Next Minecraft Update Coming This Week, Brings Achievements

Minecraft's creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, has good news for his legion of Minecraft players. The game's latest update, 1.4, will be released this week and contains a couple of cool new additions. One of them is the integration of those things called achievements, which you've probably heard of.

If Minecraft wasn't addictive enough, it will be by the end of the week. “Yeah, I like achievements," Persson declared last month, when he was quizzed on whether he'd add achievements to Minecraft. Fortunately for players, Persson won't be going overboard.

"Achievements will NOT be chores like 'cut down 10000 trees,' but rather challenges like 'ride a pig off a cliff,'" he said, to the delight of one million plus users. The achievements will work together with a new feature: statistics. Want to know how many pieces of wood you've chopped down? How about the number of "creepers," "exploding green things," or whatever they're called that you've slain?

Two additional features in version 1.4 are wolves that can be trained to kill other animals and the ability to move a spawn point. Then the Mojang crew will shift focus to the game's much neglected mod API, which has enraged the mod community.