Unfortunately the current chest protection is broken. Double chests are not protected. Please go as soon as possible and either lock your chests into a closed room (w/o doors) or split them into single chest. There is unfortunately no better alternative now. The other way would be to switch to another software to do that, but that would require all chests to be manually locked.

As a gift for the holidays (late I know)!

I implemented a user level change. Since the new server can handle more people jumping around on the map, I allowed everyone who has an assigned lot to use the /sethome and /home commands. Registering for a lot will automatically give you this command. This should also make it much more easy for people on the borders of the map to reach their lot safely after they died. Please see the User Levels page for the full details.

Ok, I have moved the server and the website to the new machine. We have now 64bit, 8GB Ram, 2.5Ghz Quad core. What are the consequences?

• We can let in more users. I have set the limit to 20 for now. Please also do your part in getting new users on the map. You can post reviews on the minecraftforum.net thread. The higher the post is in the thread, the more people will come. Also become fan on the facebook page if you can.
• We can have a larger map. I have removed the grey area around the center of the map. All areas from A-T and 1-20 can be requested now
• We can use more warps, redstone and minecarts. Use it, but please do not go crazy or have self-running looping mechanisms. I will come up with new user level permissions in the coming days for warps and /home etc

Regarding the resetting of areas: Since the old backups seem to be corrupt, I cannot easily reset an area. I allow people to choose a new one on the map and will blacklist the old one.

Once I have a batch of them together, I will delete the files there manually and give them out again. You can request a new area through the form on the website. I will check if you have another one already and delete your access to the old one.
Also, during the move to the new server, somehow the comments from the last 8 days got lost. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea how that happened.

Just ordered an 8GB Quad core server.
Spent a bunch of cash on it.
Will transfer within the next 24 hours. Wait for super-performance and speed. 30+ users at the same time!
Otherwise no changes. PERFORMANCE BOOST! No more LAG! WHHOOOOOOHAAAAA!

Ok. Time to calm down. Reset adrenaline levels. All back to normal. Act as if nothing happened.
No do not. Party as hell. Invite all you can – we can handle it.

Uncovery – Uncover the next.

Ok, I am back home – finally.

So thanks to all of you who have voiced their opinion regarding the future of the map, it helped me to come to an opinion what to do next.

First of all the most important thing: I got the old map back up and running with identical settings as before. It seems like everything works fine so far. Please tell me if you see any issues.

Now there are numerous other things you need to know. I want to be more explicit how I will continue with the server and why so all you understand the reasons. First of all, let me tell you the state of the server and the software, since not all of you might have been up to date what happened out there in the last two weeks:

I am running minecraft with the help of HMod. HMod is being discontinued. There is a new plugin application out there, called Bukkit. A lot of Hmod plugin programmers have switched already over and the first plugin releases are being worked on. I assume that there will be one or two more weeks until this will be usable however.

Also, there will be another server update next week. This will most likely break HMod again until it is updated. So while Hmod is being updated (and the plugins) again, the map will be not protected (again). During this time, I will switch back to the current, temporary map.

So, to sum up all the decisions I made apart from the above:

– I would like to make the current temp map downloadable, but I plan to keep it as a temp. map for the future in case minecraft plugins break. I expect this issue to end when notch makes the updates not mandatory. Then the current temp map will be downloadable. Not before, since I want to protect the current secret locations from griefers (not greifers, please…) until the map is not needed anymore

– There will be no plugins that support building or that spawn items such as runecraft. If runecraft would build only stuff where you have the material in stock and use them, I would install it. But I do not want to render mining useless by letting people spawn anything

– I will not remove the kits but replace them with iron and later with gold etc to make it gradually more difficult. I also will increase the time that you have to wait to spawn a new kit to prevent stockpiling.

– Restoring Areas from backup seems to work fine but NOT for older backups. This means that restoring a place to a condition before you started building should NOT work. I can make it work ONLY if your area is not touching any other areas that are given to someone.

– I will try to find plugins that allow PvP in a war-like manner so people can kill and be killed only by people who choose to join in. There is a plugin out there, but I will only use it once Bukkit is active.

– I will see how we use the ranks, currently everything will stay as it is.

– larger lots will most probably be only possible if the RAM issue is solved. Bukkit, coming minecraft updates and switching to a new server should solve a lot of this.

– I will write a 3-strikes check for the registration. If you want to get any access level, you have a max of 3 attempts to fill out the questionnaire correctly. At the third failed attempt, you are automatically banned and cannot request to join anymore. If someone cannot read, navigate a map or play minecraft, I do not want them here. I also don’t want to have people around whining that they cannot fill in the questions properly.

– The Jail will be discontinued since the plugin does not work properly. I have a different plugin that prevents to light fire. I hope this will be enough. I am testing how this works.

Hey there, after being off the net for some 10 days (withdrawal symptoms included), I have a connection again, but not too much time yet to start working on the server. So until then (probably next weekend), I want to ask you to tell me what you would like to have after I am able to install mods & plugins again. There are several options. What I would like to say however is that I will not necessarily pick the highest rated option. I use this as a way to get your opinion, not to take commands :-)

So here is some detailed explanation about the options that we have:

• Leave everything as it is now. No protection, PvP on, monsters on, no plugins. Advantage: no more outages after software updates.
• Go back to the old map and restore everything as it was before the update came out, but make it harder (no kits for example).
• Same as above, but with a new map, everyone has to pick a new area and restart building. Also, there would be a smaller public area.
• Something completely different. Please comment below.

Since the game was updated and the mods do not work, I moved the old map to a super-secure location and replaced it with a TEMPORARY map.

This means: Whitelisting is off for now. Building rights are on for everybody. If you apply for whitelist, or building rights, you will have them after the old map is back, too. Applying for protected areas is OFF. Whatever you did, had, were on the old map, will be back after all the updates work again!

I will be leaving for holidays on the 22nd and be back online on the 4th. Until then, there will be only vanilla SMP online, without any mods, protections, user rights, map updates etc. The server will restart and update itself every 6 hours. This means that if there is an update from Notch, it will take maximum 6 hours until the server will be running again. Please be patient.

Also: PvP is ON! Monsters are ON!

We have a new Facebook fan page! Hope you like it!

We have a new command available: /seen <playername>

It will show you when this player was last online! The command is available from member level upwards.

The hospital is finally working!

How? You need to go into one of the rooms and wait for 2 minutes in there. Then, you will be healed! It’s magic!

As you know, we have a quite decent map based on Google maps engine. The issue here is that there is no overlay of the quadrants for protected area and there are no icons for the spawn, people or other important places. I know that this is possible, but I have no idea how to do this. So if someone is able to write JS and wants to help, I would be very happy to get some support here.

I have created a page telling you how to contribute. Of course it contains the obligatory explanation how to send me the money that you saved for your further education, how to transfer your life insurance to me and how to pay off my mortgage. Take a look please, have a laugh.

While looking at the new 2 bridges we built I was thinking that they are not really the most attractive thing either. It’s not only the brigde but also the stairs and towers that lead up to them.

So here is a proposal: I will transfer them underground. We make std. “subway entrances” above ground. The tunnels would run along the borders so as not to interfere with existing underground structures. They would always be half/half in each bordering territories to make sure we do not take too much place of anyone.They would run at about 40-50block level.

I would therefore ask all of you who are willing to participate in that project to post a message there and I will try to make meaningful connections.

Thanks to the kind help of hutchison15, we have now a new header image. The original shot was taken by myself, but the refining touches as well as the font were done by him. Thanks a lot, hutch! I also changed the outer background to black to fit more with the “Build your Dream” tagline. Hope you like it!

[Update] Since apparently other people want to try to make one too, here are some guidelines:

• It has to somehow fit with the subtitle “Build your dream”. So it has to show some structure or image that represents this phrase.
• It should be elegant and not too cluttered
• The title and subtitle should be in the image in a similar way as it is now. Not too dominant and not covering the whole image
• The image has to have the exact same dimensions as the current one, namely 940px × 198px
• It should not be just some pattern but should rather evoke a feeling or emotion, at the minimum should encourage people to build something cool.
• We could also use a favicon for the site….

I have seen larger and larger walls coming up around protected areas. There are some problems with these.

1. They are ugly – like hell
2. They are not useful. A 2-block high wall 2-3 blocks away from the actual border is a better protection against mobs and intruders. A wall right on the border does not work since your neighbor only needs to build a ladder on the back of your blocks to climb over it.
3. They block the access for other people to get to their areas.
4. You are in a protected area if you might have not noticed. People cannot steal your stuff. They cannot destroy your stuff. So stop this childish “I can build a higher wall then you” crap.

This is why I am starting a “polite request” to take down those high walls and make sure that people do have a chance to get across your territory. Make a bridge, a tunnel, whatever, but do not block it 100% and do not make high walls. If the high walls do not disappear within a reasonable time, I will make a rule instead of a “polite request”. If the rule is not kept, I will remove the walls manually, without refund of the resources you spent on it.

I have written a new registration process, that should make things quicker, easier and give a better experience to already registered users.

First of all, there will be a whitelist now. Registration on the blog will automatically whitelist the user. There will be no more interaction from my side needed. However, there is now a test included in the registration. This should make sure that people know a bit about minecraft and that they know that despite the fact that they registered, they still do not have building rights. The questionnaire is short and not very site-specific to make sure many people can stop by and take a look at the server without having to read a lot of rules etc.

As a second step, there will be the application for building rights. Also this includes a test, and the user will have to actually read the rules, the FAQ and understand how the map works before he can answer the questions properly. Once this is done, the user is automatically permitted to build in the public area, without me having to move a finger.

The third step will be as usual the application for the private area. There will be another test that is more specific than the current one to the issues of private areas.

The overall goal of this is that we can handle a larger number of people coming from the minecraft server list and that we get less stupid questions in-game and force the people to actually read the rules on the website first. The whole thing will be live within the next 12 hours.

As you might have read on Notch’s blog, there will be a beta version release on the 20th December. This will mean that the HeyMod plugin will most likely break. Then, in return, the Cuboid Plugin that does the protection, will break. It might take some time again until the whole setup as we have it right now will work again.

The issue with this is that I will be leaving for Holidays from the 22nd until the 7th of January and most of the time will not be able to access the internet. So if there is no update until I leave, the risk is high that for a couple of days the protection will not work.

On the day the update comes out, until HeyMod and Cuboid work again, I will switch to an alternative, TEMPORARY map. The old map will be restored as soon as we know that the protection works again. It is likely that we do some fun stuff during the time, such as PVP and/or free creative building (everyone gets the /item command to spawn stuff).

So if you come back on the 20th and your house is gone, don’t panic. Have fun and wait until I restore the map once protection is assured again.

To give you a bit more understanding why things are on the server as they are and where it might go to, please read the new “About this Server” page!

I just uploaded a new map for the protected area selection. It’s a 1-pixel-per-block map with a overlaid grid of the sectors. It does not show the occupied areas, but you can still better judge what is going on there. Enjoy! You still need to go to the “protected area” page and fill out the form!

As you might have read already on Notch’s blog, there will be some important bugfixes to multiplayer within the next 12 hours. Also, there will be some interesting changes on uncovery!

As you might have seen, we had a bit of a rush of new users in the recent days that died down again. The reason was that we suddenly jumped up in the online server list form place 945 to place 5. So suddenly, instead of the normal daily 2-3 users, we had 150 in a couple of hours. I could not fast enough whitelist them, I could not assign all of them a protected area, and we got a griefer in, and everybody was annoyed. So this changes all now. I took the server off the list and will put it back up only once I know we have a working system that can handle that many people at once.

First of all, I know have an email system that notifies me on the cellphone when someone registers, and I can whitelist them from there immediately. So the longest time you have to wait will be if I am sleeping, which should not be longer than 8-10 hours.

Second, we will have a map with pre-assigned fields, like a chessboard. So you can apply for field B-9, and have a 100×100 block reserved for you, without worrying about griefers and without me having to manually walk through your area and select it for you. I can do that too from my cellphone if I need to (although it’s a bit more complicated).

Third, once you have this area, I will make a backup of this and only this space. If you mess it up and want to reset it, I can do that for you.

Fourth, we will have 3600×3600 blocks large “public area” in which you can do what you want – without griefers protection though. This area will be for new joiners or people who prefer to build in larger groups. Also this area can be reset to the backup status once in a while.

Fifth, we will have a 200×200 blocks large spawn area with all the necessary features: A hospital where you can heal, an incinerator, a market place and a trading place, and of course the much beloved Jail. This time extra spooky.

Sixth, since we will have 400 allotted areas for users to be protected, we will run out of them sooner or later. So if we need one more than we have, we will reset and hand out those areas that are deserted and where the user did not log in for a reasonable time (2 weeks probably).

Seventh, there will be a process to apply for a protected area. You will have to answer a short checklist to make sure you are mentally above 3 years old etc. to weed out the noobs from the experts and make sure dedicated people are on the server.