So I'm looking at all the new stuff slated for 1.8 and man, two things keep bugging me:
1 - The way Notch is trying to absolutely force people into rigid "you're playing creative" and "you're playing survival" streams. Having mobs was good for creatively-minded players because part of the fun of building is that it's a triumph over the uh, elements. And making building decently fun is secretly the real "reward" for "winning" survival, which otherwise has no real goal or point (don't tell me a "you win the game!" screen is a replacement for this). Plus, at it's core, the original minecraft was about doing whatever the hell you wanted; bifurcation is a blow against that freedom.
2 - The way he thinks he going to "solve" aspects of the game he doesn't like by falling back on bland, thirty-year old game ideas. An XP meter? Skill points? Criticals in combat? Really? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Minecraft's biggest strengths are it's unique aspects. This kind of stuff is just lame and uninteresting.
I'm not saying RARWRRRRRR RAAAAAAAAAGEQUIT. If anything, 1.8 is going to get me to play again, because there's a lot of world-building stuff in there that's looking very cool (been wanting NPCs forever). If anything makes the game flat-out unplayable, well, I guess I'll just have to finally get around to installing bukkit instead of playing stock. But some of the recent stuff seems like incredibly uninspired cop-outs.