Notch did something that Badspot failed to do.
Marketing perhaps?
What do you think?
Neither developer has done any real marketing. I think the reason why Minecraft is more popular than Blockland is quite simple. Blockland has a larger learning curve and you need to put some time into it to create something neat. Minecraft is much simpler. You plop into a ready made world and break cubes of one size and build using those cubes. Blockland has dozens of different sized cuboids and you can use any of them right away. Blockland doesn't have a world ready and waiting for you. You start with nothing and need to create everything. In Minecraft you can just spend time walking in one direction and explore the stuff out of the world. I've done and spent hours doing it. It's fun.
With Blockland you need much more creativity. There are people who build amazing things and when you look at those and compare them to your builds you feel little discouraged. I know I have. With Minecraft everyone has those cubes that are the same size. Everyone has the same tools. The difference between a great Minecraft build and an average one is almost without exception the size. You have one size cube to build with, detail wise the builds are very limited. You can only make it larger.
With Blockland you do not have the same tools. My personal opinion is that the default bricks are very limited. If you are only using those you are not going to achieve the same level of detail as someone using custom bricks like wedges or additional ramps. There are hundreds of add-ons out there and you really need to spend some time searching through them to find what you like. Duplicator for example. It can speed up building quite a bit. Someone who doesn't know about this add-on will not be as productive as someone who does. The same goes for the Swiss Army Gun which I used a lot for my castle racetrack which is entirely built out of print bricks. You would have to be insane to change the print on those thousands of bricks one by one.
Minecraft on the other hand works just fine out of the box. The tools do what they need to do. Break blocks so you can build with them elsewhere. That's really all you need to create builds in the game. I haven't been following the game community for over a year now but back when I played I didn't notice any mods that would change or add to the way the game worked in terms of building. There were world editing tools but they were external programs. For example you couldn't create ramped surfaces at all. There was no ramped blocks or tools to create a ramped surface. You were limited to a cube. The only mod that comes to mind is the Too Many Items "creative mode". Back then this was a new thing. Blockland is entirely based on a "creative mode".
I did not plan on writing a wall of text.
TL;DR
Minecraft is simple: cubes + cubes + pre-made world = easy, fun, entertaining.
Blockland is more complex: add-ons, all kinds of bricks, nothing to start with = you need to be creative, plan ahead what you are building, enjoyment is not instant.
