Minecraft Mob Vote losers may be added to Minecraft

Mojang took the Mob vote losers out of the bin and they’re coming to Minecraft, eventually

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Shock news came directly from Chief Creative Officer Jens Bergensten on Twitter today as he quietly announced as part of a reply to another tweet, that the previous mob vote losers will be added to Minecraft. Something we previously believed would never happen.

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That said, there is a heavy caveat with this statement but we'll go into that later.

If you're not aware, Jens or @jeb_ has been with Mojang since pretty much day one and worked alongside original creator Notch until he sold the company to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Jens stayed on as part of the team, taking charge of development and has remained as a key part of the team and development process.

A few years after the sale, for Minecon Earth 2017, Mojang announced for the first time ever that they would be allowing the players to choose which mob would be added to the game next via a mob vote which took place during the live show on Twitter.

The mob vote consisted of four different mobs, no further in production than basic sketches, with some idea of how they'd work and what they'd do. The four mobs were known as Mob A, B, C and D which didn't give much away, but each did have a tagline which gave more of an idea of what they did. Mob A was known as "The Monster of the Ocean Depths" which was a Squid-like ocean creature, Mob B, the winner, was known as "The Monster of the Night Skies" who would seek out players that haven't slept. Mob C was "The Great Hunger" and Mob D was "The Hovering Inferno".

...would illuminate dark ocean areas...

It was stipulated prior to the livestream via mini-videos and twitter posts from Mojang, that the losers of the vote would never be added to Minecraft and that made the voting process feel important. The chance for the players to have some direct influence to what was being added to the game was a world first so this was exciting but also daunting as to the ruthless nature of what we were potentially throwing away.

Eventually after a couple of rounds of Twitter polls, Mob B won which we now know as the Phantom, and it's been regarded as one of the worst decisions the player base made. It's often been considered that now that we know how annoying Phantoms are, that one of the other mobs would have been a better choice, but in reality, it's impossible to compare as those other mobs never made it into production and there's no knowing what they might have actually been like in game.

There were then two more mob votes during the annual Minecraft Livestreams. One in 2020 which contained mobs from the spin off mobile app Minecraft Earth, which was being discontinued at the time. The vote consisted of the Moobloom cow that came with a new unique flower, the Iceologer who was an Illager which would hurl ice clouds at players and a Glow Squid which would illuminate dark ocean areas.

...it actually crashes the game...

The Glow squid won with just 36.9% of the first round votes and as expected, because Minecraft doesn't natively support dynamic lighting, these Glow Squid didn't glow and they didn't illuminate dark areas. They were just visible in the dark as their texture didn't process shadows.

Again, this seemed like another disappointment to some, but it did come with Glow Ink Sacs, an item that could be used to make glowing item frames and text on signs glow. The glowing item frames were a nice idea, as they also didn't process shadows, allowing them to be seen brightly from a distance, even at night. However, glowing sign text has plagued the Bedrock Edition version of the game, causing incredible lag and also breaking our previously working system for adding color to signs.

The usual text on signs became dull and impossible to read and you only need a handful of glow signs in the visible range of a player to lose some substantial frames per second. In fact, having enough glow signs in the visible range of a player can drop the frames so far that it actually crashes the game. And this bug still exists! Today! Well over a year later!

...would never, ever be added to the game...

Finally, last year as of writing, in 2021 another Mob Vote was announced and this time included three brand new mobs we'd never heard of. They were the Glare, a small ghost-like mob that detected low light levels, the Allay, a fairy-like mob that collected items and brought them back to the player and the Copper Golem which would have been a small robot-like mob that was attracted to copper buttons and would eventually turn into a statue due to copper's aging properties.

The Allay won on the grounds that this would make sorting systems better in future, taking 51% of the vote in round one of the twitter poll.

Throughout all of this time, since the initial vote in 2017, we were lead to believe that all of the mobs that were voted out would never, ever be added to the game. In contrast to the biome vote losers which we were told would all come to Minecraft eventually, it was stipulated early on that the losing mobs would never make it into the game.

Then, in April 2022, Mob D, "The Hovering Inferno" from the original vote was announced that it was coming to Minecraft. But not the main Minecraft game, it was actually being included in Minecraft Dungeons, another spin-off from Minecraft which is a more linear, dungeon crawler that doesn't actually contain any mining or crafting. They called Mob D Wildfire and it was added as a brand new mob in the Luminous Night seasonal adventure appearing in the Flames of the Nether DLC.

...if/when they fit and can be prioritized...

This then set a precedent that we might see more mob vote losers making it into the spin-off games, but we still believed that they would never come to the main Minecraft game. Until this morning, when Jens posted on Twitter, as a reply to a seemingly insignificant tweet, that all of the mob losers would come to the game, "if/when they fit and can be prioritized."

Agnes and the team have said that they will add the losing mobs if/when they fit and can be prioritized

Ok, so this doesn't say they're being added now, it doesn't say they're definitely coming in the future, but it does say that they're no longer in the trash and actively being prevented from coming to the game.

So, whilst this changes nothing in the short term, we might just see The Monster of the Ocean Depths swimming in our oceans yet!

What do you think? Join my discord via the link below and let me know what you think to this news!

Article Author: FoxyNoTail

Foxy is a Minecraft player, content creator and official Marketplace Partner. He's been playing the game for over 13 years, delving into the code creating datapacks, add-ons, resource packs and other tools for the Minecraft player base and communities to use and enjoy. He also hosts The Minecraft Update weekly podcast. You can find Foxy on Twitter @foxynotail

Publisher: Minecraft Update News

The Minecraft Update News is produced and published by author FoxyNoTail as part of the foxynotail.com website. Sourced directly from working as a content creator, player and officially partnered producer, FoxyNoTail has the facts and figures at his disposal to ensure news articles are current, relevant and factual. Foxy has 13+ years experience in not just playing Minecraft, but creating content, videos, streams, data packs, servers, add-ons, packs, podcasts, licensed content and now news. Revered by the community as a trust worthy, reliable and honest source of news and opinion, Foxy's data is trusted and acknowledged regularly.