Java Edition removed features

Since the beginning of the development of, there have been a number of features that were removed from the game. These features may have been replaced, or a developer decided against the feature later on.

Note: This page documents only game features that were removed; features of a particular game element that were removed are noted in that element's history. See Java Edition unused features for features that are still currently in the game.

Player stats


In an early Indev version, the player could open the inventory screen and view their name and three stats: "ATK", "DEF", and "SPD". These existed only briefly; when asked, Notch stated he could not remember exactly why they were implemented and subsequently removed, and he assumed they were placeholders for "vague plans".



In pre classic version of Minecraft there was an arrow count above the hotbar on the right side across the player's health.

Inventory changes
An inventory rewrite was originally partially implemented in snapshot 14w07a, but it was reverted before the release of 1.8.

Old multiplayer player death animation
Before 1.6.1, on player death while playing in multiplayer, the player would stay standing, leap a little bit, and then disappear. In 1.6.1, this was replaced with the player falling onto the side and then disappearing.

Notch dropping an apple
Before Beta 1.8, the player named Notch would drop an apple upon death.

On-screen version number
Starting with Classic 0.0.2a, all subsequent versions until RC2 had text displayed in the top left corner of the screen that displayed the version. Versions between Beta 1.6.4 and Beta 1.7.3 did not have this text. From Classic 0.0.2a to Indev 0.31 20100205, only the version number was displayed, but after Indev it switched from being "0.31" to being called "Minecraft Indev" (Indev 20100206), the word "Minecraft" was shown before the version number. In the Alpha development stage, the text read "Minecraft Alpha v#.#.#(_#)." In the Beta development stage, the text read "Minecraft Beta #.#(_#)." This feature was only partially removed, for, among other things, the version number can now be shown by opening the debug screen while in-game. Before Alpha v1.2.2, the version number did not display on the main menu screen.

"Unlicensed Copy" message
In the Beta stage of Minecraft's development, a message reading "Minecraft Beta #.#.#(_0#) Unlicensed Copy :( (Or logged in from another location). Purchase at minecraft.net" was shown. This message can be seen only in versions between Beta 1.6 Test Build 3 and Beta 1.7.3, as proven by a bytecode editor. The bytecode for the message was removed in Beta 1.8.

Achievements
Achievements were available between Beta 1.5 and 1.12 (snapshot 17w06a). They were ultimately replaced by advancements, though editions other than Java Edition still have achievements instead.

Old walking animation for players
From pre-Classic to Alpha v1.0.9, the walking animation for the player and the human mob was different; the player and the human mob would swing their arms wildly to their sides while walking like cartoons.

Items in the inventory
Different versions in Minecraft's history had items pre-spawned in the player's inventory. Here is a table below:

High-distance anomalies
Many of the game's mechanics would break down in strange ways when at a large distance from the origin of the world. The vast majority of these effects have been patched, or at least minimised, in modern versions.

Hard limits
For elements of the game which are integer-aligned, such as the positions of blocks, Java Edition uses integer data types, which can be either 32-bit or 64-bit. 32-bit integers were more commonly used in older versions, which allowed for 4,294,967,296 possible distinct integer values, ranging from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. Exceeding these boundaries, such as by using an external editor to move the player to beyond 2,147,483,647 blocks from the origin as to force the game to load blocks beyond this position, often would result in major game-breaking bugs and crashes.

Accessing such regions is now much more difficult than it was previously, as distance is now much more restrictive, requiring modifications to the game to allow these limits to be exposed.

Floating point imprecision
For elements of the game which are not integer-aligned, such as the positions of entities, Java Edition uses 64-bit floating point (or "double") values for arithmetic and storage of relevant variables. However, there are odd cases in which a 32-bit floating point value is used instead. Such cases are rare in the modern game (a full list of those which still exist in 1.18 can be found at Java Edition distance effects), however older versions of the game used 32-bit values (or unnecessarily casted from and to them, resulting in data loss which could have easily been avoided without this pointless casting) much more heavily, resulting in a plethora of strange gameplay bugs which were tied to how far the player was from the center of the world, getting twice as intense for every integer power of 2 blocks the player went from the center.

One of the most notable floating point precision loss bugs is where the rendering of the world stops being accurate depending on the player's position. Commonly experienced alongside (and frequently, and incorrectly, blamed on) the Far Lands, the position at which blocks render will not match up with that of entities and other world elements such as the hitboxes of blocks. At 8,388,608 blocks and beyond, the game will assume the player is standing at the edge or corner of each block, and will always render the blocks of the world as if they player is standing at one of those corners. This effect is difficult to describe in text, and is best experienced firsthand.

Most of the other issues regarding floating point imprecision deal with the creation of particles, spawning of entities, and (prior to their standardisation in 1.8 with json files, which fixed all of these permanently) the geometrical distortion of block models.

A comprehensive list of since-fixed issues, as well as breakdowns of how they progress, can be found at Java Edition distance effects/Historical effects.

Boundary effects
Boundary effects refer to oddities which arise due to hardcoded numerical limits in the game, such as the 30 million wall (as opposed to hard limits, which are defined by the programming language and/or computer architecture rather than the game code).

The current world boundary as of 1.18 is a "pseudo-wall" which exists at 30 million blocks from the origin, a chunk beyond the world border. (This is defined as a "pseudo-wall" rather than a true wall as rather than being solid and preventing passage like the world border or a solid block does, the player's position is instead set to 30 million by the game if the player attempts to exceed it, which can be seen by the fact that the walking animation, step sounds and view bobbing can still be experienced by walking into the wall, as does the sounds of flying with an elytra.)

However, previous versions had much stranger effects at great distances. The world boundary was something commonly experienced in Classic and Indev due to worlds being small by design. The first versions of Infdev, which did away with such boundaries, therefore had no such effects, instead exposing the existing hard limits of the game (although experiencing these was effectively impossible due to floating point bugs rendering the game unplayable much earlier).

The version of Infdev released on March 13, 2010 reimplemented a boundary at 32 million blocks, likely to prevent access to the then-relatively-new Far Lands which existed at a bit over 33 million blocks. This boundary was considerably different and buggier than those from Indev, although this was largely to be expected due to it being effectively impossible to reach legitimately. Beyond this 32 million limit, blocks would no longer exist at all, and give way to an empty void. When major changes to world generation brought the Far Lands much closer to the world origin later that same month, however, the world boundary still remained at 32 million, meaning the Far Lands were completely possible to reach without modding the game.

Updating blocks next to this void would cause the game to freeze due to it having to calculate an immense amount of lighting updates. This void could still be traversed by entities normally until the April 13 build, in which entities that render it would become stuck in place and jitter eternally. This was later fixed in an unknown version.

In Alpha v1.2.0, the boundary effects would get stranger than before. While previously no blocks would render beyond this point, Alpha v1.2.0 and onwards would cause a strange phenomenon in which chunks would appear to generate, but would be intangible, appear fully lit, and generated features such as trees and ores would not generate at all in these chunks.

For reasons which remain completely unknown to this day, Beta 1.8 would shrink the world boundaries inwards from 32 million blocks out to only 30 million blocks out. While the effects would remain similar, with blocks beyond the 30 million boundary appearing fully lit and ignoring collision and feature generation, these fake chunks would only generate a small distance out from this boundary, stopping at 30,000,064, or four chunks from the boundary. In addition, any entity attempting to surpass 30,000,032 would again be stuck in a jittery stasis, with players in particular having their heads twist unnaturally if looking around after this point (a bug that was patched in 12w03a, where facing direction would no longer change and preventing this unnatural twisting).

With the client-server split in snapshot 12w18a for 1.3 (a change which broke many other things about the game), the stasis bug was actually fixed, and fake chunks could be generated beyond the 30,000,064 point, allowing for the player to keep flying outwards until 32,000,000 blocks, where they would be kicked out of the game due to being in an illegal position, revealing that not all elements of the 32,000,000 limit had been removed from the game yet. 12w27a, a later snapshot for 1.3, would clamp nether portal positions to be within the 30 million limit.

1.7 and 1.8 started to make major changes to the world boundary to bring it to its modern state. 1.7 first made all blocks beyond 30 million completely solid, including air. Said wall could still be surpassed, however, by flying over it, as it only extended to the 32-bit limit on the Y-axis, allowing for 32 million blocks to be reached once more and the illegal position game crash triggered. The boundary became more unstable from version to version throughout 1.8's development, with the end result on its release being that chunks beyond 30 million blocks would no longer render, and teleporting beyond 30 million would crash the game. 1.9 would allow chunks beyond 30 million blocks to render once more, and prevent teleportation beyond 30 million blocks at all. Little has changed about the world boundary between this point and 1.18.

Basic theory
The Far Lands were a complex terrain phenomenon which arise due to a major bug in terrain generation works. Generally, "far lands" are the result of what happens when a given noise generator exceeds the largest value it can handle, resulting in an integer overflow and resulting in the generated values reaching unnatural magnitudes. The term "Far Lands" in isolation most commonly refers to what results from "low noise" and "high noise" overflowing simultaneously.

The Far Lands
In their most well-known iteration, the which would extend from the lowest point of the world to the very top. This wall

The Far Lands manifested as a sort of "wall" which would extend from the lowest point of the world to the very top. This wall contained a series of holes in it, with these holes reaching back almost infinitely, with only minor changes even after millions of blocks. The density of a cross-section of this wall was roughly 50%, with solid portions and hollow portions being around equal. Given their positions at the four sides of a world, there regions are often referred to as the "Edge Far Lands" when distinction from other regions of a world is necessary, and, due to their "Swiss cheese"-like formation, informally as "The Loop".

Since the Far Lands existed on both the X and Z axes, it is entirely possible for them to "intersect" each other when surpassing their starting point on both axes. The resulting terrain, named the "Corner Far Lands" in analogy to the vertices of a square, is markedly different from that of the edge regions: the world appears to be solid layers of terrain arranged on top of each other with air gaps in between. Due to this distinctive morphology, the Corner Far Lands are also informally referred to as "The Stack". The terrain seen in these regions is comparable to that which is seen in the Nether. Often, major diagonal or oblique patterns can be seen within the generated terrain, which, if they exist, are especially obvious at the beginning of the corner Far Lands.

In the unmodified game, only four sets each of the edge and corner Far Lands can exist in a world, from the noise overflowing on the X and Z axes. However, game modifications can modify aspects of either chunk saving or terrain generation in ways that ultimately allows for noise to overflow on the Y axis as well. Such modifications reveal two more sets of Edge Far Lands for a total of six sets (corresponding to the faces of a cube), eight sets of Corner Far Lands from these Y axis Edge Far Lands intersecting X and Z axis Edge Far Lands for a total of twelve sets (corresponding to the edges of a cube), and new regions in which all three axes simultaneously overflow due to Y axis Edge Far Lands intersecting the existing Corner Far Lands, with eight of these regions in total (corresponding to the vertices of a cube). These regions, referred to as the "Vertex Far Lands", are incredibly unstable; sometimes these regions are completely solid, other times are completely empty, and other times still feature incredibly strange terrain atypical of even "The Loop" or "The Stack".

With default settings, the noise would overflow at twice the distance on the Y axis as it does on the X and Z axes, at around 25,101,640 blocks.

The Farther Lands
The Farther Lands is the name given to another noise overflow which, by default, happens at a greater distance then the normal Far Lands. Whereas the usual Far Lands arise from the overflowing of "low noise" and "high noise", the Farther Lands sees "selector noise" break down instead. Low noise and high noise are two different noise generators which the game uses to generate the potential fundamental shape of terrain, whereas selector noise chooses whether low noise or high noise is used to actually generate the terrain at that given point. When the conventional Far Lands start, despite both low noise and high noise overflowing simultaneously, selector noise still functions normally, meaning that there is still a large amount of possible variation in the shape of the Far Lands.

When selector noise does eventually break, which happens at roughly 1,004,065,920 blocks from the world origin, it follows that the variation between low and high noise also breaks down. Like how the usual Far Lands is a series of straight tunnels, the Farther Lands divides the world into a series of straight regions, with low noise used exclusively in one region and high noise in others. As such, the variation usually seen in the Far Lands vanishes after the Farther Lands.

The Corner Farther Lands take this effect to an extreme: while the normal Corner Far Lands are rich in nuance, the Corner Farther Lands are almost devoid of it. The beginning of the corner makes this all the more obvious, and also highlights edge Farther Lands-corner Far Lands intersections, making the aforementioned straight line regions clear to see.

Before inf-20100327
Terrain generation was much simpler in versions before March 27, 2010. While in modern versions, the noise generator used for terrain is 3D, earlier versions used a purely 2D noise generator for the world instead. The resulting terrain was much more cliff-based as a result, and overhangs were an impossibility. In addition, noise incremented much slower than the modern noise generator does, resulting in it overflowing at 33,554,432 blocks out (coincidentally a power of 2).

Rather than featuring a series of holes, this noise generator instead created a huge, featureless wall as it broke, as the purely 2D nature of the noise forbids any overhangs from generating. This wall is completely solid stone and extends infinitely outwards when it starts. Occasionally, the faces of this wall may appear ridged like a radiator or heat sink, resulting in a slightly more gradual transformation of the terrain.

Further investigations
While largely removed as of Beta 1.8, simple modifications to the game can effectively reintroduce them, in which case they behave effectively identically to how they did before, but much more stable due to the fixing of the vast majority of high-distance precision loss effects in earlier versions which caused lag and hindered movement. In addition, several aspects of the Far Lands persisted into later versions:
 * The Far Lands also existed on the y-axis at twice the distance as they did on the x-axis. While obviously unobservable due to blocks not being able to exist at all outside of a certain height range, abuse of the Old Customized world type in which the height scale is increased to absurd values could allow for the positive Y-axis Far Lands, or "Sky Far Lands", to generate within vanilla bounds without modding.
 * Beta 1.8 fixed the Far Lands by adding code to the noise generator to have it repeat after a certain amount of units. It is possible to have the amount of times the generator repeats to itself overflow, although the effects of this are not possible to see in vanilla worlds (it would only break down after almost 54 quadrillion blocks). However, further exploitation of Old Customized to set the coordinate scale to even more ludicrous values will bring this overflow point into vanilla bounds once more. As setting it to values like these causes normal terrain to become incredibly chaotic, the point at where it breaks is difficult to see.
 * For low and high noise, these overflowed regions are called the Fartherer Lands, and for selector noise, the Farthest Lands.

Modding has allowed for y-axis Far and Farther Lands, the Fartherer and Farthest Lands, and 64-bit versions of the Far and Farther Lands (distinct from the Fartherer and Farthest Lands in while they appear at the same locations as them, they result from 64-bit noise breaking normally rather than the modulo that prevents 32-bit noise from breaking itself breaking) to be seen in their natural habitats.

Brick pyramid
Brick pyramids were tall experimental generated structures made up exclusively of bricks. They were added in Java Edition Infdev 20100227-1 and they were removed from the game in Infdev 20100327.

These were entirely composed of bricks - the pyramids did not have any rooms inside, however caves could generate through them in the March 25th build due to caves being able to generate through any blocks at the time (including trees and other structures they should not be able to).

These were most likely intended for testing structure generation in infinite worlds. As blocks did not drop items at the start of Infdev due to entity code still being reworked, brick blocks could not be collected from pyramids for most of their existence.

Indev house
The Indev House was a building which generated at the center of Indev maps. The player would spawn inside of this house when the world was first generated.

This structure was added in the January 24th build, and was initially comprised of mossy cobblestone, with two torches inside. The Indev House was reworked in the first February 14th build, having a stone floor and walls made of oak planks.

Early iterations of the Indev House contained a series of chests, which would harbour almost every block and item in the entire game at that point. These chests went through a series of changes, before being removed from the house entirely in later iterations.

The Indev house was removed at the start of Infdev due to terrain generation being redone to accommodate infinite worlds, ditching the limited worlds of Indev and earlier.

Obsidian wall
In the first builds of Infdev, two obsidian walls generated in the world as to mark the orthogonal directions. One of these walls would appear where the X-axis was at 0, and another where the Z-axis was 0. The player would spawn at the point where these two walls intersected.

Like with the brick pyramids, these were a debugging feature, and were not implemented as a source of obsidian for players due to the inability for blocks to drop items at the time.

These walls would no longer generate as of the March 13, 2010 build of Infdev.

Monolith
Monoliths were a terrain bug which existed from late Infdev to late Alpha. Occurring when the noise generators for handling the shape of terrain output specific values, these structures would consist of the terrain being "inverted" in a given region of space. Outwardly, they appear as sheer stone cliffs which reach the top of the world. Ore and sediment blobs could be seen to generate in the sides of these, as could water and lava springs. Further examination of these reveal that the area underneath these monoliths is completely empty all the way down to the bedrock layers, further proving that the terrain is "inverted", as air regions and solid regions have completely switched places. Water would generate in this empty space below monoliths, as the game would consider any air space below a given point that did not belong to a cave or other structure as an "ocean", and fill it with water accordingly.

Due to being "inverted" sections of terrain, it is exceedingly likely that monoliths would generate up infinitely (or at least up until the vertical Far Lands) were they given sufficient space. Due to their version range, they were limited to 128 blocks. Monoliths could also fully enclose regions of normal terrain - when seen from below, these would appear as sheer cliffs, like all non-monolith terrain.

Monoliths came with the June 11, 2010 build of Infdev, which overhauled terrain a third time in the Infdev development period, they persisted up until Alpha v1.1.2_01. Alpha v1.2.0 redid terrain generation once more, such that completely different noise generators were used for terrain, which no longer had he potential to cause these bugs. However, despite this, Old Customized worlds were still capable of generating monolith structures by defining a negative "Biome Scale Weight" value from snapshot 14w17a for 1.8 to snapshot 18w05a for 1.13, but with the removal of the "Customized" world type altogether in snapshot 18w06a for 1.13, this can no longer be recreated. Monoliths can once again be generated in 1.16+ using customized worlds.

Placeholder trees
There are several cases in the game in which unique species of tree use the logs and leaves primarily associated with other trees. Two prominent examples are pine trees, which use spruce logs and leaves, and swamp trees, which use oak logs and leaves, rather than either of these having dedicated blocks. As a result of this, they cannot be grown from saplings, and can only be encountered when generating new chunks.

In Java Edition 1.7.2's development, when biomes were being added to the game, two trees were added to the then-new biomes which also reused the logs and leaves of existing trees. However, these were a temporary measure, as later in development, they were given logs and leaves of their own, alongside saplings, planks and further wood products.

Specifically, these were the acacia tree, and the dark oak tree. The acacia tree reused jungle logs and oak leaves, and dark oak trees used spruce logs and oak leaves.

Village aspects
Villages have seen multiple changes in generation since their introduction. Due to these changes, some may consider villages which generated in previous versions, or at least certain buildings within them, as "removed" structures.

Old village
Old villages and old zombie villages could generate in plains, savanna, taiga, ice flats, and desert biomes. The type of village, and therefore the style of all structures within it, was determined by the biome where the village well was located. All village biome variants were essentially palette swaps of each other, with the exception of one house in the old ice flats village, which would generate with randomized crop items such as carrots and beetroots. The "old villages" were not known as such until the Village & Pillage update.

Gravel roads
Before 1.10, villages used gravel with cobblestone underneath to signify roads; however, in 1.10, grass paths were added to signify village roads. However, grass paths sensibly were only generated where they replaced grass blocks, and gravel paths still existed until Village & Pillage update, when the jigsaw system broke it.

Savanna village
Prior to 1.10, villages that would generate in savanna biomes used oak logs, oak planks, oak fences and oak stairs. This village type was replaced by villages made out of acacia derived blocks.

Glass pillars
Glass pillars were added in Beta 1.9 Prerelease 3. They were used to mark the location of strongholds, as the eye of ender did not lead to strongholds yet. One pillar extended from the main entrance and another from the portal room. They went all the way up to the build limit. This was because Jeb forgot to remove the debug pillars before releasing the version publicly. They were removed in Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4, due to eyes of ender being able to lead players to the stronghold portal room.

Cloud customisation
The color and height of clouds could be changed in Indev, however this functionality was removed in Infdev. Unlike many other things now customizable in Java Edition via custom world generation, this is yet to see a return.

Isometric screenshot


In the Indev versions of Minecraft, players could take a screenshot of the map from an isometric perspective using. When the game captured an isometric image, it would save the current location of all mobs and show any and all alterations to the map the player had made that would be visible from the perspective of the sun (at sunrise). The player would not be visible unless the player was in third-person view before taking the isometric screenshot.

The isometric screenshot would save to their local user folder as "mc_map_####.png" where #### represents the number of the screenshot starting at 0000 up to 9999.

There are some limitations that existed with the screenshots:
 * They could capture the player's sprite only when in third-person view.
 * Due to a glitch, the screenshot would render only those blocks that are in the player's FOV, and everything else is either black or shows underground sections that would have been obstructed.

This feature was removed in Infdev due to the addition of infinite worlds.



Indev map shape


The map shape refers to the general dimensions the level generator used to create maps. It was added in Indev 0.31 20100106 and it altered the length, width, and height of the map.

There were three kinds of shapes:
 * "Square" was a map of equal length and width, with a height of 64 blocks.
 * "Long" was 2 times the length and $1/2$ times the width of a square map.
 * "Deep" was 4 times the height and $1/2$ times the width and length of a square map.

There were three kinds of sizes:

Indev map theme
The map theme refers to the general style the level generator used to create maps. It was added in Indev 0.31 20100107, and it dramatically affected game mechanics, such as monster spawn zones and boundary liquid. "Paradise" and "Woods" themes were added in Indev 20100214-2. Themes were removed for in the middle of Infdev and were comparable to biomes in Alpha, Beta and current Minecraft versions.

Normal


"Normal" was the default map theme. Above ground, one would find sporadic trees and generally favorable space. The weather was constantly partly cloudy, and the lengths of night and day were equal. Underground, ores of all types could be found and lava was generally found near the bedrock layer.

Boundary liquid: water.

Hell


"Hell" was the second map theme introduced within the map theme feature. Hell featured significantly less lighting during the day, where mobs of all types would spawn at any time. All water was replaced with lava, grass was replaced with dirt and grass would spawn in place of sand only during map generation. Mushrooms were abundant on the surface. Farming worked at a much slower rate (one plant stage per day cycle). This map theme was comparable to the later added Nether.

Boundary liquid: lava.

Paradise


The third map theme, "Paradise", was more relaxed than the other themes. It featured larger beaches and plentiful flora compared to the "Normal" theme, and the time is always set to "Noon" (the sun never sets); hostile mobs spawn only underground. Farming works at a much faster rate (from planting to harvestable in 30–45 minutes).

Boundary liquid: water.

Woods


The fourth map theme, "Woods", was a middle-ground of challenge between "Normal" and "Hell". It provided constant overcast during the day that reduces light, and tree density was higher than the other themes, resulting in the land space becoming smaller. Additionally, mushrooms were spotty throughout the above-ground areas.

Boundary liquid: water.

Indev map type


The map type refers to the general format the level generator used to create maps. Added in Indev 0.31 20100106, it dramatically affected gameplay, such as the availability of water, sand and gravel. The further the player traveled toward the end of the map, the slower they moved.

There were four kinds of map types:
 * "Island" was the default map type featuring minor hills and liquid existing at the borders.
 * "Floating" was similar to the floating islands in the "Buffet" world type today — it contained multiple floating islands. Falling from these islands resulted in death as the surface was covered in bedrock. Floating gravel and sand was common, while water was rare.
 * "Flat" was similar to the "Superflat" world type today — it featured flat grass with flowers, trees and a starting house.
 * "Inland" featured a slightly hilly landscape, which was essentially the "Island" map type with infinite flat land at its borders as opposed to water. Sand and gravel were common.

"Winter Mode" map type


"Winter Mode" was a randomly occurring map type in Alpha. It was added on July 9, 2010, in Alpha v1.0.4 and was the first "biome" to appear in Minecraft.

There were a couple of differences compared to normal worlds. First, there was the presence of snowflakes, which fell constantly. There were four different kinds of snowflakes. These snowflakes would create snow on surfaces directly exposed to the sky, provided that it was a solid block. Due to a lack of unfrozen water, reeds were rare. The second element unique to "Winter Mode" was the presence of ice. When a map was generated, most exposed water blocks would be frozen into ice. The water did not freeze completely near gravel beaches. The third element was a decrease in the spawning rate of passive mobs.

Whether a world was in "Winter Mode" was determined with a 25% chance at creation.

"Winter Mode" was removed in Alpha v1.2.0 with the addition of proper biomes.

Biomes prior to 1.7.2
Versions prior to 1.7.2 had two biomes that were later removed from the world generator. Despite being unused, they continued to exist until Java Edition 1.18, in which mountain edge get removed.

The following biomes became unused in 1.7.2:
 * Mountain Edge (now available in the "Buffet" world type)
 * Frozen Ocean (restored in 1.13 as a very different biome)

Biomes prior to Beta 1.8
In Beta 1.8, biomes received a major overhaul, removing and changing many of them. Prior to these changes, there were 13 biome types that were much smaller and less distinct.

Biomes prior to 1.18
In 1.18, terrain height is no longer controlled by biome, so the following height variations biome have been removed and had their code merged into the main one:
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"Customized" world type
"Customized" was a world type that gave control over many settings that affected terrain generation, such as ores, sea level, biomes, structures, and many variables that govern the random shape of the terrain. It was introduced in snapshot 14w17a for 1.8, and was removed in snapshot 18w06a for 1.13. Although customized worlds were added back in the 1.16 snapshot 20w21a, there is currently no in-game menu to modify worlds; custom worlds can be generated only by importing a JSON file.

Audio loops
Loops were unused sounds, found in the game files, and were possibly meant for when the player is in a specific type of location (i.e., in caves, forests, oceans and beside a waterfall).These sound effects were only appeared in C418's June 4, 2009 Sound Test.

They were found in, and could be converted to reveal four loops, of birds chirping, cave chimes, ocean and waterfall noises.

Unused
These features never had any functionality in-game.

Armor in Survival Test
In early versions from 0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST through Indev 20100207-2, there was a folder called "armor", which contained two files. One was called ; and the other was called. These files were removed in Indev 20100212-1 with the addition of normal armor models.



Plate armor
Plate armor was used in Survival Test for mobs and it gave them no additional defense.



Chain armor
Unlike plate armor, chain armor was impossible to see in-game. It was just an unused texture. It was later removed and replaced with a new model and texture with leggings and boots.

"Play Tutorial Level" button
An unclickable "Play Tutorial Level" button was added to the main menu during Indev. With the addition of texture packs in Alpha v1.2.2, the button was removed. No tutorial level had actually existed during that time.

Fluff.png
In Infdev, a texture called  was added. It was used as a texture for clouds from Infdev 20100611 to Infdev 20100618, but became unused in Infdev 20100624 and was removed by Alpha v1.2.2.

chunkinfo command
From 1.8 (snapshot 14w30a) to 1.13 (snapshot 17w45a), the file  contained translation strings for a   command, which never existed in game. The following keys existed:

commands.chunkinfo.usage=/chunkinfo [  ] commands.chunkinfo.location=Chunk location: (%s, %s, %s) commands.chunkinfo.noChunk=No chunk found at chunk position %s, %s, %s commands.chunkinfo.notEmpty=Chunk is not empty. commands.chunkinfo.empty=Chunk is empty. commands.chunkinfo.notCompiled=Chunk is not compiled. commands.chunkinfo.compiled=Chunk is compiled. commands.chunkinfo.hasNoRenderableLayers=Chunk has no renderable layers. commands.chunkinfo.hasLayers=Chunk has layers: %s commands.chunkinfo.isEmpty=Chunk has empty layers: %s commands.chunkinfo.vertices=%s layer's buffer contains %s vertices commands.chunkinfo.data=First 64 vertices are: %s

It is unknown if this command was used for development or was simply a dropped feature.

calm4.ogg


was a music file (alongside the other tracks) that was beta-tested and created by Notch himself. The song is 3 minutes and 13 seconds long. It consists of an upbeat synth, battle-like tune. At 1:36, Notch can be heard saying "Mojang Specifications" in slow-motion.

The track was released in Alpha v1.1.1, but in Alpha v1.1.2, this track was omitted from the downloaded game files. Players who had the game while the song file was still included continue to hear it being played, as the game plays any song in the  folder.

With the introduction of the 1.6.1 launcher, playing older versions with the track  does not allow the track to be heard, since music is downloaded separately from the jar files.

On February 1, 2020,  was reuploaded by Notch on his SoundCloud page with the name "Magnetic Circuit".

Toggle rain with
In early Indev versions, pressing would toggle between rain and clear.

Spawning nether portals with
In Java Edition Alpha v1.2.2a, players had the ability to spawn nether portals by pressing. In Alpha v1.2.2b, spawning nether portals using was removed.

Time control with and
In Beta 1.8 Pre-release, as a result of remaining debug code, players had the ability to use and  to control in-game time. In Beta 1.8 Pre-release 2, the functionality of and  was removed.

"Player Activity" button
The "Player Activity" button in "Minecraft Realms" was added in 1.5, but it was removed in 1.14.4 for unknown reasons. This button was used to show the online activities of players.

Texture pack
Texture packs were added in Alpha v1.2.2, and were replaced with resource packs in snapshot 13w24a for 1.6.1.

"3D Anaglyph" option


"3D Anaglyph" is an option in video settings that applies a red-cyan stereoscopic effect, enabling the use of red-cyan 3D glasses to experience the game in more depth. This option was removed in snapshot 17w43a for 1.13 due to 3D glasses becoming less popular.

Void fog and particles
From Java Edition Beta 1.8 Pre-release up to its removal in Java Edition 14w34c, a fog effect and particles would appear in the lower 16 blocks of the world.

Dispensing command blocks
From snapshot 14w07a for 1.8, dispensers had the ability to place command blocks, when activated. This feature was removed as of 1.8.6 to solve a security issue.

Mobs running from creepers
In 1.8, mobs ran away from creepers that were about to explode. In 1.8.1-pre1, this feature was removed because every mob that had the ability to run from a creeper was looking for an exploding creeper every tick, degrading performance.

Water evaporating on magma blocks
In snapshot 16w20a for 1.10, water evaporated on top of magma blocks when randomly ticked. From snapshot 18w07a for 1.13, whirlpool bubble columns are produced on top of magma blocks instead.

Splashes
Note: When a line of splash text is removed, the line it occupied in  is deleted, meaning the line number of all subsequent splashes lowers by one.

"Super Secret Settings" button
The "Super Secret Settings", added in snapshot 13w38a for 1.7.2, were removed in snapshot 15w31a for 1.9 due to an internal rewrite. It was a button under the options menu that, when pressed, would blare a random game sound with a lower pitch, and activate a shader.

Native Twitch.tv integration
Native Twitch.tv integration was added in snapshot 13w47a for 1.7.4, and was removed in snapshot 15w31a for 1.9. It integrated Twitch chat into the game.

entity.hanging.place and entity.hanging.pop
and  were two sound effects added in snapshot 15w49a and removed in the next snapshot, 15w49b. The sound effects were blank audio files and were likely intended as sound effects for the lead.

Old conduit particle


The conduit was added in snapshot 18w15a with particles, but those particles were changed in the next snapshot, 18w16a.

/locate New_Village
There was a locate command called. This was implemented in snapshot 18w48a for Village & Pillage before the village structures from Update Aquatic and prior were removed. Once these "old" villages were officially taken from the game's structure spawn list in snapshot 19w02a, was replaced by  as the   ID was no longer needed.

First-person view pivot
Removed in 1.14 for performance reasons. Before changed, the player could not look directly upwards or downwards.

Placeholder block drops
Survival Test introduced block drops, which were mapped as follows:

Block drops were reworked in Indev.

Minimized textures
In Survival Test, item drops were restricted to the cube shape used for blocks. The projected texture was the same on all faces and the texture scale was closer to those of blocks, making it look cropped.

Tags
The  and   tags were added in snapshots 18w07a and 18w07b for 1.13 respectively and removed in 18w10c. Before the removal, these tags functioned as follows:

Java launcher easter eggs
Prior to the release of Launcher 2.1.497x, the launcher contained multiple easter eggs. If the player hovered their cursor over the "Play" button for a few seconds, a random mob would appear in the bottom right corner of the launcher. In the top left corner of the launcher, the player could see a translucent creeper face. There was about a 1⁄11 chance of the creeper face being replaced with a shrugging kaomoji, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. When the player clicked on either of these, they turned solid white. Clicking them again would return them to their translucent state. In addition, if the player pressed +, the experience orb pickup sound would play.

Old walking animation for mobs
In Survival Test, mobs (pigs, sheep, skeletons, zombies, spiders and creepers) had different walking animations.

Creeper melee attack
In Survival Test, creepers did melee damage to the player. In Indev 0.31, this feature was removed. The damage was 4.

Removed with the 1.3 server split
When 1.3 split client and server logic, several features lost significant functionality. While some of these have been effectively restored or at least substituted, many of them remain moved to this day.