Something else vital is that it ran on almost everything. Even before it expanded to every smartphone and console available, you could get it to run on a cheap

Something else vital is that it ran on almost everything. Even before it expanded to every smartphone and console available, you could get it to run on a cheap and old laptop. Even 10fps was serviceable if you played on peaceful :) I actually got into Minecraft during classic, and I chased performance optimizations all the way to Linux. Even with all the feature additions, by the time it hit beta, it ran better on my laptop than it did in infinidev / alpha. When it entered beta and Jeb took over in 2011, it felt like an inflection point. Minecraft just _kept_ _getting_ _bigger_. Every time I come back, there's something new that I discover. I think that's part of the secret. Even with a wiki up at all time, there's still the delight and horror of discovery. I went got back into the game recently, went strip mining 5 blocks above bedrock, and was pleasantly surprised by the whole process :)