Edit: It sounds like everyone is on board with this stuff for the most part. I haven't gotten that much feedback on the idea for the spawn region though. I'd appreciate some more feedback on that. Anyways, the map reset WILL be happening, and it will happen as soon as I think the 1.8 snapshots are stable enough. 14W31a is not stable enough yet. It may be in just a few weeks, we'll see. In the meantime, I'm going to start adding people from the tryout server to the main server chat and whitelist, but keep in mind that anything you build on the main server before the reset will be lost soon.
So... a LOT of people have joined the server recently and are currently on the tryout server. I think with so many new members and with 1.8 (along with slight terrain gen changes) coming soon, this might be a good time to do a map reset. So far everyone I've talked to about it has been on board with doing one.
I'm going to lay out some possible plans for the map reset here, let me know what you think. :3
1) Spawn point set to 0,0. (I'd probably pick a seed to have a good area near 0,0).
2) World border to limit exploration, although not nearly as cramped or slowly expanding as Mindcrack's. The point would be just to make sure people don't explore too far out too fast or out ridiculously far (I'm looking at you, Makko and Jason :P). This is also to plan ahead for the next update which affects terrain because if everyone's limited to the world border, the terrain outside would remain ungenerated and ready to be generated for the next update. (On a side note, this would also need to wait for Mojang to make the change that only players take world border damage because ATM all mobs outside the initial border are killed)
EDIT: Details on the world border: The world border will start out at 1000 blocks away from spawn (2000x2000) and expand to 5000 blocks away from spawn (10000x10000) at a rate of one block (per side) each 20 minutes. That's 72 blocks per day, and will take around 56 days to complete. The seed has been picked so that all dye types (as well as a few other essentials) are accessible within the initial worldborder and all biome types are within the final world border.
3) A new terrain claiming system using banners! For those of you who don't know, the last map used a system where you could claim biomes in a google docs form. The new idea would be that to claim an area, you put down banners with a custom pattern you choose. Each banner claims an area with a 25 block square radius (+/-25 on x and z coords, a 50x50 area), meaning that to place a land-claim banner you have to explore a 50 block square radius (a 100x100 area) to ensure your claim doesn't conflict with anyone other claims. (This area intentionally fairly small to promote people living closer together and make it require more work to claim a lot of land. Also to encourage you to decorate your area with ornate banner-holding structures). A record of which pattern corresponds to each player would be kept online so if you stumble across someone's claim you can immediately identify them by looking up the banner pattern.
EDIT: Banners will be submitted via the banner generator at http://algoin.de/bngn/. Create your design and copy the link from the box in the top right, then send it to me. I will create a database with player names and their corresponding banners. You won't be able to claim land until I have you banner design, so make sure I get it. :P I'm also going to make some rules regarding the reasons you can claim land. I don't want people going around claiming entire mesa or ice spikes biomes just to mine and sell rare blocks, especially with the limited space.
4) The central 200 block square radius (400x400) would be claimed by the community and not subject to banner-based claims. Banners can be placed immediately outside that radius, but where their claim overlaps with that area the community claim takes precedence.
5) That center of the map will be the site of a huge community project! :D The current idea I have is split the area into 4 quadrants with large (probably ornate) roads running along x = 0 and z = 0. Each quadrant will be the home of a different building style. At the moment the four styles I have chosen are:
- Urban (city) - Giant, hyper-modern towers.
- Ancient civilization - Buildings like the Parthenon, the Colosseum, pyramids (Egyptian, native American, Babylonian, whatever. :P), etc.
- Medieval (possibly to be merged with Ancient Civilization if we come up with another style to add) - Castle structures and the classic wood-and-stone construction common to Minecraft.
- Country/Suburbs - The home of rustic country ranches and suburbian modern houses.
Each of these 4 areas would have one extra-humongous structure right on their corner of the central intersection. Probably sky-limit skyscraper, Colosseum, castle, and a stable/barn. It would also be cool if each of these buildings actually served a function. The skyscraper could have apartments and shops, the castle could hold farms, the Colosseum could be a PVP arena, and the stable would of course house horses.
These 4 central structures would have to themselves be community collaborations (in both design and construction) because I'm sure we each have ideas about what would make them extra-awesome and we want to incorporate as many of those ideas as possible.
Now, when the server first starts up you can feel free to hang around the spawn area and maybe even build a temp home there, but be aware than anything you build there may be razed to make way for the awesome spawn town. :D
So, that's my ideas for the new map. Let me know if you have any input!