#just...trust the process，mkay? better for everyone if nobody panics :)

[shadeswift99]

Ok, going to get a little bit more serious here, but: If the Season 8 finale left a bad taste in your mouth, if the Moon Big plotline as a whole just didn't sit right with you, if you're really more in it for the stability and collaboration and you'd like your unmodded low-stakes minimal-plot Hermitcraft back...try this on for size.

Here is my genuine, evidence-based prediction: It's gonna be just fine.

Just hear me out. See, the thing is, I think season 8 was shorter for a reason. The Hermits tried a lot of new things this season: They lived on the same continent, they did a lot more collaboration, people who we'd never seen lore from before tried their hands at plot and people who were already plot madmen (*cough cough Ren and Doc*) amped it up even further - but I'm guessing that the thing that made a lot of that stuff possible and attractive as an option was the limited amount of time before the update. Also: the update being delayed pushed off a lot of their plans, and without that, we might have seen an extremely sparse and demotivated season without adding a little something extra to keep the players engaged. As it turned out, they ended up with a great sketchpad to test some things they wouldn't risk a normal season on trying out, or create a type of content that wouldn't usually be sustainable in the long term.

They had a great amount of fun doing that! I loved it! But my best guess is that - aside from explaining how they got from point A to point B - season 9 is going to be much more the unscripted vanilla shenanigans we've all come to know and love. And since the beginning of a season is one of my favourite times in any SMP, I, for one, am incredibly excited for it!