At first, Minecraft 1.6 wasn’t looking like it would be much fun. Notch mentioned the majority of the release had to do with bug fixes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be glad for a more bug free experience, but bug fixes are about as low on the glamour totem pole as you can get. As the days passed after 1.5, though, Notch seemed to get more ambitious, adding an updating map feature to the 1.6 to-do list along with an update everyone can get excited about – Nether functionality in SMP.

To this point, Nether functionality has only been possible through server mods. It works well enough, but its a strain on server resources and adds one more thing that has to be updated by a third party coder before multiplayer servers using the feature can expect to upgrade.

If you haven’t played in the nether yet, get there in your single player world. It’s unbelievably spooky for a world that is made solely of blocks.