I'm sure the social aspect is what hooks a number of people, myself included. I run a small whitelisted server for friends and family. It's fun to survive, cre

I'm sure the social aspect is what hooks a number of people, myself included. I run a small whitelisted server for friends and family. It's fun to survive, create and build things by your own and orders of magnitude more fun with friends. I'm regularly on with at least one other person. We always on mumble while playing so we can chat. Go out and explore together ,etc. Another thing that got me hooked is mods, specifically Minecraft Forge and the mods that are built on top of it. It's added so many new dimensions of gameplay. Edit: To add there are also whole mini-games being build within vanilla Minecraft. SethBling is one map making genius. You can play his Super Smash Bros. style PvP map. Or try Vech's series of Complete the Monument style adventure/puzzle maps. The many Let's Play Minecraft series on YouTube that should also be mentioned: Etho, BdoubleO100, Generikb, Direwolf20, KurtjMac, Guude and many more. Some of these have been YouTube partners for a while, Working at it full-time and producing ~30 minutes of content every day.