Draft:Universe of Minecraft

Minecraft is a media franchise developed from and centered around the sandbox video game of the same name. Primarily developed by Mojang Studios, the franchise consists of five video games, along with various books, merchandise, events, and an upcoming theatrical film. The universe of Minecraft includes several dimensions including the Overworld, Nether, and The End.

Overview
The world of Minecraft is composed of rough 3D objects–mainly cubes and fluids, and commonly called "blocks"–representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The game world is virtually infinite and procedurally generated as players explore it, using a map seed that is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player).

Dimensions
The Minecraft video game of the same name has three dimensions, the Overworld, Nether, and The End. The various dimensions can be travelled to and from through portals.

Overworld
The Overworld is the dimension which the player spawns in. The Overworld contains a wide variety of environments including badlands, caves, deserts, forests, jungles, mountains, mushroom islands, oceans, swamps, and taiga.

Nether
The Nether is a hell-like dimension which is accessed through an obsidian portal. The Nether can be used to travel great distances due to the fact that 1 block travelled in the Nether corresponds to 8 blocks in the Overworld.

The Nether was added in Java Edition Alpha 1.2, also known as the "Halloween Update". In Java Edition 1.0.0, Nether fortresses were added to the Nether, as well as magma cubes, blazes and several items (blaze rods, Nether bricks, Nether brick stairs, Nether brick fences, Nether warts, Ghast tears dropped by Ghasts, and gold nuggets dropped by zombie pigmen). In Java Edition 1.4.2, wither skeletons were added. In 1.4.6, Nether brick slabs were added. In 1.5, Nether quartz ore was added and spawns around Netherrack.

On November 13, 2013 in the 2013 Music Update, four music tracks were added for the Nether, "Concrete Halls", "Dead Voxel", "Warmth" and "Ballad of the Cats". In the 1.10 "Frostburn Update", magma blocks, red Nether bricks, and Nether wart blocks were added which can be crafted but do not naturally generate in the Nether.

In the 1.16 "Nether Update", there were many major additions to the Nether including 3 new biomes (the crimson forest, warped forest, and soul sand valley). Ancient debris, a rare ore was added and Nether gold ore was added. Hoglins, piglins, and striders were added to the Nether. 3 new music tracks were added, "Chrysopoeia", "Rubedo" and "So Below". In 1.16.2, piglin brutes were added.

The End
The End is a vast and empty dimension. It consists of a mostly empty void sparsely populated with islands made of end stone. The Ender Dragon lives on the central island which contains several obsidian towers that have end crystals on top, the ender dragon flies around the towers to get healed. After killing the Ender Dragon, a portal opens up to the Overworld and when passing through it, the End poem appears on the screen.

The End was added in 1.0.0, also known as the "Adventure Update".

Steve
Steve is one of the main protagonists and default character skins. He has a goatee and wears a light blue top, a pair of blue trousers, and shoes. In spite of his masculine name and features, Persson claimed that Steve's gender was never intended to be fixed. In 2012, Persson explained that Minecraft blocky graphics inadvertently reinforced a default aesthetic for the game which is "traditionally masculine". He emphasized that Minecraft was designed to "be a game without a gender element" in a game where "gender doesn't exist", and that the character model was "intended to represent a human being" who was genderless. Admitting that limiting the gender option to just male "is telling everybody this is a boy game only", Persson claimed that he once attempted to create a proper female character model in Minecraft, but said "the results have been extremely sexist."

Alex
Alex is one of the main protagonists and the female default character skin. She was added on August 22, 2014. She has red hair tied into a ponytail, and narrower arms.

Herobrine
Herobrine is an urban legend and creepypasta which originated as a hoax propagated by an anonymous post on the English-language imageboard website 4chan. A "ghost" who haunts single-player Minecraft worlds, the character is supposed to look like a standard character model for Steve, except for a pair of glowing white eyes which lack pupils. Theories that explain the character's supposed origins range from his purported identity as Persson's supposedly deceased brother to an "unlucky miner" who haunts living players out of a desire for vengeance. The first purported sighting of Herobrine was from the time period when Minecraft was still in the alpha phase of development: an anonymous 4chan poster claimed that they spotted a character who stared at them from the dense fog between the trees before vanishing and that they received a private message from a user called Herobrine, which simply said "stop". This occurred after a subsequent post they made which inquired about the sighting was allegedly removed without explanation. The Herobrine creepypasta is regarded as a notable horror-themed urban legend in the video game industry. Following the anonymous 4chan post, the hoax became the subject of numerous threads on Minecraft internet forums as well as user generated videos on YouTube which report alleged sightings, often annotated with red text and eerily-themed music. Two popular Minecraft livestreamers, Copeland and Patimuss, were acknowledged by Lauren Morton from PC Gamer for their contributions towards popularizing the urban legend into a viral meme. For example, Copeland posted a few edited Minecraft screenshots which shows a depiction of Herobrine to get a reaction from his viewers and staged a hoax sighting for his livestream using a retextured painting which is made to look like Herobrine. The popularity of the Herobrine creepypasta led to a placement on a 2013 poll of the "Top 50 Video Game Villains of All Time" organized by Guinness World Records, spawned unofficial books such as The Legend of Herobrine and the Gameknight999 series of novels, and inspired fan-made skins patterned after the creepypasta. As an acknowledgement of the Herobrine meme, Mojang development staff often include the line "Removed Herobrine" within patch notes released for the game up until June 23, 2020, with the Java Edition 1.16 patch, also known as Minecraft Nether Update. Fan interest in the meme eventually culminated in early 2021 with the discovery of the world seed which contains the first instance of Herobrine's alleged sighting.

Wither
"It all started with the beacons - we needed a way of obtaining them. I wanted it to be some kind of boss fight and I was inspired by Terraria: in that game you always initiate the boss fights yourself. So, I already knew it should be some sort of summoning, and occult, too, relating to the undead of Minecraft. The name itself comes from a poison spell in an online roleplaying game I made before joining the Minecraft team, called Whispers in Akarra. Working on that game is how I met Daniel and Pontus [the awesome Oxeye Game Studio guys who made Cobalt]! I picked several inspirations from Whispers in Akarra actually - the Blaze is another!"

- Jens Bergensten

The Wither is a flying boss with three heads. The Wither attacks by spitting out explosive black skulls which spread corruption. The Wither drops a Nether star when killed, the Nether star can be used to craft a beacon which when place on a pyramid of iron, gold, or diamond grants nearby players buffs.

Ender Dragon
The Ender Dragon is the final boss. She is a flying dragon who spawns on the main island in The End. Notch nicknamed the dragon "Jean".

In Minecraft: Story Mode, she was killed by The Order of the Stone.

Other characters
In Java Edition 1.19.3 (as part of the "Wild Update"), new default skins were added to the game to add diversity to the game: Noor, Sunny, Ari, Zuri, Makena, Kai, and Efe.

Cross-dimensional
These creatures are found in more than one dimension.