Minecraft Forums

First of all, I am unsure if I should post this here, but the forum description writes: General discussion about Minecraft, Minecraft development and anything that doesn't fit into the other specific sections.

Since it doesn't fit in other sections, I will post it here.

Here is the story of how I found the date I played Minecraft for the first time. A date that changed my life. A date where my childhood would be different if it went "the other way" (not discovering Minecraft).

I had been wondering about this date since 2017. When was it? Here, you will read about the extreme investigation that I started, the pain I got through, my prediction and the emotional (no joke here) reunion with this date.

It all started in 2017. I started feeling the need to discover this "sacred" date. The date that changed my life and the course of my childhood. But I didn't knew where to start. First of all, I was unsure about the year that I started playing this game. 2013? 2014? or, maybe 2015? I run out of ideas. But in my mojang profile it included a date of purchase:

29 September 2014

I am very happy to have this (also sacred) date, but I played in cracked for many months before this. And I had no more clues.

I started at remembering what version I started playing. 1.7.5, which came out in February 26, 2014. This was a major lead, but not the conclusion.

I asked my cousin a month later about what he remembers. He said 1.7.4, which came out December 10, 2013. I started playing Minecraft the same day as my cousin, and I had no other choice than to listen to him. I had many doubts about 1.7.4, but I had to make all ideas equal.

I didn't remember 1.7.4, which is where my doubts originated.

Years passed, with each year asking my cousin if he remembered something new. Nothing. But, in 2020, I wanted to finish it and to find an end in this mystery. I accepted that the date is lost in time and that the chances of finding the date are the same as finding the seed of my first Minecraft world (impossible). I accepted that the date can only be found if something incredible happens while researching. I also accepted that I can't find the date but improve my prediction with more accurancy, still not what I wanted but I didn't had any choice.

In 2020, I made the following discovery:

If I don't remember 1.7.4, it means that I started near February 26, right? That's what I thought, and my entire theory was soon based on all of this.

I must had started playing Minecraft either December 2013, January 2014 or February 2014, with February getting more emphasis (a lot, actually).

And then, I found a journal that I kept as a child, AND IT INCLUDED FROM 30 DECEMBER 2013 TO 1 FEBRUARY 2014. This helped me make a conclusion: That my timeline was partly wrong, and if I can find any clues to confirm the latter, then there is an increased chance of me starting to play Minecraft at around 17-25 February 2014. I started with no clues and ended up isolating two weeks. How incredible is that?

Yesterday, I almost closed the investigation with the above conclusion (17-25 February 2014). Still a bit sad that I can't find the exact date. But before closing I had to do the last thing that I wanted to do for months, which I never did:

To get the search history of my father's google account and try to find if I can find the date from it. With his permission I did it. It was simple logic, since my father downloaded the game "cracked", he searched for it, so it should be in his search history, right?

I downloaded all the data from his Google account and opened the huge 50MB file with all the search histories. At that point, as with many years ago, I had accepted the fact that the date can't be found and I can only improve my prediction. Then I found this:

Αναζητήσατε τον όρο mine craft
6 Φεβ 2014, 2:16:41 μ.μ. EET
Προϊόντα:
 Αναζήτηση

Even if the above is in Greek, you can understand that it had to do something. Surely. Then I found this:

Αναζητήσατε τον όρο minecraft download
6 Φεβ 2014, 2:17:38 μ.μ. EET
Προϊόντα:
 Αναζήτηση

Αναζητήσατε τον όρο minecraft torrent
6 Φεβ 2014, 2:19:03 μ.μ. EET
Προϊόντα:
 Αναζήτηση

IT WAS WITHOUT DOUBT, THE "SACRED" DATE, THE DATE I STARTED PLAYING MINECRAFT! 6 FEBRUARY OF 2014!

I screamed "OMG DAD I FOUND THE DATE" and couldn't help but stare to the search history as nostalgia takes me back to this considered lost date.

And the best part? I was off by only 11 days in my prediction! I started with not even knowing if it is 2013, 14 or 15 and in my finalised prediction only off by one and a half weeks? OMG!

Here comes the emotional part: I got to my room and started crying. A lot. I was crying for 10 minutes. I never got too emotional in my life before. Now, I know what you are thinking: Why a 15-year-old teenager cry because he found a date he had been searching? Well, I was ready to close my investigation with the result that the date is not able to be found, but before I did that I had to check the search history as a last chance. I had spent at least 8 hours at that point researching this (at least in 2020, since I started this search in 2017, it is much higher) and had exhausted every possible clue. Only the search history remained.

I cried because this date meant something for me, people think differently. Some don't even care, some take it very seriously. I took it seriously. And I also cried because I could not believe that it was found just before I closed my investigation.

I can blame myself for not thinking that previously, I had thought of it but I wanted to prioritize other things and that's why I wanted to do it last. In theory, I could have found it in the beginning.

Today I couldn't sleep. I slept but woke up 5 in the morning unable to sleep because I am still shocked that I found it.

I hope you liked my story. I wanted to post this somewhere so I can finally get it out of my head.

Nice. Minecraft is without a doubt one of the games that shaped my childhood. It's just so fun to play, even after all these years.