What I expected to happen was that I'd be able to create a normal world with a default set-up.
What actually happened was that the game crashed during world-generation.
Minecraft 1.8.9 doesn't crash, Pre-release-3 1.9 crashes.
Crash Log below:
Completely ignored arguments: [--nativeLauncherVersion, 301]
[12:22:52] [Client thread/INFO]: Setting user: Patrickrc1
[12:22:52] [Client thread/INFO]: (Session ID is token:c941a33d199d41f89f891a9b4ffa547d:ff71c46985884b80bd0400762f9bb639)
[12:22:54] [Client thread/INFO]: LWJGL Version: 2.9.4
[12:22:55] [Client thread/INFO]: Reloading ResourceManager: Default
[12:23:09] [Sound Library Loader/INFO]: Starting up SoundSystem...
[12:23:09] [Thread-5/INFO]: Initializing LWJGL OpenAL
[12:23:09] [Thread-5/INFO]: (The LWJGL binding of OpenAL. For more information, see http://www.lwjgl.org)
[12:23:09] [Thread-5/INFO]: OpenAL initialized.
[12:23:09] [Sound Library Loader/INFO]: Sound engine started
[12:23:11] [Client thread/INFO]: Created: 1024x512 textures-atlas
[12:23:26] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting integrated minecraft server version 1.9-pre3
[12:23:26] [Server thread/INFO]: Generating keypair
[12:23:28] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing start region for level 0
[12:23:29] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 5%
[12:23:30] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 11%
[12:23:31] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 18%
[12:23:32] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 25%
[12:23:33] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 33%
[12:23:34] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 40%
[12:23:35] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 45%
[12:23:36] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 54%
[12:23:37] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 63%
[12:23:38] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 73%
[12:23:39] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 83%
[12:23:40] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 93%
[12:23:41] [Server thread/INFO]: Patrickrc1[local:E:89f60680] logged in with entity id 170 at (-51.5, 65.0, 171.5)
[12:23:41] [Server thread/INFO]: Patrickrc1 joined the game
[12:23:44] [Server thread/WARN]: Can't keep up! Did the system time change, or is the server overloaded? Running 2781ms behind, skipping 55 tick(s)
#

1. A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
   #
2. EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x00007ff9cead172c, pid=3268, tid=7440
   #
3. JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (8.0_25-b18) (build 1.8.0_25-b18)
4. Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (25.25-b02 mixed mode windows-amd64 compressed oops)
5. Problematic frame:
6. C [ig8icd64.dll+0x60172c]
   #
7. Failed to write core dump. Minidumps are not enabled by default on client versions of Windows
   #
8. An error report file with more information is saved as:
9. C:\Users\Patrick\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\hs_err_pid3268.log
   #
10. If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
11. http://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/crash.jsp
12. The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code.
13. See problematic frame for where to report the bug.
    #
    AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: Using incremental CMS is deprecated and will likely be removed in a future release