From what I've seen I thought the new enchanting system is better. For instance, you can get to level 30 and get a level 30 enchant and only use 3 levels and 3 lapis. Then you don't have do do as much work to go from level 27 back to 30 and I don't mind using the lapis because I usually have a ton of it sitting around anyway.
The issues I have with it is that are that it's too easy, and you can't really "sell" enchantments to other users anymore. I used to farm XP and enchant my friend's pick for some iron or a bunch of stone he wasn't using, but now that it hardly costs XP, I can't really justify selling it. Once you get to level 30, you grab some lapis lazuli and enchant everything at level 30, only needing to refill 3 levels each time. With a cheap automatic XP farm, 3 levels is nothing; you only feel limited when it costs 30 each time.
I've never hosted my own server but I heard about the Bukkit thing. Wasn't that guy sending them a DCMA to get Mojang to open up their code to them so that progress could be made or something? I don't understand why Mojang is being so weird with Bukkit lately since they absorbed that team, so several of their employees worked on it. I think it has to do with Microsoft. I think they want to get always-on servers running on Xbox Live for PCs and Xbox. They probably also want to incorporate a modding API for DLC. Some of it will be free, some of it will be paid. Maybe like an "app store" for Minecraft, lol. As long as it works well I wouldn't mind throwing some money towards developers who make cool mods or shaders and letting Mojang get some kickbacks from that. Especially if it all works together nice and stable. I believe Microsoft will do a good job with it and hopefully will be able to throw a bunch of engineers and developers at the project. Make everything run better and add features faster. Maybe they could even get off of Java. Crazy I know! Microsoft has tons of resources to help them and from what I've read their Azure servers are pretty good. Not sure if you could run Minecraft on them but it would be interesting to see if they offered some managed packages.
I've been hosting public survival servers for a few years, sometimes also hosting a private one, but now I just host a private one for my friends. I was a very good admin, if I may say so myself. It used to be really great, but the community filled up with 10-year-olds and griefers, so it's tough to fill up a server with good players now. MSFT
officially had nothing to do with the Bukkit takedown, but as you said, maybe they did. I wouldn't mind paying a little to play on a serious server with good players and professional admins if it wasn't Xbox Live! I remember the atrocity that was Games for Windows Live, so I don't trust MSFT with that. Plus I only have an Xbox, not a 360 or One, so I'm not in that ecosystem.
Modding in MC is always a dodgy process, and the game is hideously resource-intensive for what it is. I really hope Microsoft takes it off Java and makes a good modding API, but then there's the risk of them making it Windows-only, as they have done with other games they published recently (AoE II HD and Rise of Nations).
The game is currently semi-open source. That is, it's not, but you can still decompile it anyway. People decompile and de-obfuscate the Java byte code, sometimes in a hack job way because the automatic decompiler MCP isn't always updated, modify it, then recompile and re-obfuscate the code. Repeat for every single update. And anyone can stick a virus in there undetected. At least Bukkit's plugin system was nice and clean; I made a few plugins myself. The whole modding/plugin community was run by random hackers on the Internet, which was cool for a while, but this is no longer a little "indie" game.
