Java Edition Classic Minecraft had such vibrant, bright, bold colors. Colors we haven’t really seen in the game since like bright pure green, spring/mint green, lavender-blue, two types of purple, pure magenta, and rose magenta. It really speaks to the optimistic idealism and simplicity I think this version of Minecraft embodied.
Java Edition Beta shifted and squished these colors into an overall darker palette with the addition of brown and a much darker green and cyan (teal) wool. The cooler colors were shifted to “standardized” ones. Blue in this version is a pure, very dark ultramarine blue. We have Pink ™ instead, etc. This is the palette of colored wool that most veteran players have played with for the majority of their time with Minecraft.
In Early Release Java Edition (1.2.4) the saturation of wool was toned down noticeably, making the spectrum of wool blocks slightly darker than before. Most notably yellow, orange, and pink look a lot duller when you compare them directly and it changed the mood of the game drastically downwards IMO.
This was basically a downgrade in my opinion, and didn’t last too long in the scheme of things.
Then everything changed when the Fire Nat- World of Color update happened and cheered the hell up out of the Minecraft wool color palette as a whole, while adding concrete and glazed terracotta.
Pink actually looks fresher and more vibrant than ever before, orange looks fruity, yellow looks lemony, etc. There were some big changes to the overall hues themselves though, like lime wool actually being more yellowish and lime-like instead of pure green, and “light blue” is now a completely different color, being cyan in color instead of literally a lighter blue, which is completely gone now. The darker tones of brown, dark-green “green”, and blue, and teal “cyan” have all been brightened, etc.
Overall I’d say the world of color update was a great thing that needed to happen, but it also shifted the perception of the game towards something more cartoonish, inclusive, and kid-friendly as a whole too, while abandoning certain aspects/conventions of the older aesthetic styles that lent themselves to more stoic and serious types of builds.
Looking at it historically, you could see it as a return to the oldest aesthetic Minecraft embodied, but while it did make it brighter overall, they also ended up ditching a bunch of interesting pure, niche, and/or in-between colors that are actually brighter/more vibrant than the ones ingame, those which are ironically closer to promotional art for the game.
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