I mean, is it MMO style?

No. The game can be played in either a singleplayer environment or on a server, but the servers are independent of each other, so you'll never get an MMO-like situation.

I would recommend using bread as food early on (or simply putting all items in a chest and suiciding). You get bread by destroying the long grass that is everywhere until you get a lot of seeds. Then you plow some dirt nearby some water (or move the water to your dirt with a bucket) till the dirt with a hoe, and plant the seeds. Do something else while it grows, and after enough time has passed you can harvest the crops for 1 wheat and 0-2 seeds which can be replanted. 3 wheat items can be crafted into 1 loaf of bread.

It's complicated, and time consuming, but it's the most reliable source of food you can get. Other options are to chop down lots of trees and hope they have apples, then replant the trees, going on a zombie killing spree to get their rotten flesh (each piece has a 50% chance of making you slightly hungrier though...), chopping up animals and cooking their tasty flesh, finding mushrooms and making mushroom stew.

You could conceivably bump into one of us, but there are tons of servers. Multiplayer is referred to as SMP most of the time.

Some servers like to think they're MMOs, but they only hold up to 100 or so players, and are frequently lame.

I mostly play on one of three servers. Brodiecraft, MintyFresh, and wipfcraft. The IPs are respectively, 66.225.198.130:25628, 67.222.144.216:25580, and I don't remember.

Oh ok. So you don't really come into contact with other people? It sounds like there are many many servers...

You know, I find it funny how this thread was inspired by the spinoff thread "creeper sense tingling"...

Sarg, you can come in contact with others if y'all are on the same server. It is somewhat similar to an MMO, it's just that the servers are very small (very rarely do they top 100 players, as dD noted), so the 'massively' part is a bit off.

whos minecraft is he knew

NO HES NOT ITS A FUCKING CORPORATEMONEYSUCKER THAT TURNED NOTCH INTO FILTHY MULTIMILLIONAIRE EVEN THOUGH ITS NOT EVEN A STUPID PERPETUAL BETA ANYMORE STOP BUYING THAT SHIT AND BUYMORE LEGO WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT CORPORATEMONEYSUCKER

BETHESDA IS A HARD WORKING COMPANY THAT IS GETTING RIPPED OFF BY CORPORATE BEHEMOTH MOJANG THAT IS TRYING TO STEAL THEIR WORK WITH THIS "SCROLLS" GAME!!!!!1!11!!!1'

WE NEED TO STOP MOJANG FROM TAKING OVER THE WORLD OF GAMING AND KNOCKING SMALLER GAMING COMPANIES LIKE BETHESDA OUT OF THE PICTURE WITH FAILED LAWSUIT COSTS.

This, is Minecraft.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded%26v%3DMmB9b5njVbA&feature=player_embedded&v=MmB9b5njVbA&gl=US

Bump for star and future post

"So where do you get food from?"

You can get food in a variety of ways. You can get food from killing Chickens, Cows, and Pigs. Killing a Chicken will drop one piece of Raw Chicken and 0-2 feathers. Killing a Cow drops 1-3 pieces of Raw Beef IIRC. And killing a Pig will drop 0-2 pieces of Raw Pork.

Now you can eat the raw food and it will replenish your hunger meter that depletes the more you move around and the more actions you take. Actions such as mining, moving, sprinting, placing blocks will all have an effect on your hunger meter. Eating some pieces of raw food have a chance to make you sick. For example, raw pork and raw chicken has a chance to make you sick IIRC.

You can also kill Zombies and they will drop Rotten Flesh which can be eaten and restores two hunger meter pops. Eating Rotten Flesh actually comes with an 80% chance of getting food poisoning. And your hunger meter will start to deplete in 30 seconds. As opposed to eating something else that didnt make you sick, which would last you considerably longer.

You can also grow wheat. You grow wheat by collecting seeds. Destroying tall grass has a chance to drop a seed. Once you have some seeds you'll need to make a hoe. Till some grass/dirt and that makes it into farmland tile. You can make farmland anywhere and plant the seeds as long as the dirt is tilled. But it will grow significantly faster if there is water nearby. And also an adequate light source. A block containing water will hydrate soil 4 blocks away from it. It will also keep that soil from reverting back to regular dirt.

The seedling will then take some time to develop. Depending on how you have placed the seeds and what the adjacent blocks are around it will determine how quickly it grows. It will go through a process of 7 stages before it is fully grown. When it reaches maturity, you can harvest it and it will drop one piece of wheat and 0-3 seeds I believe.

You can also get food from growing melons but this can be a bit challenging to get started. You'll need to acquire melon seeds from a chest in a mineshaft or stronghold. And then they can be planted the same way as seeds and will produce a melon. Which can then be harvested and will drop 3-7 melon slices.

Minecraft, my 8 year old boy enjoys it ......... it's for kids and people who think like kids :-)

Well, back in perpetual beta, it used to be played by those weird indie teenagers until they discovered everyone plays it now. They say they used to play minecraft before it was cool.

My 12 and 10 year old are addicted to it, almost as bad as their father's WebDIP addiction!
I'm too old to understand all the gaming issues nowadays, but is there any chance of one of my kids downloading a virus from one of these servers? I have told them that they have no idea what, or who they are downloading, is there cause for concern? Is there a way I can feel comfortable with what they HAVE downloaded, of course they think it's all fine.... although my world was perfect when I was 10 as well

Make certain Microsoft Security Essentials is loaded and running. That's one of the best things to do. And get a router with a firewall built in. That will allow you to research and close off ports that have known potential issues. Don't give the kids the router's password so they can't get on and open things up when they get "smarter" than you.

So there definitely are potential threats?

There is potential threats everywhere. For example, my iPod Touch got infected recently; my Windows XP got infected while looking at YouTube...and so on. So, yes, there is potential security threats.

Make sure you have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and, if needed, boot into safe mode upon booting up.

Our family computer is a Mac, which makes things better, but still not safe?

Like previously mentioned, you can get a threat from just about anywhere but playing on a minecraft server is relatively safe. I'd say you have a higher chance getting something leisurely browsing the internet than getting something from being on a minecraft server.

If you got a virus from playing minecraft, I wouldn't be surprised if you were the first one to ever have that happen to them. Browsing the web and visiting sites like this one (not this one in particular, of course, I mean other online game sites) are much more likely to get you infected than any game that requires payment and doesn't utilise the browser. (With the exception of games which allow you to upload your own stuff you've created, like War3 maps)

I got my account only a few updates after Alpha was released. I was around for the Seeeecret Friday update, the Beta update, and many, many more. Who else was around before Beta?

I was around when Notch added survival mode. And I was like WTF is this? Why would I want to play in this mode when I can just create things? Little did I know.

Little did you know? What does that mean?

£16, £16. Is it worth it? I'm quite tempted to try this game. But don't want to waste £16 on a fad :/

I think its worth it. Do you like open sandbox games? Check out some of the videos on youtube.

I've checked out a few of the videos - it does look fun and intriguing. I wonder about how long it takes to build the cities it keeps mentioning though - I wonder if it's something that might become quite mundane. A lot of the same processes over and over again?

Open sandbox - what does that phrase mean?

Also, I'm most intrigued by the potential to meet others in multiplayer and see their 'worlds'. Is that a common aspect or not really a main feature?