I occasionally do, but it's mostly just adventure maps and other short-lived "fun" things like that. When I do play "traditional" MC, it's still not technically vanilla, since the server I'm on has a few mods built into it.

You can use Minecraft with portable Java; that's what I do. There is no browser plugin or system path entry.

Install jPortable 64-bit (or 32-bit if you're using a 32-bit Windows installation).
Then set up a shortcut with a target something like this:

D:\portableapps\CommonFiles\Java64\bin\javaw.exe -jar D:\Minecraft\Minecraft.exe

...adjusting the locations to match your own system, of course. Minecraft.exe's location doesn't matter since the actual Minecraft data is in %APPDATA%\.minecraft

When new Java versions are released you can simply run jPortable again to update to the newest version.

I know two kids who still play it quite a lot.

I am personally starting to boycott it now thought because:

1. Minecraft used to call itself DRM-free back when I bought two copies of it (as presents), but apparently now the new Minecraft launcher has proper DRM, requiring online logon whenever you want to play it, even single-player.

2. That damn Java. One of the kids constantly runs into the "out of memory" crash now. I googled for it and tried one of the various suggestions how to make Java allocate more memory, but I think it is still flaky, from what I've heard from that kid.

Meh. At some point I was thinking of buying a third copy, for myself. Fat chance.

The console versions use totally new code; it would be great if they would adapt that for the PC version but that's probably never going to happen.

Played a decent amount a while ago until real life stuff came up plus my computer could barely run it with the new features. Have recently started to follow it again, the new stuff is interesting.


The previous launcher had the same thing.
The new launcher will let you play offline, may need to deleted the profile and relogin.

Why would login auth be a tipping point anyway? That's not really what most consider true drm. For the second point you'd want to check better places for tech support. One major thing would be the java version being up to date.

I recently started playing it again due to receiving my Rift and it's glorious :D

Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it. But since I already having a ton of backlogs I'm not sure I will be back again soon.

Because I originally bought it with the "DRM-free!" slogan.

Anyway, maybe I need to re-confirm whether the online authentication is always needed, even with the new launcher. I haven't tested it thoroughly with all kinds of workarounds etc.

I just temporarily disable internet connection and run it up, It only seems to want to log in to the servers if it detects a live connection, I may be wrong but thats my experience.