So, I fell off of Minecraft pretty thoroughly for a few months there, and then BAM 1.8 hits me like a truck.
You can now better control the creation of your world using presets. There are a ton that are already inteh system, but through playing with the system, I have this one:
Ore generation is much more realistic, with Diamonds being found as high as there are mountains.
Rivers, and forests now have better setups, Gravel is more prolific as it should be. Stuff like that.
The best part about these presets, is it has ZERO to do with the Seed. So every time you create a new world, you can use the same preset, but the worlds will be different.
Mods:
Forge is now updated to 1.8, but it just got updated like the 28th of Dec. So don't expect much to be out there yet.
Some of the 1.7.10 mods will work, but expect bugs.
NEI and CodeChickenCore are both updated.
Thats all I know at the moment though.
I hate to say it, but I have been itching to play some MC with folks on a server again.
(I will update this when more mods update)