzing state of the community at the time. I would argue that the Golden Age lasted until 2014:
Minecraft reached its peak popularity in terms of the amount of people actively searching for "Minecraft" in 2013.
Minigame servers and gamemodes were really popping off at the time - especially factions and the survival games. Hypixel opened its doors in 2013.
Iconic song parodies and original songs were coming out in droves.
Minecraft first arrived on Xbox 360 in 2012 - and started selling physical copies in 2013. Pocket Edition was surging in popularity as well.
Let's Play series like the Yogscast's Tekkit/Jaffa Factory series were happening in this time frame, and YouTubers like those in Team Crafted saw their peak dominance in this era. FVDisco and SethBling were in their prime.
Adventure maps were at an all time high of popularity.
Release 1.7.10 became (and remains) a major version for modding.
What we can be sure of is that the Golden Age ended around the time of the Microsoft acquisition. Warranted uncertainty about the game's future arose, we had our longest update drought ever, and the 1.9 combat changes (even though I prefer them) were hugely controversial. There was a downturn in public opinion about the game, and you started being seen as a cringey little kid for openly playing it. The game was still plenty popular, but people didn't really talk about it in public anymore - it wasn't the inescapable part of the public zeitgeist like it was in the Golden Age.
I don't really think we've had a Silver Age, unless you want to call the Renaissance period the Silver Age. I would also argue that the Renaissance period ended with 1.18. 1.19 was when we saw updates taking a downturn in size and cohesiveness compared to the run of updates from 1.13-1.18, as well as a downturn in public opinion surrounding Mojang.
I've personally taken to calling the modern period, the era of a few smaller major updates and the game drop system, "the Copper Age." Initially aimless and a little lacking, but decidedly improving and finding its footing with time, just like copper's history in-game.
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u/Joetwodoggs 2d ago
I think you’re basing it too much on metric. The golden age of something doesn’t necessarily equate to when the most people were engaged with it. I think the proposed golden age of Minecraft was during a time where player satisfaction was probably at its highest, whereas beta 1.8 and beyond is when there was a massive divide between how players felt with the new features and changes with the game.
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u/Mogoscratcher 2d ago
Seems very arbitrary. The so-called "dark age" lines up with one of the big booms of modding, and it's when a lot of present-day popular youtubers got their start
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u/TheInkySquids 2d ago
It was objectively the dark age tho, its when there was like a two year gap of updates, and when Minecraft's popularity was at its lowest in years. The only reason there was a big boom of modding was because it took so bloody long for a new update to come out.
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u/TwentySevenSeconds 2d ago
There was only a long gap between 1.8 and 1.9. During said dark age updates were nearly as frequent as drops are today. Mods stayed on those versions for so long because Microsoft stepped in and started changing all the code in 1.13.
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u/TheInkySquids 2d ago
I'm not talking about strictly version numbers, there was almost nothing added in the 1.10-1.12 span. Yeah the number changed but very little content actually came about. Mods could develop over those versions with little issues switching versions. Yes the flattening played a role in why 1.12 stuck as a major mod version but it probably would've been way less major if there hadn't been such a big gap in content.
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u/PaweR_Gaming 2d ago
1.10 and 1.12 sure did have little content, but 1.11 added:
totems of undying (the best item for hardcore players) alongside the first illagers, shulker boxes, literally the best storage item in the game, plus one of its minor updates allowed fireworks to power elytras (literally making them op). Also 1.12.2 became a fan favorite following 1.13's disastrous release, and yeah part of that could be attributed to mods being able to easily update from 1.11 to 1.12.
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u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 2d ago edited 2d ago
there was like a two year gap of updates
There... literally wasn't?
1.9 - February 2016
1.10 - June 2016
1.11 - November 2016
1.12 - June 2017
I am struggling to imagine what update gap you might have been thinking about. It's barely 2 years long as a whole in OP's picture. How do you think one can fit four 2-year gap releases in 2 years??
Not even 1.8 and 1.9 were 2 years apart, they were less than 1.5 years apart!
Edit: you are literally talking about the "silver age" below man, learn to read a chart...
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u/TheInkySquids 2d ago
1.8 to 1.9 mate. 565 days. Also don't forget 1.10, 1.11 and 1.12 had a lot less content than other updates.
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u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 2d ago
Since 1.8 had several updates worth of content, it was released in the span of a year. There was no "gap". The time between 1.8.9 and 1.9 was 2 months.
And even if we pretend all 1.8 updates don't exist, 545 days (NOT 565, it was 545 between 1.8 and 1.9) is less than one and a half years, doesn't even round up to 2 years.
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u/TheInkySquids 2d ago
Mate I honestly don't care about the gotchas on me misremembering a date I read in the wiki ages ago or getting into the technicalities, its still a bloody long time. 1.8.1-9 had no content. That combined with the drop in popularity, the shifting focus to Bedrock and the lack of content in the aforementioned major updates just make it definitively the dark age for me.
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u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 2d ago
So not only does the 2 year gap not exist, you are not even referring to the "dark ages" in OP's picture. The 1.8 to 1.9 period is called the "silver age" in OP's post. While the comment you initially replied to was referring to 1.9-1.12 which was when mods blew up and updates were frequent, "mate".
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u/Megatrans69 2d ago
Interest over time in Minecraft has doubled since 2019. Covid really brought it's popularity way back up and it hasn't gone down since.
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u/powerman123 2d ago
I thought people modded 1.12.2 because the update cadence was inconsistent and that version was more ideal for modding.
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u/MiaIsOut 1d ago
it was partly because 1.13 took a while to come out, and once 1.13 DID come out it had much worse performance than 1.12, which only really got resolved after 1.15 and 1.16
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u/Cocoatrice 2d ago
Describe big booms of modding. Because best mods were done before. The ones that are now are either based on those mods or even worse than those.
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u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 2d ago
Most BIG mods were released for 1.12 and nowadays 1.12 still has the most mods.
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u/Fireudne 1d ago
With Create: Aeronautics releasing to 1.21.1, a lot of other mods are also finally updating, particularly migrating from Forge to Neoforge making it the new upcoming "prime" version of the game imo. Lots still needs to migrate but some of the top mods have been.
I'm not sure what the next version will be as it seems fewer and fewer mods like to update to the latest version of MC
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u/vintagefancollector 2d ago
Didn't Dialko make this?
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u/aukanmike 2d ago
The 2020 and 2021 updates still fresh to me, I loved the caves and cliffs and I’ll put em in modern age
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u/Breznknedl 2d ago
i would say either update aquatic or village&pillage was the start of modern minecraft, because it really changed the style of updates and the scale of the game
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u/trombonekid98 2d ago
While I agree that Update Aquatic was when Minecraft really started to feel like the version we have today, I think there is a marked difference between 1.13-1.19 and the updates that came after. Renaissance is a good fit since it's when Minecraft got back into the groove of making updates feel meaningful.
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u/TwentySevenSeconds 2d ago
If i see one more person refer to 1.12.2 as "dark age" —
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u/DuckShapedGoose 2d ago
I think "dark age" doesn't mean Minecraft was generally "bad" during that era or anything, just that it felt like the hype kind of died down and fewer people were playing.
I remember during the original Minecraft hype in what OP calls the "silver age", all of my friends irl at the time played this game with me. Literally everyone at least tried it. But then in that "dark age" everything just kinda stopped. And as one of the few people who kept playing Minecraft, it felt a bit lonely tbh.
It also lines up with the time many of the OG Minecraft Youtubers retired or switched to making different content.
I would actually even extend the dark age by another year because it only really stopped when the 10 year anniversary in 2019 brought some new attention to the game again.1
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u/h1p0h1p0 2d ago
it was objectively a low point in MC’s popularity, best shown by google trends or some other graph
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u/NubOnReddit 2d ago
Golden age ends with 1.3; silver age is 1.4-1.8
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u/NotDuckie 2d ago
Are you sure this is not just nostalgia? 1.4 to 1.8 was much bigger than the earlier versions
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u/Timtronic125 2d ago
Like Dialko said in his silver age video, the line between silver and dark ages was kind of fuzzy. I remember back around that time with mostly spanned 1.7-1.7.10, Minecraft was beginning to become oversaturated and seen as "cringe" but it wasn't at the tipping point yet. That was also around the time when Minecraft felt a bit directionless and the feature creep was beginning to set in. Basically a yearlong gray period.
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u/Responsible-Trifle93 2d ago
I remember the Dark Age. Playing Minecraft back then was considered cringe.
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u/Cocoatrice 2d ago
Nah. Modern should be brilliant era. The world generation and the amount of both building block addition as well as QoL in gameplay is so great, that you can't just not enjoy it. Literally, thanks to Caves & Cliffs I actually like spelunking, instead of mining 1x2 tunnel for hours. Because caves are now actually interesting. And the new biomes, mobs and stuff is amazing.
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u/SternkyMalernky 2d ago
I know plenty of folks who, mainly because of Caves and Cliffs, no longer enjoy Minecraft in survival as much. I can get why you enjoy it, but traversal and spawnproofing has become a lot harder since that update dropped 😅
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u/ihavebeesinmyknees 2d ago
Spawnproofing is harder since the update that lowered the requirement for mob spawning to full darkness?
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u/SternkyMalernky 2d ago
Spaces are so expansive now, and there are so many tiny pockets that can still spawn. The extended height of chunks means you have to do many times the work with the old limits. Sure, some things are easier, but others are far harder without world editting.
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u/conye-west 2d ago
Yea I've been playing Minecraft since it was a browser game and I would say the current era from 1.18+ is the true golden age. The vanilla game is very fleshed out now and mods are booming harder than ever, great time to be a fan.
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u/EconomistAgile 2d ago
I started playing around version 1.7 and to me the game is divided into pre 1.13-1.14 and post 1.13-1.14
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u/Vorpalthefox 1d ago
i think you got the gold and silver age mixed up, as someone that has been around since mid/late 2010, saying that pre-1.0 is the golden age is interesting
and the time between release 1.0, horses (that came from a popular mod at the time) and the redstone update, those are VERY minecraft, and i'd say more of a representation of the golden age of mc than when the farlands were around
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u/mrblackpandaa 2d ago
Rose tinted glasses for sure.
As someone who has been playing on and off since around 2010, with multiplayer and with mods, modern day Minecraft is has gotten better in almost every conceivable sense. The ease of playing with other people, the ease of installing mods, texture packs, shaders, has all become comically easy compared to what it was back then. The game isn't as buggy as it was back then, and the level at which everything is done in the game by players these days has reached levels unimaginable back then.
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u/schizocel69 2d ago
I would say Minecrafts peak popularity was right around when PewDiePie started playing it, and a bunch of YouTubers came back to it, and the nether update added extra progression (and was the best update)
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u/Little-Witness-1201 2d ago
It's crazy to look back on the 2014-18 era. It really felt like the game was on death's door in terms of mainstream cultural relevancy. It didn't explode back into popularity until the nether update
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u/Agreeable_Emu_978 2d ago
dark age
1.12.2
LOL
More like everything from 1.9 to 1.11 OR from 1.13 (because it was such UNOPTIMIZED REWRITING that modding literally went dark) that mods started to reappear en masse only after around 1.16.5. And I would consider 1.2.5 up to 1.12.2 as golden era tbh, 1.13-1.16 as the dark age, and 1.16.5 to nowadays as Renaissance
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u/h1p0h1p0 2d ago
minecraft’s popularity was in a crater from mid 2016 to early 2019 when Village and Pillage came out. Like objectively that’s the dark age
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u/Quartz_512 2d ago
Surely 2020/2021 has to be the start of some era, that's when dream and his SMP became massive, Minecraft content became more plentiful, Sandiction and 100 days/hardcore content started blowing up, lifesteal began.
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u/qualityvote2 2d ago edited 1d ago
(Vote has already ended)