Who has the oldest Minecraft world?
Minecraft is a game shrouded by mystery since the day it was released. It was this indie game that was sending waves across the gaming community. However, the game wasn't very polished at that time; but this rawness of the game made it stand out but also made it more susceptible to all sorts of urban legends and weird myths, which still resonate with us to this day.
Many Minecraft players have grown up with this game by their side; they’ve seen the game become what it is today. The nostalgia these players get from seeing something from their old world or an old youtube Minecraft tutorial is something else. I know how it feels because I have been a part of this community for as long as I can remember.
This nostalgia has fueled many topics in the community for a long time, like who has the oldest Minecraft world, the oldest server, or who is the first Minecraft player in the world. All these questions have the most straightforward answers; all the oldest worlds and servers were created by Notch. But that’s not what you're here for, you want to know who were the players who created the first Minecraft and what did they build.
This topic has garnered a lot of attention from many old and new Minecraft players alike, so we decided to add fuel to this fire and search for the oldest Minecraft world in Minecraft.
We searched far and wide, spent hours and hours on the internet, archive sites, Minecraft forums, and chatting with Minecraft players who’ve been a part of this community. So in this blog post, we’ll finally rest the case of the oldest Minecraft world by showing you what we found in our searches. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
A little Minecraft History
It doesn’t seem like it, but Minecraft is an old game; it is more than a decade old. Many new players have started playing the game in the recent resurgence that happened a couple of years ago, thanks to Minecraft blowing up on youtube once again. The game has seen many ups and downs in the years it has existed.
Since the start of the Minecraft development was very open and accessible to the community, the developer Notch frequently made updates to the game and let people know where the game was headed. The Minecraft that we know and love today had started to take shape a decade ago, thanks to Notch's efforts.
Since the game started getting some traction in the gaming community, many have been eager to try out this new sandbox experience. And many did when the game began to release. The initial versions of the game weren’t the best, lag was rampant, and the block physics weren’t fantastic.
But still, many players loved the experience they got from playing Minecraft. Rightfully, the game was very different from anything out then. So many had already started creating their own Minecraft worlds and playing, creating crazy builds to impress others in the community. But you’ll be shocked to know that saving your world was a feature that wasn’t a part of Minecraft initially; it was put in in the game in an update 0.0.13a.
So without saving the game, there were no worlds, so this narrows down our search to the worlds posted right after this update; as players started saving right after tis update was released.
The search for the oldest Minecraft world
A simple google search for ‘oldest Minecraft server’ will result in many different videos and articles popping up that claim to have found the oldest Minecraft world. Judging by the results, it is pretty clear that there is an interest in the community for this discussion.
Most of these articles and videos try to show you the oldest Minecraft world but fail in doing so; they offer a world created in a time that is around the release date of the game, which is 2011. Clickbait is used in these articles and videos. I saw this video with Oldest Minecraft world 2007 written on it. The game didn’t enter development till May 2009; how did this guy get a Minecraft world in 2007?
That aside, I started to look for the oldest Minecraft world on the site where you go to find all the answers, Quora! I couldn't find any posts that matched our description many hours later, and I was disappointed. I found the oldest Minecraft server, but not the oldest Minecraft world.
Next up is Reddit; I was pretty damn sure that someone would have an answer for me. Reddit has a lot of Minecraft players who played from the start and were a part of Reddit at that time as well. But once again. I left the platform with disappointment as I didn’t get an answer to my query even on Reddit.
Youtube is where I found the oldest Minecraft world in a video created by YouTuber MCBYT. He searched around the internet for the worlds where people would post them. That is the Minecraft forum which has been online since Minecraft was released.
A simple search on this forum for the oldest thread will show you that there were many different worlds from 2009 when Minecraft was still under development. But these aren’t the oldest Minecraft worlds, they are pretty old, but not the one we’re looking for.
But get this, we found a world that was saved even before the one we found above, and this is indeed the oldest world in Minecraft for now; there's nothing pre-dating this, and many Minecraft players are pretty sure that this is the one; this is the most oldest Minecraft world that was saved on to a computer.
And you know what the best thing about this world is? It is still playable and not corrupt; it is a piece of Minecraft history and should be adored by everyone in the community.
This world was found courtesy of the Minecraft archive group, OMNI Archive. They have been archiving older game versions for years, and this world was with them, so a huge shoutout goes to them. The oldest Minecraft world, or map, was saved on June 12, 2009 and archived by OMNI Archive. We know that this is the oldest world in Minecraft because it was saved after a couple of days of the update, making it possible to save your Minecraft worlds.
The world was shared in the OMNI archive discord server, and thanks to them, we will now get to see the oldest Minecraft world. But the sad thing is that we actually don’t know who created this world; we know who archived it, though Alexandre Bujold is the one who archived the map; as for who this belongs to, we have no way of knowing that. At least for now.
But what we’ve managed to find is still remarkable and groundbreaking so let’s see what this oldest Minecraft world has in store for us. You can check out the map by downloading this file
