A note on Minecraft informants and how The Golden Age frequently gets defined:
You may have heard the words "The Golden Age" be used to describe a period in Minecraft history where the game was different and supposedly more special in a way, before. You also may have seen some YouTubers fallaciously hard-define it as "versions from Minecraft Alpha to Minecraft Release 1.2".
If you felt a shudder at seeing Release 1.2 in there, you probably know where this is going.
This is happening a lot, because people don't dig very deep when they make their analyses, and I think it's just an interpretation of the rules in the sidebar of that /r/GoldenAgeMinecraft subreddit.
For your information, in 2024, it looks like:
Which would make sense, if versions allowed in the rules had to match versions that the forum title is explicitly about.
But they're not, and in 2020 it actually said:
That should raise a few questions. One of them could be "does a version have to be a part of the Golden Age just because the rules say you can post it here?" I'd say no. No it doesn't.
Finally, in 2019, it said:
So what's actually happening here, why the drift?
Well, this drift was a somewhat sensitive issue on the subreddit, once upon a time. I remember somebody asking (not word for word) "This is it, right? The amount of newer versions that are included won't go any further?"
It didn't really represent a growing range of versions that had been vindicated by history. People didn't come to the realization some day that Minecraft 1.2 was a more amazing time in history than they used to give it credit for. Minecraft 1.2 is part of the Silver Age. And I personally just so happen to remember it fondly.
The catch is that people on the subreddit just liked being allowed to post stuff from later versions than is normal in a retro MC forum. Versions like Minecraft 1.0.0 were an aside. It didn't change the consensus to actually include release Minecraft 1.0.0 in the list of versions that were special in the same way as Alpha 1.2.6 or Beta 1.4.
You can actually find posts there that are well outside of even the newest range of permitted instances. Stuff like "What do you think of the new ores in 1.17? let's discuss it" and the posts will have plenty of upvotes, and you get insulted if you try to call it out, even though it blatantly ignores the rules. And I was basically attacked for daring to mess with block textures in an uncommon way with my starting Beta 1.8 mod for some reason, it's a stupid and shitty community.
The truth is that Beta 1.8 is a terrible version, and it set the standard for a lot of updates that would make the game vastly different than it was during the real golden age. No matter how much people like Minecraft FR 1.2, or just have fond memories of it or whatever other reason they own that it speaks to them, the gameplay of those old vanilla versions will not reconcile. Beta 1.8 had an updated and unfavorably-remembered terrain generator and brought hunger and sprinting which messed with the balance of night's threat level, and further versions added enchanting and, at the point of FR 1.6, a much more severe hunger system. Which people also sometimes try to say is in the Golden Age.
Look, I'm not trying to be a killjoy here, and I hope I don't stop having 50 followers, or get the ultra-predictable "old man yells at cloud nostalgia!" response, but we need to be careful about how we designate the meaning of "The Golden Age" for Minecraft. As far as I recall, the meter had already been set. Minecraft Classic to Minecraft Beta 1.7.3.
But if we lump more versions into it, there's no telling how much slippage we'll see in the future. One day somebody might tell you that Phantoms and the EULA oppression are in the golden age. It would be like saying that Abraham Lincoln was part of The Renaissance because Abraham Lincoln was cool. People might tell me the "golden versions" is a subjective range, but that's just it: I don't think it should be subjective. Subjectivity is a bad idea when you're defining eras of history. And the versions that came out in 2011 will always be the versions that came out in 2011. They don't change.
If we can't all agree on one solid golden age definition, we should at least take the time to replay the versions we want to praise to make sure we understand them recently, or just to look into things more than just "that sidebar has that version and the forum name says those words so there must be a link." Minecraft Beta before The Adventure Update was really good, and unique in a way that Alpha was too, and you'd be amazed at how many problems Beta 1.8 has. While working on my mod I realized that it appears to have been a rushed stepping stone made so that Mojang could get to the prereleases leading to Release 1.0.0 as quickly as possible. It's got oodles of things that would have to be fixed before it could be an acceptable standalone version of the game. Why do you think NBODE has been taking so long to come out?
