Update: The final release is officially out. 

It's been a long time coming, but it is finally here. Mojang will be releasing the first, official retail version of the highly addictive Minecraft on Friday. This follows news from earlier this week that Mojang released the game for iOS as well.

Although Minecraft has not been officially released as I write this, Eurogamer got their hands on a copy of the 1.0 build and gave it a 10 out of 10 score. The review is light on details, but you can tell they really enjoyed themselves. 

As for what players can expect in the latest release of Minecraft, the list of possible changes is extensive. Which ones made it and which ones did not remains unclear, but that information will be released soon.

If you have not checked out Minecraft in awhile, the Mojang team has been very busy adding features, fixing bugs and making substantial changes and improvements to the game each month. You may want to revisit the game once again. The additions include new realms, game modes, farming, crafting and even a "end boss" dragon to give you a false sense of completion.

"Notch", the father of Minecraft, regularly updates his personal blog with information regarding the game. In his blog, Markus Persson states that Minecraft will continue to receive updates and big changes, letting players know that Mojang will not be resting on their rears after the big 1.0 release.

The last few weeks have been incredibly stressful and emotional in many ways, and I feel so relieved to finally have a finished version of Minecraft to release to the world on Friday. But that doesn't mean we'll stop working on Minecraft! We'll keep adding to the game just as we have so far, and we have many exciting plans for the next year.. some of these will be announced fairly soon.

If you have been thinking about buying Minecraft and still have not yet, today may be the last day to pick it up for 25% off while the beta still lingers on minecraft.net.