I was in my mid to early teens and Minecraft wasn't out fully yet. It was a holiday season get together with family, my family flew across the country to spend time with them. My cousin, my older brother, and myself were all playing together when I accidentally broke a block underneath an anvil for the first time and learned they could fall. This was on a platform pretty high in the sky so I assumed it would be no big deal. I let out a muted "oh." of mild surprise at my discovery, then a few seconds later heard my cousin the the other room roar "WHAAAAAT?!".

A small message popped up on my screen: "James was squashed by a falling anvil."

Funny to think so such a small thing ended up becoming the inspiration for my go to username from then on.

Started when it was in Alpha because my brother in law said it was awesome. No one told me you could build tools and such, so I dug out (by hand) a fortress out the side of a mountain that was 7 floors where each floor was 3 blocks tall (technically 5 of you count the ceiling and floor). I showed him my achievement, both proud and frustrated. He asked how many pickaxes and shovels I went through, my response was something around ".........what?"

Playing in a world created by my boyfriend and his sons. We made a huge mine. I remember a cobblestone tower. Just in front of this was a small pool of water where I once died because of the bug that didn't allow you to swim up while taking damage. We started with a small wood house and eventually made a castle out of smooth stone. It had a library and a kitchen and 4 beds - One for each player. I didn't have an Xbox live account so when we played I was always logged in as a guest. Before leaving the game I'd remove all my armor and empty my inventory into a chest for the next time I joined.

Minecraft before Microsoft bought it out and forced me to make a Microsoft account just to play it.

First time I ever played minecraft it was in 1.2 and I spawned in on a spruce beach, I had a crappy 3x2 sand hut with a dirt roof and a tower sticking out the side that went way up into the air. I wish I still had that world but I haven't even been able to find the seed again let alone a 12 year old save. It was my first time playing anything on PC too so I had no idea how to move and started trying to move using the arrow keys and I thought I had a broken copy of the game.

Played Alpha and vividly remembered the first night when the monsters come out. Terrified.

Then I discovered mods. Entire game changer when I discovered the Portal Gun.

Good times.

Hanging out with friends in the /r/Minecraft irc channel. Talking with etho was cool too, albeit brief. Also, playing on oc.tc back in the day with them, which is what inspired Minecraft to implement the ding sound when you make a hit with the bow.

Edit:

Oh yeah, Minecon in Florida was cool too. Sethbling and I rode the teacups together at Universal.

Building a cloud castle out of colored wool blocks in survival with my then girlfriend (now wife).

When barrier blocks first came out I decided to build an invisible box full of Withers right in the middle of my village.

It was then I learned that, despite being unbreakable to players in survival, Withers could still break barriers.

Playing just as it left alpha and exploring, listening to my music.

I'm actually a fairly new player at 45. My two young kids have gotten into it recently and we have a realm where we play together sometimes. Seeing what they figure out and come up with on their own is fascinating and amazing.

The adventure and terror of not understanding how it all works when I first started playing. Mobs were scary, crafting recepies gave possibilities I didn't know existed.

The bomb house!

I got a [then] 3~4yo relative who was a big fan of Minecraft, and he was always asking me to build him a house. So I did, in a new creative world. Rigged the whole thing with TNT. Once he stepped on the pressure plate, "tsssssssKABOOOM!". I thought that he'd take it as a joke, but started crying, partially because his mum was nearby and she was laughing nonstop at it. (I promptly opened a copy of the world, before I rigged it with TNT. "See? It was a joke! Here's the house, before exploding! No TNT this time, OK?"

He's a teen now and we still joke about this.

I used to play on (pirated) Pocket Edition on my dad's phone as a kid, since I couldn't convince my parents to get Java Edition.

I built an entire city in Creative mode - with a gigantic ice skating rink - and ran around showing it off to anybody that would listen. If I looked back at it these days I'd find that it leaves a lot to be desired, but my dad chucked the phone so I have no way of knowing how good/bad it is beyond my nostalgia-tinted memory.

These days I main survival, redstone, and tech mods. I miss the days when I could build whatever I wanted without my inner critic getting in the way.

I remember my very first base, back in version 1.7.3 (the first one). It was a hole in the ground on top of a hill. On top of the base I had a small farm.

I have a few from playing with friends a few years back. But my favorite is when I accidentally made a dick castle.

Generally my method of building castles is finding a nice big hill or cliff, plopping a few towers along the top, and then connecting them up with a big wall. If it was big enough, it'd be an open court yard in the middle. But in this case, it was just a long hallway connecting 3 towers, with the main tower overlooking a sheer cliff face into the plains below. Majestic, glorious, the perfect spot.

My friend had been heckling me about how the shape was a little phallic, but I scoffed at his observations. After a week of building this thing, and finally getting the roof done over the hallway connecting the towers, my friend made a map. And I could deny it no longer. I spent a week constructing a giant cock n balls, with the head threateningly pointed at the village to the east. The map remained proudly displayed in the entryway to our shared base just south of my castle. To a 15 year old, this was peak comedy.

Later my friend burned it down. I still bring up this betrayal to him sometimes.

Playing the game with my mother after she bought it for my birthday back in 2011.

People touring the massive builds I worked on at nerd.nu i.e a 70x70 skyscraper extending from bedrock level to the height limit. This required over a million blocks be mined, processed and placed.

Getting various features to work in my ongoing mod pack that were jerry rigged together from seemingly unrelated mods. Eg. Modded overgrown stone from biomes o plenty that spreads and "dies" under the same conditions grass blocks do (The erosion 2 mod was used to do this)