I'm not convinced this was the intention. I remember there used to be some writing by Notch on Minecraft's website that went something like (paraphrasing from

I'm not convinced this was the intention. I remember there used to be some writing by Notch on Minecraft's website that went something like (paraphrasing from memory): "When thinking about whether to make the game easier or harder, I generally lean towards harder. This might make the game frustrating if there isn't some sort of goal, so I think I will have to build in a goal for players." I'm sure this passage is long gone, I unfortunately don't have time to go digging through the Internet Archive right now. But I assume this "goal" become The End.