Updates in 4 months?

I've been absent from MC for about 4 months now. Before that I had set up my server to my exact wants and it was going well.

Are there any new things I should know about?
First - what all is new in MC now anyways? (since the piston update up to the current pre-release) Usually there'd be a nice detailed post by Notch on the updates but I can't seem to find anything of that sort and a lot seems to have happened especially since 1.9.
Before I knew the game pretty well but now there's so much new stuff. Would anyone fill me in?


Apart from the game itself, are there any new must-have plugins? Maybe something that goes with the current version of the game?

And one last thing, I've heard of a lot of issues with the orbs. Should I use one of those plugins that stop them from dropping/ being on the server? And if so, recommend me one? As there's a handful.

 

1.9 isn't released yet.

1.8 brought unicorns and fairies, and with them, unicorn horns and fairy dust that you can collect by slaughtering them. If you tame them and keep them as your pet, and take good care of them, you supposedly end up better off in the long run, but no one's made it far enough yet to figure out what happens and there's a theory that Notch was just trolling us. Unicorn horns do one-hit KOs on any mob, but only have 31 uses. Fairy dust makes it so you can permanently hover slightly above the ground. You don't get affected by slowsand because you never touch it, etc.

Orbs are partly fixed at least, you should start out with them on and only turn them off if you feel it's necessary or annoying otherwise.

I'd recommend a mob spawning plugin because the Unicorns and Fairies are really rare too...

 

1.9 has had three pre-releases.

but anyways, thanks a lot :]

 

I'm well aware, but this is the bukkit discussion forum and 1.8.1 is the latest minecraft release.