The End Idea
Well, it looks like for the moment it's not possible to reach the end without issues, but if those issues could be resolved, I was thinking about ways that we could legitimately have the end in survival.
The only 2 reasons I can think of to want to reach the end are to acquire end stone, and to kill the dragon and collect XP. But those are both good reasons IMHO.
I think a way to do this that could work would be to have a portal to the end in the city spawn, and to disable regular stronghold portals to the end (as we do for nether portals). However, these rules would apply to the end world:
* The end is a survival world and uses your survival inventory.
* No /tp commands of any kind are allowed in the end (this includes /spawn). If you enter, the only way to leave the end is to die or to defeat the dragon (just as in SSP).
* The end world is reset every server reset. This ensures that even if the dragon is defeated, the portal back to the overworld will only persist until the next server reset. This also reinforces the fact that the end is not for building.
Just some thoughts I had, not for the near future, but I wanted to post them before I forgot about it. :)
I don't know man, the whole ender dragon thing is kinda tricky on the multiplayer side of things. Like every server restart, people would literally race to the End, and all try and kill and collect the experience from the dragon.
I think it would be awfully chaotic, and on a totally different note, I would support bringing back the Darklands! Oh man those were the days!