We’re getting really close to the 1.3 release now, and need to check that everything runs as expected. The plan is to release one or two snapshots, and then the 1.3 pre-release by Wednesday or Thursday. The pre-release is intended to be identical to the official release next week, in order to give modmakers and server admins a week’s head start. That’s why we need to do a snapshot first, since we can’t do changes to the update after the pre-release is out.

This snapshot consists of all the bugfixes that Nathan (@dinnerbone) and Eric (@_grum) have been working on the last two weeks. Get it here:

• Client: http://assets.minecraft.net/12w30b/minecraft.jar
• Server: http://assets.minecraft.net/12w30b/minecraft_server.jar (or EXE)

If you havent downloaded Minecraft you can grab it here: www.minecraft.net/download

Please note that the snapshot jar doesn’t need to be extracted or unpacked in any way, you simply replace the minecraft.jar file that is located in the “.minecraft/bin” folder.

// The Minecraft Team

UPDATE: There was a bug that prevented people from interacting with blocks (right-clicking) which has been fixed. We also fixed a null pointer exception. The links above have been updated to point to the new version (12w30b).