[inigyou]

When I bought Minecraft, most things weren't renewable. Now, late-game players don't even have to go mining. Or craft that much.

The enchanting table used to be a rare reward. You had to get to level 50 and roll the dice once. You get a random upgrade to one item and that's it, you're stuck with it. It was gambling. Now the cost is trivial after several reductions, and people minmax their enchantments, and Repair means you never have to re-roll, and you can get all your enchantments anyway from villagers if you do a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. That's an accidental game that overtook the actual game, and it seems like not a very good one.

[inigyou]

also worth noting - in beta, you could create item farms if you installed mods allowing you to create item farms - besides the cactus farm which was possible since cactuses were added to the game (and there's a very silly reason why they are possible) and the obvious intended farms like wheat.