Minecraft Forums

Quote from Monotonality»

I believe it's due to a combination of factors. Both, the rise of Discord and instant messaging Apps, as well as the general decline of the forum itself. I've been here over the years under many names but I know one thing - this place isn't what it used to be, and it saddens me to see it in this state. I've outlasted any friend groups I've had here over the years. I have not really had any bad interactions with staff (that I didn't deserve).

Hope we can bring back some kind of activity.

I remember years ago there was a section called PPNS (Politics, Philosophy, News and Science). Whatever happened to that?

(Hey, I remember you used to go by Thunderhoof and Starlight Glimmer on here. Those were fun times. Anyway, let me actually respond to your post now lol)

Yeah, Discord played a huge part. It was why back then we replaced the old IRC chat and launched an official Minecraft Forum discord that everyone can join via the 'chat' button on the website. While there were a lot who joined (22,000 and counting to be exact), the activity on the discord server never really materialised.

And yes, there used to be a PPNS section on the forum. I can answer your question as I was around during the time when it was removed. To summarise, PPNS resulted in a lot of heated arguments, drama, conflict and created a cesspool of negativity amongst what was otherwise a friendly community at the time. It was also deemed as an additional aspect to moderate and it can be challenging to moderate political discussion whilst being as fair and objective to everyone as possible.

Totally get the MCF admins' decision on removing PPNS though. Planet Minecraft actually allows for political discussion, so you get plenty of LGBTQ+ related posts, politics and discussion on other hot-button issues in the news. The result of this is that community can be quite toxic at times because of the difference in opinion between those who are more liberal vs those who are more conservative and it is a hassle to moderate as well.

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

I would not call Planet Minecraft a thriving community, at least when it comes to the forums (mind that it is largely for sharing maps, resource packs, and mods); many of the sections are just as inactive as these forums (for example, Java Edition discussion, with 3 active threads in the past day. The general off-topic discussion forum is more active but discussion about the game itself is more important, and a dozen recently active threads isn't very many). The only really active Minecraft-related forums that I've come across are for major servers, such as Hypixel (the entire first page is just 10 minutes worth of activity; if you look at all activity it only goes back 1 minute; even Reddit doesn't come close to this, and actually, the way Reddit works makes high activity highly detrimental (instead of a list, with many threads per page, you only see a few posts and not many people will scroll down that far, and by default it sorts by "hot" so only highly rated/active posts are visible - consider my most recent post; either such an insane achievement is meaningless to the average person and/or they have no interest in the question, or it was quickly pushed into oblivion by new/higher-rated posts (by contrast, a picture of a chest of resources got over 10k upvotes and 700+ comments). I've seen people repost something several times in the hopes of getting lucky but that is just spam).

Agreed that the PMC forums section is not that active when it comes to game-related discussion, however that is not an accurate barometer for activity on the site. The bulk of where game-related discussion occurs on Planet Minecraft nowadays is through wall posts or comments on submissions (maps/mods/skins etc).

Sure, there are plenty of individuals who use the wall post section to rant about their day but you do get a good amount of discussion on people sharing their skins/maps/videos, fanart, asking for feedback, tips, talking about their favorite Minecraft YouTubers and if there is a new Minecraft update coming you can bet that people will be sharing their thoughts on it.

Using myself as an example, if I posted something similar as a comment here on the update opinion thread on MCF, I would probably get 1-2 upvotes (if lucky).

If you're looking for long-form, in-depth discussion (like what you usually post here), you are admittedly not gonna find much on it on Planet Minecraft. Discussion there is mostly one or two-liners with comments like 'omg warden is cool' or memes. If there is something controversial (like the recent chat report update), then yes you do get some essay-like posts venting about it. Part of it is due to the younger demographic on PMC (it's mostly teens).

PMC has a creative focus - which is why the community is very much into discussing skins, sharing Minecraft fanart, writing stories, creating maps etc. It may not be up your alley, but all these creative outputs are Minecraft-related and hence constitute as Minecraft-related discussion.

At the end of the day, Planet Minecraft has nearly 10,000 users online (at the time of writing this post), while the Minecraft Forums has 20. I think that says it all.

To preface this, my views do not represent the staff team and are purely my own:

I don't agree with the excessive nature as to how the off-topic rule is enforced. Conversations going a little off-topic is natural and is part of any regular interaction. In the earlier days of the forum, enforcement on this was pretty strict and some of us have carried on with that approach to this day.

I've seen first hand how the heavy-handed moderation has led to many users quitting and leaving over the years and I believe it is one of the key factors as to why the forum is less active today. Planet Minecraft and /r/Minecraft are all very much alive and thriving, so we can't completely attribute the decline in activity purely to Minecraft being less relevant than before.

I like mods that add new dimensions - this one is no exception.

Based on the screenshots, the distinct themes you've got going on for the different layers is really cool!

Depends on what you're using them for.

With regards to gaming and video-editing, a desktop wins hands-down as the superior workstation.

As for school projects, a laptop is pretty much a necessity for me to have for face-to-face group discussions and to work on Google Docs/Slides together.

Could be a nice easter egg, I don't see why not

Being one of the biggest Minecraft creators of all time, he does deserve some sort of tribute.

Mojang made a new blog post about it, outlining some Frequently Asked Questions, so it looks like chat reporting is here to stay.

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/addressing-player-chat-reporting-tool

Not a fan of the bitter taste, so no. I'll take iced tea any day though.

ngl this is scarier than herobrine

fr though I applaud your effort in creative fiction, takes the monotony out from the usual threads I'd have to read.

k

32097, at this point 50,000 already seems like a pipe dream...

Sad to see the steady decline of the forum over the years while Minecraft as a whole has gotten even more popular than before.

I'm been mostly on Planet Minecraft for the past few years, which is where most of the community seems to be at. The off-topic discussions there are quite active too.

So far, Elden Ring.

I posted an installation tutorial on how to install Optifine for Minecraft 1.18!

Quote from Phrossbite»

yeah forums are ancient relics at this point, everyone has migrated to discord. unfortunate tbh

I want to agree with you, but Planet Minecraft is still incredibly active so I guess it boils down to having good marketing, active engagement with the userbase and regular improvements.

That whole deal with MCF being supposedly shut down probably steered some veteran users off the forums who never returned, despite that never coming to fruition.