It's been ten years since the Swedish designer Markus 'Notch' Persson brought us the first iteration of the sandbox game, Minecraft. Even then, it was another two years before it was released as a full build, but the game's popularity hasn't waned at all since its initial debut. Oh sure, some of the updates haven't been as well-received as others, but Minecraft is one of those games that people will be playing for years to come.
The appeal of Minecraft is undeniable and simple: you're thrown into a totally new, procedurally-generated world every time you start a new file, and have all the time in the world to explore (survive those god-awful Creepers) and harvest resources to begin building your own structures.
Check out this stunning video showcasing the Minecraft Middle-Earth project below:This can be as simple as a crude wooden dwelling, or as elaborate as a sprawling castle. The limits of your imagination (and your actual skill at playing the game and navigating its pitfalls) is your only impediment.
Over the years, we've seen some pretty damn impressive Minecraft projects, with people recreating things like the Empire State Building, Star Destroyers, and Hogwarts for example. But now a fan project, which has taken a total of nine years to complete, has managed to recreate the entirety of the fictional continent of Middle-Earth from J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
When I say the entirety of Middle-Earth, I really do mean all of it. As you can see in the video above, the fans have managed to use every material and block available in the game to meticulously re-create every location seen in the movies, including Minas Tirith, Rivendell, the Mines of Moria, and even Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr.
Not only that, but the game also contains a number of footprints, showing the paths taken by the various members of the Fellowship in their quest to destroy the Ring of Power, so you can retrace the steps taken by the nine great heroes.
The team behind the project still hasn't fixed a number of minor details yet, but they insist that it will be 100 per cent complete soon. Man, I can't wait to jump into this server and go backpacking around Rohan and Gondor.