That is unlikely to happen unless more of the "vanilla fanboys" opens their eyes to the modded universe and start demanding it. As long as there is such a huge ("misguided") vanilla community to keep supporting Mojangs complacency then things will stay the same.
From my (probably skewed and limited) perspective it seems like vanilla Minecraft is like a slightly bland cream Ice cream. If you have never tasted anything else then it is AMAZING! But it boggles my mind that so many people never realise that this icecream can be mixed with SO many flavours and served with so many various other things to make it an even greater experience.
What is needed to change it? Kickstarter collection for add campaigns to spread the value of modded minecraft? Lobbyist work?
One thing that Modders can start doing perhaps, is make detailed information more readily available ingame I think. Too much information needs to be pieced together from wiki's, forums and youtube videos. which might be overwhelming to the younger audience. What the game really needs is a single unified tutorial/information system where all mods incoorporate information about their items. No books, no XX different systems. Maybe something that is integrated into NEI. ExtraUtilities already used NEI somewhat to this extend, but something more focused with possibility for pictures etc. as well.
If such a thing was added and jointly accepted and used, then Mojang might have a easier time accepting mods as the added complexity might not be such a big a problem for the younger audience.
When I first played minecraft, I thought it was the dumbest thing on the planet. It is not intuitive. Really I did have to look up an faq. "Cut a tree down with the flat of your hand" WTF? Really? this is what I'm doing? "Make planks, make a crafting table, make a pick axe, mine some stone, make a better pickaxe, now find some coal"... it could say...
Honestly a small in game tutorial wouldn't be out of the question...
That having been said, there are things that I miss greatly in 1.6 that are not in 1.7 or have changed for whatever reason. There are also things I'm very happy about. Did you see the announcement that galacticraft is coming to FTB? That having been said I really like where the modded community is. I feel like we should muddle in 1.7 for a while longer and flush out some of the awesome ideas that people are floating around. Who knows if we stay committed as a community long enough to one version Soaryn might even finish XyCraft.
That having been said what's so great about 1.8 anyways? other than "it's the latest and therefore best version duh" argument?
EDIT: Soaryn, if you're reading this... please finish XyCraft... Pretty please with sugar on top? 0.0
