OK, let's say Notch sends you an email saying that you are lead developer of Minecraft 2. To make sure you're up to the job, his first assignment for you is to give a short presentation on key points in Minecraft 2.
He wants you to write a list of 6-12 new major features that you will be working on implementing in Minecraft 2. Also, he want a 3-12 paragraphy short story describing Minecraft 2 to a prospective Minecraft player. The premise of Minecraft 2 is that you are a player from Minecraft that has suddenly awaken in a new world, that's still pretty earth like, but maintaining some of the quirks you're used to to know that it's a Minecraft world. Please write your story in the second person as if you are describing to an adventurer their first few days in this new world.
GO!
Here's mine:
Brand new engine with higher resolution textures, 1024 height limit, realistic water shaders, & terrain smoothing.
Scaleable sized finite worlds with appropriate location dependent sun, star, and moon movement.
New physics system- build massive working ships that can crash into floating icebergs, trees that fall when you chop them down, and more.
New Terrain, Biome, Ocean generation system. Topographical regions are first generated, then biomes are generated over those based on elevation, temperature, & humidity. Then oceans are filled in & inland below sea level areas will have the ability to be swamps, deserts, or lakes depending on the humidity. Temperature & Humidity zone sizes will be scaleable by the user prior to map creation.
Dynamic water system with flowing rivers from realistic sources, changing tides, whirlpools, and more
Location & biome based seasons
Plant & Animal life: Many new plants & both male and female animals, but more importantly- plants and animals will naturally reproduce passing dominant and recessive traits genetically. Plants & animals will be able to die due to old age, disease, or overcrowding. Animals will also be able to die from starvation or from predators.
Sentients! Primitive overworld fortresses, towns, villages, & cities will be randomly generated on the map containing a variety of races and almost infinite factions.
(sort of 8a) Players will be able to amass allies to aid them in their projects & begin their own civilization
(sort of 8b) Players will be able to take part in wars, defending against sieges & using their civilization's army to besiege enemy fortresses.
(sort of 8c) Random building generation code can learn from buildings users create.
You awaken on a beach. In the distance you see the sun rising over vast snowcapped mountains surrounded by clouds, making their shadows recede into nothingness. Behind you the ocean waves gently wash against the pebbly beach that you've found yourself on. At the edge of the horizon above the vast ocean you see a moon setting behind a formation of islands seemingly floating in the sky. A second moon moves independently & in a different phase, independent from the dance of the sun & the other moon. You surmise that one moon rises at every night & sets every morning like the moon you knew before. And perhaps this other moon moves differently, but just how you don't understand yet.
You wonder what perils could await you after one day in this world, & you decide that you don't want to find out & go to work on the first tree you find. You go to work on a tree & find that it falls over, which you find odd, expecting to the rest of the trunk to float there, but this world is already a bit odd. You do find that you can use the wood to make a crafting bench, an axe, and a pick like you could before, and go to work starting a small mine in order to build a furnace for the night, or better yet, find some coal.
Night falls just as you get your shelter up. Your only light is provided for you by the light of your furnace that you are using to create charcoal. Outside you hear the all to familiar sounds of skeletons walking & zombies growling, but you hear other sounds too. Wolves howling at a presumably full moon, and terrifying screeches and wails. You tremble as you grip your freshly made sword. After the enderdragon & countless blazes & ghasts, you wonder why you'd be afraid, but still you shiver.
Daylight comes. You don't know if there are creepers in this world, so you dart out of your shelter as fast as you can. You decide that you need to find food & wool to both eat before you starve & to have a warm bed at night. So you wander the countryside hunting wild game & searching for some sheep. You come to an elevated plain with a deep canyon cut into it. Finally, you see a group of sheep. You don't have sheers, so you decide the only way to get that wool is by killing, and you ready your stone sword and charge at a sheep. Taking down your first sheep you hear a sound. A sound like a mad sheep. A sheep you've never seen before- one with curled horns- charges at you. You run, but it hits anyways & you find yourself falling down the gorge.
Splash! The roar of the river becomes muffled as you struggle to surface under water. The current carries you quickly away and you can only try your best not to be injured by the rocks. After some struggle and quite a distance traveled, the river slows.
You find yourself at the edge of a very primitive village. People living in huts, surrounding a stone shrine with an impression where a diamond appears to have been. The people of the village look at you strangely, and whisper about how different this stranger looks. In the distance you see a black castle with smoke rising from it and lava pouring out of spouts below some of the crenelations & you think to yourself that perhaps they have a diamond like the one that this village seemingly lost, but they don't appear friendly. You retreat into the woods to build a base and form a plan.
I am not creative enough to to do but I really like some of your ideas. Only one I may not like it the higher resolution textures. How much higher are we talking. I don't think it should go over 128x128. Other wise it because....to unminecraftlike (my word)
There won't be a Minecraft 2. Minecraft 2.0 will be an update of Minecraft. Still Notch.
Second, there are so many things wrong with upgraded graphics. In a game that's known for blocky, retro graphics in a world of 3D realism in games, upgrading the graphics is the stupidest possible thing to do. Also, there's a damn good reason that the game is such low graphics. In a world thats 5 times the size of earth, do you realize the processing power needed to handle anything around 1028+? I'm sure many of the better computers could handle, but the pull of this game is that you can play it on crap computers if you want to - no need to spend hundreds on a good computer just to have the right specs.
Why do people want a Minecraft 2? =/ That. . . what?
If he wants money he'll just get DLC. And to get in new players he'll make bigger updates.
The game will probably get much better and bigger updates in 2012 so there is no reason to make a whole new game.
Especially since there wouldn't be much to overhaul.
There won't be a Minecraft 2. Minecraft 2.0 will be an update of Minecraft. Still Notch.
Second, there are so many things wrong with upgraded graphics. In a game that's known for blocky, retro graphics in a world of 3D realism in games, upgrading the graphics is the stupidest possible thing to do. Also, there's a damn good reason that the game is such low graphics. In a world thats 5 times the size of earth, do you realize the processing power needed to handle anything around 1028+? I'm sure many of the better computers could handle, but the pull of this game is that you can play it on crap computers if you want to - no need to spend hundreds on a good computer just to have the right specs.
Hence 5-10 years.
Also nobody would ever actually explore a minecraft map enough for it to be 5 times the size of the earth.
Also have you tried running minecraft on a crap computer? The FPS can be awful.
I don't get why everyone's getting so stickily. This is supposed to be a fun thread for people like me that imagine what Minecraft could be like in 10 years. I'm not trying to be super realistic or anything. Of course Notch wouldn't pick out some random Minecraft fan to be the lead developer at Mojang on Minecraft 2.
Translation: this thread isn't serious business, RELAX.
While I do agree that he'd still (most likely) want to make money, he wouldn't make it off of a sequel to a game that doesn't need a sequel. He'd just start a new game entirely. People wouldn't feel the need to buy a Minecraft 2, since most of them would already play (and love) the original.
Fix boats.
Fix powered and chest minecarts so they hook up and behave like real minecarts.
Fix animals regrowing coats when shorn
Fix SMP. Everything that's currently subpar or broken for SMP, fix it.
Maybe add finite water
--More dimensions (the code already exists)
In the past, Notch has added standalone mods like BetterLight to the game, with acknowledgments. I'd like to add the following updates and DLC, in no particular order:
--BiomeTerrainMod/PhoenixTerrainMod/BBOB. This should become part of the extended base game engine.
--Nature Overhaul (perhaps as part of a Forestworlds Update, featuring a lush jungle plane with a serpent boss)
--Nandonalt's Ocean Life mod family (corals, sponges, fish, sharks, snails). Perhaps as part of an Atlantis Update, featuring a vast oceanic plane with lots of underwater NPC villages, improved boats, new plants (seaweed, Lotus root), fish nets that you can cast and AFK and then come back to harvest, simple submarines or diving bells or even just an improved underwater breathing enchantment, and a giant squid boss.
--A true Skylands/Aether plane Update: Aether Mod, new mobs (birds, fireflies or butterflies), new items/blocks as per the original Aether Mod, perhaps the boss in the Aether is a giant Garuda entity or a Roc or a Djinn
--A mountain Update: Elevation biome gets unique temperature/weather (snow caps). NPC villages inside mountains are like small self-contained Abandoned Mines, but have dwarves or goblins. New ores. New trees & plants (Flowering mountain laurel with reddish bark, Dwarf pine with grayish bark, Bluebell flower that gives a blue or purple dye. New mobs (goat, Ice Giant or cave troll). Improvements to minecarts. Drawbridges that do not require redstone. A red dragon boss, or a giant, or a Balrog, or a Dire Wolf.
--A desert Update: Hot deserts and cold deserts, new plant (Agave), Cactus mod (you can make sticks and wooden-level tools from cactus blocks), new mob (Sidewinder or Asp), new muted smoother texture for sandstone, new procedural dungeon type "Tomb", boss is a giant scorpion or asp or Djinn or lion that dwells in a pyramid stronghold, new mountain generator that makes extreme hills that do not suffer from having the top few layers made of sand. NO notch ponds on surface, water is only available underground or at the coast or river.
--A coherent system for traveling from one plane to another. Currently, you need an Endportal to get to the End, and a Nether portal to get to the Nether. I'd like to see a universal interdimensional transport system. Maybe Stargate
--Planar colonization should be more or less feasible on every plane. The End is sort of barren and has very limited solid land. That said, after the Dragon has been defeated, its inhabitants are entirely neutral to you, as long as you're careful. On the other hand, the Jungle Domain and the Skylands and Atlantis should be richly populated, highly biodiverse, full of new blocks, items, recipes, mobs, and unique terrain procedural objects.
I'm more interested in knowing why would Notch choose me.
But anyway:
1- Transform villagers into pigmen, and make their villages include a simple barter system.
2- Stairs for every block type, except wool.
3- New block: Anti-ender. Will prevent endermen spawning on the chunk. Crafted with enderpearls.
4- Cancel red dragons; add winged creepers as a rare mob instead.
5- Instead of the End, Minecraft 2 uses the Nether for bosses. Bosses include mega ghast, super blaze, rock monster, etc. You summon them by blocks on fortresses. Credits don't exist, since there are many and none is the "main". Rather, credits (with no poem) can be accessed from main menu.
6- Un-nerf weapons; improve combat in general.
7- Water will have the old system, instead of "if it touches a block, it's a source".
8- 3 new slime-like mobs: boss slime, pet slime and mountain slime.
9- Boats have the pre-1.7 physics. Boat elevators and roads are possible again.
10- Improve potions and enchantments: simpler and less random.
11- Terrain overhaul: Remove the mountain biome; add extremely random mountains to all biomes. Ocean is 60% smaller, and has less depth. Forests are less dense, and trees can be on mountains as well. Beaches are near water: from 1 to 2 blocks, except in swamps. Swamps have the 1.8 colors and blend better. Ferns/ shrubs will generate again.
12- New structure, very rare (rarer than villages): abandoned factory. Spawns on surface like villages. Includes storage minecarts and normal pistons. Includes skellie spawners.
13- New biome: Savannah. Like in pre-1.8, but with more features: special type of tall grass, greater pig spawn rate.
11- Terrain overhaul: Remove the mountain biome; add extremely random mountains to all biomes. Ocean is 60% smaller, and has less depth. Forests are less dense, and trees can be on mountains as well. Beaches are near water: from 1 to 2 blocks, except in swamps. Swamps have the 1.8 colors and blend better. Ferns/shrubs will generate again.
Agree totally with all these except for oceans. All biomes IMO need to be about 1.5x as large as they are now, except for Tundra and Ocean.
Tundra needs to be differentiated into Taiga, Tundra, and a blend between the two, with slightly less dense trees. This brings me to a related but more fundamental problem, blending of biomes. All biomes should at least try to blend gently into the next biome, without sharp lines. Rivers are cool, but they are too frequent and uniform in size and spacing.
Ocean size - while I'm personally happy with oceans >4km across, I agree I'd have to draw the line at oceans 20km wide. Oceans should have a minimum size roughly 500 m and a maximum size roughly 5000 m in any dimension. (They can be spawned side-by-side, partially breaking this rule, but that should happen very rarely.)
As far as ocean depth is concerned, right now the deeper depths are crying out for some sort of content. Occasional trenches and holes into caverns don't cut it. New blocks, items, sea mobs, water plants, and visibility tools are needed for fully exploring the oceanic world. A beefed up Underwater Breathing potion and Underwater Breathing helmet enchantment are needed. If all those were to happen, I wouldn't mind having oceans that are 12-18 m deep in places.
Removing the mountain biome and porting its terrain code to random mountains throughout is a good idea. A special case could be made for saving "dedicated mountainous terrain" for the Mountain Update, as I have outlined above. In this update, you would get to travel to a plane with a slightly higher build limit, taller and more massive mountains, encompassing all biomes; new mountain-related blocks, items, mobs, textures, and recipes. This is the sort of plane that is endless ranks of majestic peaks, rolling hills, and fjordlike valleys and ravines cutting deep into the earth.
9- Boats have the pre-1.7 physics. Boat elevators and roads are possible again.
Boat elevators were a gas! I loved the weir ways we had to use booster carts, too.
So often this is how games go wrong. "BUT NOTCH NEVER INTENDED THAT IT'S NOT A NERF IT'S A FIX!" Who gives a flying fork? It was fun! This isn't EQ or WoW. We don't all have to be playing the same game. If people are enjoying an unintended feature, why not let them keep that option???
"BECAUSE THAT WOULD LEAD TO ANARCHY YOU COMMUNIST!"
Um, yeah right. A more sane comment would be "WHY NOT MOD IT HOW YOU WANT IT?" - and sadly I can't. I have to rely on mods that others make, and there aren't always mods to keep cool old features (at least not that I can find) - like water elevators, boat elevators and boosters and so on.
BUT NOTCH IS GOD AND HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN?!?!
Ah, finally a reasonable argument. God is not Swedish, so you're wrong! Look, if I were in charge of MC, I'd empower the mod-makers - and I wouldn't punish people who dug how my game worked, just because I have this fascist streak in my - MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY (and ironically he really doesn't have a fascist streak in him - he does let the modders do their thing, even though he doesn't help them at all (and should, he owes them - he should PAY them). Why not go all the way and let us configure the game we want. If I really like 1.7 or w/e, let me roll back - and if I like new biomes but old styles - let me click buttons until I have that. Yeah, it'd take a little work - but he's got a fjord full of our money.
Anyway, yes, I complain, therefore I am evil. You Notch worshippers, just move along. Nothing to see here....
1. Back to the old mob spawning combined with some new spawning mechanics - peaceful mobs spawn on grass again without their special chunks, its just at a decreased rate and they dont despawn
2.Mo' Creatures mod - Fishes, Bears, Birds at least those mobs should be added
3. More dimensions - Its on everyone's mind ever since the mod came out, we want the Aether!!
4. Terrain Gen. - Oceans are too big, forests are too dense, these must be fixed
5. Underwater life - if the oceans are empty, corals, fish and whales can fill it up
6. Easy server set-up - lets face it, we all want that
He wants you to write a list of 6-12 new major features that you will be working on implementing in Minecraft 2. Also, he want a 3-12 paragraphy short story describing Minecraft 2 to a prospective Minecraft player. The premise of Minecraft 2 is that you are a player from Minecraft that has suddenly awaken in a new world, that's still pretty earth like, but maintaining some of the quirks you're used to to know that it's a Minecraft world. Please write your story in the second person as if you are describing to an adventurer their first few days in this new world.
GO!
Here's mine:
You awaken on a beach. In the distance you see the sun rising over vast snowcapped mountains surrounded by clouds, making their shadows recede into nothingness. Behind you the ocean waves gently wash against the pebbly beach that you've found yourself on. At the edge of the horizon above the vast ocean you see a moon setting behind a formation of islands seemingly floating in the sky. A second moon moves independently & in a different phase, independent from the dance of the sun & the other moon. You surmise that one moon rises at every night & sets every morning like the moon you knew before. And perhaps this other moon moves differently, but just how you don't understand yet.
You wonder what perils could await you after one day in this world, & you decide that you don't want to find out & go to work on the first tree you find. You go to work on a tree & find that it falls over, which you find odd, expecting to the rest of the trunk to float there, but this world is already a bit odd. You do find that you can use the wood to make a crafting bench, an axe, and a pick like you could before, and go to work starting a small mine in order to build a furnace for the night, or better yet, find some coal.
Night falls just as you get your shelter up. Your only light is provided for you by the light of your furnace that you are using to create charcoal. Outside you hear the all to familiar sounds of skeletons walking & zombies growling, but you hear other sounds too. Wolves howling at a presumably full moon, and terrifying screeches and wails. You tremble as you grip your freshly made sword. After the enderdragon & countless blazes & ghasts, you wonder why you'd be afraid, but still you shiver.
Daylight comes. You don't know if there are creepers in this world, so you dart out of your shelter as fast as you can. You decide that you need to find food & wool to both eat before you starve & to have a warm bed at night. So you wander the countryside hunting wild game & searching for some sheep. You come to an elevated plain with a deep canyon cut into it. Finally, you see a group of sheep. You don't have sheers, so you decide the only way to get that wool is by killing, and you ready your stone sword and charge at a sheep. Taking down your first sheep you hear a sound. A sound like a mad sheep. A sheep you've never seen before- one with curled horns- charges at you. You run, but it hits anyways & you find yourself falling down the gorge.
Splash! The roar of the river becomes muffled as you struggle to surface under water. The current carries you quickly away and you can only try your best not to be injured by the rocks. After some struggle and quite a distance traveled, the river slows.
You find yourself at the edge of a very primitive village. People living in huts, surrounding a stone shrine with an impression where a diamond appears to have been. The people of the village look at you strangely, and whisper about how different this stranger looks. In the distance you see a black castle with smoke rising from it and lava pouring out of spouts below some of the crenelations & you think to yourself that perhaps they have a diamond like the one that this village seemingly lost, but they don't appear friendly. You retreat into the woods to build a base and form a plan.
wouldn't he just update it?
Tl;Dr Kinda thing, im sure its interesting to someone, but not me.
BAI
Team fortress 2: I make noobs my bitches.
Poit of Minecraft 2 would be to take advantage of the ability to make an entirely new engine from scratch.
In 5-10 years do you think Notch will even care?
There won't be a Minecraft 2. Minecraft 2.0 will be an update of Minecraft. Still Notch.
Second, there are so many things wrong with upgraded graphics. In a game that's known for blocky, retro graphics in a world of 3D realism in games, upgrading the graphics is the stupidest possible thing to do. Also, there's a damn good reason that the game is such low graphics. In a world thats 5 times the size of earth, do you realize the processing power needed to handle anything around 1028+? I'm sure many of the better computers could handle, but the pull of this game is that you can play it on crap computers if you want to - no need to spend hundreds on a good computer just to have the right specs.
Three Letters.
D L C
T: No
C: Tssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
M: Aww damn
If he wants money he'll just get DLC. And to get in new players he'll make bigger updates.
The game will probably get much better and bigger updates in 2012 so there is no reason to make a whole new game.
Especially since there wouldn't be much to overhaul.
Money???
Yeah that too.
Hence 5-10 years.
Also nobody would ever actually explore a minecraft map enough for it to be 5 times the size of the earth.
Also have you tried running minecraft on a crap computer? The FPS can be awful.
I don't get why everyone's getting so stickily. This is supposed to be a fun thread for people like me that imagine what Minecraft could be like in 10 years. I'm not trying to be super realistic or anything. Of course Notch wouldn't pick out some random Minecraft fan to be the lead developer at Mojang on Minecraft 2.
Translation: this thread isn't serious business, RELAX.
One word: Updates.
While I do agree that he'd still (most likely) want to make money, he wouldn't make it off of a sequel to a game that doesn't need a sequel. He'd just start a new game entirely. People wouldn't feel the need to buy a Minecraft 2, since most of them would already play (and love) the original.
:sad.gif:
Fix powered and chest minecarts so they hook up and behave like real minecarts.
Fix animals regrowing coats when shorn
Fix SMP. Everything that's currently subpar or broken for SMP, fix it.
Maybe add finite water
--More dimensions (the code already exists)
In the past, Notch has added standalone mods like BetterLight to the game, with acknowledgments. I'd like to add the following updates and DLC, in no particular order:
--BiomeTerrainMod/PhoenixTerrainMod/BBOB. This should become part of the extended base game engine.
--Nature Overhaul (perhaps as part of a Forestworlds Update, featuring a lush jungle plane with a serpent boss)
--Nandonalt's Ocean Life mod family (corals, sponges, fish, sharks, snails). Perhaps as part of an Atlantis Update, featuring a vast oceanic plane with lots of underwater NPC villages, improved boats, new plants (seaweed, Lotus root), fish nets that you can cast and AFK and then come back to harvest, simple submarines or diving bells or even just an improved underwater breathing enchantment, and a giant squid boss.
--A true Skylands/Aether plane Update: Aether Mod, new mobs (birds, fireflies or butterflies), new items/blocks as per the original Aether Mod, perhaps the boss in the Aether is a giant Garuda entity or a Roc or a Djinn
--A mountain Update: Elevation biome gets unique temperature/weather (snow caps). NPC villages inside mountains are like small self-contained Abandoned Mines, but have dwarves or goblins. New ores. New trees & plants (Flowering mountain laurel with reddish bark, Dwarf pine with grayish bark, Bluebell flower that gives a blue or purple dye. New mobs (goat, Ice Giant or cave troll). Improvements to minecarts. Drawbridges that do not require redstone. A red dragon boss, or a giant, or a Balrog, or a Dire Wolf.
--A desert Update: Hot deserts and cold deserts, new plant (Agave), Cactus mod (you can make sticks and wooden-level tools from cactus blocks), new mob (Sidewinder or Asp), new muted smoother texture for sandstone, new procedural dungeon type "Tomb", boss is a giant scorpion or asp or Djinn or lion that dwells in a pyramid stronghold, new mountain generator that makes extreme hills that do not suffer from having the top few layers made of sand. NO notch ponds on surface, water is only available underground or at the coast or river.
--A coherent system for traveling from one plane to another. Currently, you need an Endportal to get to the End, and a Nether portal to get to the Nether. I'd like to see a universal interdimensional transport system. Maybe Stargate
--Planar colonization should be more or less feasible on every plane. The End is sort of barren and has very limited solid land. That said, after the Dragon has been defeated, its inhabitants are entirely neutral to you, as long as you're careful. On the other hand, the Jungle Domain and the Skylands and Atlantis should be richly populated, highly biodiverse, full of new blocks, items, recipes, mobs, and unique terrain procedural objects.
I've done all that NEEDS to be done.
But anyway:
1- Transform villagers into pigmen, and make their villages include a simple barter system.
2- Stairs for every block type, except wool.
3- New block: Anti-ender. Will prevent endermen spawning on the chunk. Crafted with enderpearls.
4- Cancel red dragons; add winged creepers as a rare mob instead.
5- Instead of the End, Minecraft 2 uses the Nether for bosses. Bosses include mega ghast, super blaze, rock monster, etc. You summon them by blocks on fortresses. Credits don't exist, since there are many and none is the "main". Rather, credits (with no poem) can be accessed from main menu.
6- Un-nerf weapons; improve combat in general.
7- Water will have the old system, instead of "if it touches a block, it's a source".
8- 3 new slime-like mobs: boss slime, pet slime and mountain slime.
9- Boats have the pre-1.7 physics. Boat elevators and roads are possible again.
10- Improve potions and enchantments: simpler and less random.
11- Terrain overhaul: Remove the mountain biome; add extremely random mountains to all biomes. Ocean is 60% smaller, and has less depth. Forests are less dense, and trees can be on mountains as well. Beaches are near water: from 1 to 2 blocks, except in swamps. Swamps have the 1.8 colors and blend better. Ferns/ shrubs will generate again.
12- New structure, very rare (rarer than villages): abandoned factory. Spawns on surface like villages. Includes storage minecarts and normal pistons. Includes skellie spawners.
13- New biome: Savannah. Like in pre-1.8, but with more features: special type of tall grass, greater pig spawn rate.
-------------------------------------------------------
That's all I guess. Of course, that's in Minecraft 2 before the first update, in later updates I'd probably add small things. Very small things.
Because you have compromising pictures of him with a plate of spaghetti, a pool noodle, a can of shaving cream, and a guitar.
Agree totally with all these except for oceans. All biomes IMO need to be about 1.5x as large as they are now, except for Tundra and Ocean.
Tundra needs to be differentiated into Taiga, Tundra, and a blend between the two, with slightly less dense trees. This brings me to a related but more fundamental problem, blending of biomes. All biomes should at least try to blend gently into the next biome, without sharp lines. Rivers are cool, but they are too frequent and uniform in size and spacing.
Ocean size - while I'm personally happy with oceans >4km across, I agree I'd have to draw the line at oceans 20km wide. Oceans should have a minimum size roughly 500 m and a maximum size roughly 5000 m in any dimension. (They can be spawned side-by-side, partially breaking this rule, but that should happen very rarely.)
As far as ocean depth is concerned, right now the deeper depths are crying out for some sort of content. Occasional trenches and holes into caverns don't cut it. New blocks, items, sea mobs, water plants, and visibility tools are needed for fully exploring the oceanic world. A beefed up Underwater Breathing potion and Underwater Breathing helmet enchantment are needed. If all those were to happen, I wouldn't mind having oceans that are 12-18 m deep in places.
Removing the mountain biome and porting its terrain code to random mountains throughout is a good idea. A special case could be made for saving "dedicated mountainous terrain" for the Mountain Update, as I have outlined above. In this update, you would get to travel to a plane with a slightly higher build limit, taller and more massive mountains, encompassing all biomes; new mountain-related blocks, items, mobs, textures, and recipes. This is the sort of plane that is endless ranks of majestic peaks, rolling hills, and fjordlike valleys and ravines cutting deep into the earth.
Boat elevators were a gas! I loved the weir ways we had to use booster carts, too.
So often this is how games go wrong. "BUT NOTCH NEVER INTENDED THAT IT'S NOT A NERF IT'S A FIX!" Who gives a flying fork? It was fun! This isn't EQ or WoW. We don't all have to be playing the same game. If people are enjoying an unintended feature, why not let them keep that option???
"BECAUSE THAT WOULD LEAD TO ANARCHY YOU COMMUNIST!"
Um, yeah right. A more sane comment would be "WHY NOT MOD IT HOW YOU WANT IT?" - and sadly I can't. I have to rely on mods that others make, and there aren't always mods to keep cool old features (at least not that I can find) - like water elevators, boat elevators and boosters and so on.
BUT NOTCH IS GOD AND HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN?!?!
Ah, finally a reasonable argument. God is not Swedish, so you're wrong! Look, if I were in charge of MC, I'd empower the mod-makers - and I wouldn't punish people who dug how my game worked, just because I have this fascist streak in my - MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY (and ironically he really doesn't have a fascist streak in him - he does let the modders do their thing, even though he doesn't help them at all (and should, he owes them - he should PAY them). Why not go all the way and let us configure the game we want. If I really like 1.7 or w/e, let me roll back - and if I like new biomes but old styles - let me click buttons until I have that. Yeah, it'd take a little work - but he's got a fjord full of our money.
Anyway, yes, I complain, therefore I am evil. You Notch worshippers, just move along. Nothing to see here....
1. Back to the old mob spawning combined with some new spawning mechanics - peaceful mobs spawn on grass again without their special chunks, its just at a decreased rate and they dont despawn
2.Mo' Creatures mod - Fishes, Bears, Birds at least those mobs should be added
3. More dimensions - Its on everyone's mind ever since the mod came out, we want the Aether!!
4. Terrain Gen. - Oceans are too big, forests are too dense, these must be fixed
5. Underwater life - if the oceans are empty, corals, fish and whales can fill it up
6. Easy server set-up - lets face it, we all want that