Terraria and Minecraft

Hey guys, it's good to be back. Expect 3 to 5 updates a week going forward for the foreseeable future. Anyways to the topic at hand....

I recently purchased a 4 pack of Terraria for my buddies and myself over the Steam weird summer camp sale thing. Being a huge Minecraft fan (PC Master Race hello?) I figured it was high time I try the seemingly 2D concept ape. Not to my surprise Terraria is about as awesome as a 2D Minecraft can be.

The point of this post is the potential for Minecraft will always be greater than the execution of Terraria.

Allow me to clarify; Terraria is an amazing Indie game. It is really great to explore caves and dungeons, fight boss monsters, craft new weapons and armor, find new materials, and have lots of really fun items and possibilities. Despite having a lot of fun with the 8 or so hours I've put into Terraria so far I still have the thought nawing at the back of my mind saying one thing....

What if these features were in Minecraft?

Despite spending at least 100 hours over the last year in Minecraft I really think, like many people, that it really isn't much of a game. I am in the process of building my 3rd giant map spanning castle thing on my friend's server and all I can think about is why? The major flaw with the build thus far (1.73) is there is still no purpose. Terraria has that purpose, but all it does is remind me how awesome Minecraft could be.

In Terraria if you build a castle useful NPC's will come and populate it. Imagine if we built a giant 3D castle in Minecraft and different shopkeepers and other service providers would bustle about, adding life and purpose to your creation. Imagine if there were 5 times the monsters to fight and if there were more differences between a skeleton and a zombie rather than one has a bow and arrow. Imagine if there were 10 times the ores to find, much more intrecate caves and
dungeons, and a real reason to explore in Minecraft?

Now I know Minecraft is still in Beta and we have had the "Adventure Update" being touted by Notch for a little over a month now. There still is a lot of time to see this potential be realized, but Terraria serves as a catalyst for my desire to see it happen.