Besides the lack of an ingame manual, a few things about Minecraft that might seem bad actually made it successful since the alpha: - time-consuming resource c

Besides the lack of an ingame manual, a few things about Minecraft that might seem bad actually made it successful since the alpha: - time-consuming resource collection - lack of objectives - low-res graphics, even though the engine is capable of high-res - one-click sword combat mechanics - no official multiplayer server - Java (not common for games at the time) - glitches that don't completely break the game The most interesting one is resource collection. It actually encourages building by forcing players to think about what resources to use and making it more impressive in multiplayer to see large/expensive structures.