1.8 just made moving to 1.7 a better idea than waiting for 1.8. And that's saying something. I can't help but laugh at the vanilla people who actually think this is a real update.
And before you say "oh, but there's a lot of code changes" or "but this is only the first snapshot, they'll add more stuff": bad and no. Minecraft updates have been worthless (the entirety of 1.7 was a lame combo of ATG, BoP and Mariculture, without any of the good things those mods offer, and horses do not qualify as "significant content") for 2 versions now, and internal code just makes it even harder to update for the mod devs they claim to support. Hell, this snapshot included a feature that was made FOR ONE SPECIFIC ADVENTURE MAP. That's PATHETIC.[/rant]
I gave up hope in Mojang's current team to produce interesting content after 1.7. If they can surprise me, great. I also expect enchantable flying pigs.
I have to disagree with your opinion of the 1.7 updates, at least the biome and terrain generation bits.
I prefer the 1.7 "world update" stuff over BoP, though I can't really decide if that's because it's actually
better, or because BoP is still using the old worldgen. I do like the biomes they introduced (especially the roofed forest), but I think that the 1.7 update for BoP will be
very interesting, as they'll be able to use the vanilla code changes for biome placement and climate to help arrange the BoP biomes. One of the most annoying things I've dealt with in Minecraft has been nonsensical biome placement (desert next to taiga, ice plains next to jungle, etc), and that's (mostly) fixed in 1.7. It's worth it to me just for that.
As for ATG, I'm internally split over ATG's worldgen. One the one hand, I love it... it looks realistic, biome placement makes sense, you have actual continents, etc. As a "surface builder", it's a dream come true, and it's better than 1.7. On the other hand, every ATG world I've created so far (and I've done quite a few in creative just to fly around and check out the terrain) has had "underground issues". Caves tend to be shallow, or to just loop around and come back out on the same mountainside.
It's been difficult to find a big cave that goes all the way to diamond level, and I've really only found significant "low-altitude" resources by digging down. Maybe that's just bad luck on my part, but I've tried on several worlds now and had little luck. I even did a creative world where I put down a few max-size quarries and rode them down looking for caves... I found caves, but most of them were self-contained units and
very few went from the surface to y=16. Of course, now that I've said that I'll go home, fire up TW2, and drop into a new world right in front of a cave that goes straight to bedrock and then meanders for miles.
As for the 1.8 stuff that I've seen, the new stone textures are ugly and the blocks made with them are ugly... BUT the texture pack guys will fix that in a hurry. Because I never play with default textures, I hope they start out with brick, slab and stair versions of these blocks. (Of course, I've wanted smooth stone stairs since the frickin' game launched.) The guys with Soartex Fanver will make them look good. I actually like the default slime block texture, and I like that you can put a carpet on top of it and still get the bounce effect.
I haven't had much of a chance to play with the enchanting or trading changes. As it stands right now I always have either TiCo or Enchanting Plus installed anyway. I've never done much with villagers, either... though docm77's villager trading system has gotten me moderately interested.
