You can always find that free, Classic version and download that. I first found out about Minecraft by hearing people talking about it (online and IRL), then someone on another forum linked the first Yogscast Minecraft vid, so I watched that (it's the first in a long series which hasn't finished yet but is currently on hold because their server got corrupted so they're having to recreate everything and stuff, but it'll be back some day) and thought the game looked cool. Then I downloaded the Classic version and played around with that for a bit, decided I liked the game so went ahead and bought the full version - it was about £14 quid at the time I think (still in Beta), but is more like £17 or so now.
Obviously there's much, much more to it than I described above, but I was just trying to give the most basic outline for you. The Minecraft Wiki has detailed info on anything you could want to know, and the site I linked (Minecraft Tips) is a nice long newbie guide explaining the basics of most of the main mechanics and stuff, at least up to version 1.5-ish. But if you have any questions, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them :).
Bumping this thread to see whether anyone was still interested in some kind of >G Minecraft server or something, since it sounded like that was going to be a thing at some point. I also have my own, private server but the maximum number of people who can be online at once is only five (I just got the cheapest server type I could, basically, since there were only two of us likely to use it regularly), but I may be willing to give one or two people the login details (and add them to the whitelist) if anyone is interested. The latest big patch (1.7.2) went in last night so there's new biomes and flowers and tree types and a whole load of other stuff now in the game.
Apart from that, I just generally like chatting about Minecraft anyway so if anyone's interested go ahead and ask/say something ;).
So! Something did happen briefly, but the friend who was maintaining it ran out of time to do so, and it kind of fell apart. I have recently made steps toward reviving it, however: I have gotten a several-year-old but very powerful server from an old company that went out of business, and have it in the GTG warehouse. We have a spot near our router where I intend to stick it and let it run sometime soon. I haven't played Minecraft in about a year, but I would love to have somewhere to occationally play and see awesome things made by other people!
Cool :). Well, I don't mind giving you the login details to my own server if you just want to mess around for a bit on one rather than go to the trouble of setting up your own - right now it's just me and my partner who use it, though my dad is off work next week and says he'll log on for a bit during that time (he hasn't been on it for ages). We have a base set up and have explored a pretty sizeable area so can point you to some interesting locations and give you a bit of food and stuff to start you off if you like ;).
If you end up setting up your own server I'll see about paying it a visit at some point too :).
Just thought I'd mention that I'm a new Minecraft convert... Been playing a couple of weeks and only semi know what I'm doing, but it's pretty cool. Only done single player so far.
Goovy :D. Feel free to bug me on Skype any time if you have questions or anything - the Wiki is great for looking up pretty much anything but in case you generally want to chat about the game, let me know and if I'm available then maybe we can talk ;).
Yeah, I've been trawling the wiki a lot. So much helpful stuff! Your guide is great too Ameena, so thanks for that. :)
I have the beginnings of a tower to live in, a branch mine, a little farm with sugar cane, wheat and carrots, a field full of rainbow sheep and pens of pigs, chickens and cows, and underground oak tree farm, with a basic wall around everything. Early days.
I'm not so good at making things look nice though!
Sounds like you've got a reasonable base set up - food isn't an issue for you, you have farms for each of the four resource-producing farmable species, you've got sugar cane for whenever you get round to building an enchanting area (need fifteen bookshelves to max out the enchantment levels provided by an Enchantment Table), and presumably you've got at least a small stockpile of various resources from your mine. And even if you haven't managed to find any diamonds yet, it's still possible to build a Nether Portal (whenever you decide you want to go to the Nether) as long as you have access to a lava pool and at least one bucket :).
Having a wall around your base is something I don't tend to get around to doing myself...but that said I tend to set up by building into a hill so don't really need protection on all sides. Plus I skip night time unless I want to actually go out and kill stuff, so creatures attacking aren't really a problem. Note that if your wall is currently a two-block-high layer of dirt or cobblestone or something, you can make it look a bit nicer by using a wooden or cobblestone fence instead - fences are one-and-a-half blocks high so stuff can't jump over them (except horses with a good enough jump ability).
If you want, I can give you my server details if you want to pop by some time and say hi - I've not played much Minecraft in the past few weeks (other than logging in to "draw" Mr Chomps) as me and Ja'Ph' have been playing Borderlands 2, but I can log in and show you around and stuff. There was an issue with the server crashing any time a player got too far away from any other players, but there has been a patch since then so I don't know if that got fixed. We wouldn't be far enough apart for that to happen anyway, if it's still an issue :).
Last night I got horses, yay! Found a desert temple and there was a saddle and some diamond horse armour in one of the chests. :) I've been wanting horses ever since I found them - next, a donkey, since I spotted a herd on my travels.
Horses are pretty cool (though very laggy to ride in multiplayer games, last time I tried). And of course donkeys are cool as well, and cute :). You can make a lead from string (x4) and a slimeball in order to lead them around and tie them to fence posts(works on cows and stuff too).
Maybe we can meet up on Skype some time (where we'll be able to tell that we're both online together) and I can give you a tour of my server :). I haven't been back to it for a while now, though, and the base I'd built wasn't complete at the time so it still looks a bit crap. I've been building a different kind of base every time I make a new world on the server. I've had several that were built into a hill/mountain - a few have had different-coloured rooms linked by corridors, whereas another was more kind of "open plan", with the entrance at ground level and some stairs down to the various "rooms", which were set back into the walls all around the open cave. Another time (in one of the older worlds I made), I hollowed out the entirety of a mountain and replaced the surface with glass, then dug a crater beneath said mountain and filled it with lava, building a spiral stairway (of glass) down to the Nether Portal, which was on a (glass) platform between the mountain and the lava pit. There was a bridge (which was going to be made of obsidian but I never finished it) leading from the mountain to the land. That was a cool base :). Anyway, the current one has all the usual "rooms" in their own little buildings, so it looks like a sort of village thingy. There's a real village very close by, as well, though it doesn't really have much in it any more. And some of the buildings may have caught slightly on fire a few times when I was messing around with a lava bucket (they're really good for clearing forests if you can't be arsed to keep remaking axes and/or flints-and-steel, though it does take a while) :D.
I may even remake the world again - I can't remember whether I did or not after the world-changing patch went in and added all the new biomes, causing some very long, sheer, vertical walls all around the perimeter of the explored world (where chunk generation changed with the patch, so the newly-generated chunks clash very noticeably with the ones that had been generated before the patch). I can't remember whether that was in this world, or the one before, lol - I've made so many.
So how's it going in Minecraft? I logged into my server briefly the other day, to remind myself of what our settlement looks like - this isn't the world with all the vertical walls, so I did remake it since then :). There is a massive Desert off to the west with a Savannah on the other side. I think there was a Flower Forest over there, too. I think the only new biome I've not discovered yet is a Mesa. Oh, and that one with all the ice spire thingys. Andw hatever one has that podizal stuff on the ground. But all of those are pretty rare, I think.
I did find my first ever Mushroom biome at one point - might have even been in this world, actually. I should go back and explore, and fill in more maps to get a wider area.