Classic Minecraft

Classic is the second phase in the development cycle of Minecraft, following Pre-classic and preceding Indev, and was the first Minecraft development stage to have some of its versions released to the public. This phase was unnamed until June 28, 2010 when a blog post was written to name the development phases of Minecraft. Creative and later Survival game modes were introduced in this phase.

The release of Survival mode in Classic was conducted in a series of tests named Survival Test. It was a very early version of the game mode. The test had a point-based system, where the player could acquire points from killing some of the game's first mobs. Even after Classic was phased out, Survival Test was still playable until the website received a major overhaul on December 16, 2010, where it was quietly removed.

Classic does not support many of the main features in the current versions such as crafting, inventory, or dynamic lighting. The additions of features such as sneaking gradually made Classic obsolete. Despite this, many players continued to use Classic for building things that would take too long in Beta. The addition of Creative mode rendered Classic completely obsolete.

## History

Sand has been available for use since Classic. During that time, sand blocks were rare and only appeared naturally in one block-thick beaches (usually by water or in the middle of a landscape). These beaches were always level and below Ocean level. Sand instantly appeared at the lowest point it could go when placed above an air block without any sort of falling animation. Destroying a pillar made from sand from the bottom would cause the sand to disappear from the top first. Gravel and sand "fell" when placed in mid-air by moving directly above the nearest block directly below them, instead of turning into falling block entities and falling. These attributes were present until the release of Infdev.
An old glitch in Classic 0.0.23a\_01 allowed players to raise the height of a fluid block by placing sand (or gravel) over it. The sand block would stay suspended in mid-air until it was broken. When broken, a fluid block corresponding to the type below the gravel or Sand would appear where the block was. The suspended fluid block would remain immobile until a block was placed next to it, causing a flood. This bug has since been fixed, but has been reported that it has happened before.

An interesting and often humorous quirk in Classic is that whenever the player moves, they will swing their arms wildly around. This was changed in Indev and removed in Alpha v1.0.9 because hands and blocks in hand would have moved tirelessly back and forth, ultimately blocking the player's view.

## Website Availability

The latest version of the Classic Creative game mode had been still playable for free on Minecraft's website. It was no longer updated and only kept for historical purposes. According to Notch, he planned on "...slowly phasing it out. I won't remove it, though. Just hide it." It was playable in both singleplayer and multiplayer variations. There were mods which had been added to multiplayer, making the game more varied in gameplay. Some special custom game modes like Capture The Flag, Lava Survival, TNT Wars or Zombies had also been created.

On August 8, 2012, the link on the website to Classic was removed, but re-added after many complaints. On July 1, 2013, because of the new launcher being able to play Classic, the link to Classic was removed again, though the page remained playable. The Classic game at that page went unsupported for some time, meanwhile several major browsers increased their default Java security to the point where the game became essentially unplayable, until at some point between September 10 and 12 2015, the page containing Classic was itself removed entirely. Classic is now available solely to play via the Minecraft launcher if Alpha versions are enabled. Classic, Infdev, and a few pre-Classic versions (but not Indev) are included under "Alpha."

## See Also

Pre-Classic

Alpha

Indev

Infdev

Beta

Official Release

Unused Features

Removed Features