We has it.

This was the longest transition in our server’s history, but there was good reason. Mojang changed so much of the underlying code that it took the Bukkit team over a month just to be able to compile the first development build, less than a week ago. While it’s still under development, with bugs and missing support for new features, Craftbukkit is stable enough that I was able to safely update the server. (after a couple workarounds) We’re running the Spigot fork because of a particular commit regarding item frames. I was hoping mods like Optifine would arrive in time, but there’s no telling how long that’ll take. It’s likely we won’t see many mods at all for 1.7.2, as 1.7.3 is just around the corner. Fortunately for us, 1.7.3 clients can connect to 1.7.2 servers, so we won’t have to wait for that.

The big news for our server with 1.7 is the new world, but we’re holding off on that until another day — possibly Sunday — so that more people can participate. The world will be named Omega, barring any changes in the poll, and will likely have a major city named Theta. We plan to have a major thoroughfare straight through the center of the map that people can build along. Designs on that are in the works near dev spawn. In addition, I’ll be adding a 1.7 outworld, probably tomorrow, so that people can strip mine some stained clay. (please avoid that in Omega)

Please report any server-side bugs in the comments below so that I can address them. I expect things to break. We tested anything that we knew may be sensitive to the changes, but I’m sure we’ve missed something.

Hey, look.. you’re informed. I can sleep now.

Update

We now have a lush new 1.7 terrain outworld where you can get all your 1.7 goodies. There is a mesa biome, I checked. Enjoy.

The last vote on our new world name is now closed. We had eight choices, and two stood out from the rest: Theta and Omega. But in the time-honored tradition of nerds, “there can only be one.” Or can there? OmegaTheta anyone? Meta? No no… as much as I have a fondness for mutant names, there must be a fight to the death. Commence!

Theta

– In its archaic form theta is used as a symbol for Earth.
– Alpha, beta, delta, and theta are brain signal frequencies.
– Its symbol is a circle with one or two lines through it, or alternatively a dot in the center. (eg. ϴ)
– In classical Athens, theta was used as a warning symbol of death.

Omega

– The great O. Mega means “great” or commonly “big”/”large”.
– Its symbol looks like a horseshoe, Ω, or as the lowercase “w”, ω. In Cyrillic it also has a round form: Ѻ.
– It has dozens of uses in physics, mathematics, and chemistry. I can only write a few here.
– In astronomy, it’s used to rank a star’s brightness within a constellation, or in the capitalized form, the universe’s density.
– In sociology, it’s used to refer to the lowest ranking member of a group.
– In relational databases it represents NULL, missing value.

With 1.7 we’ll have the capability of putting an icon to the left of FinalScoreMC in the server list, as seen below.

So flex those creative muscles and open up your image editor. Submissions must be a 64×64 PNG image. You’ll have about a week to design it before we put them up for a vote, after which it’ll be our server icon for at least the duration of Minecraft 1.7. If the votes are tight, we might cycle through them. I’ll even throw in 500 coins to the winner(s), just because <3

For 1.7 we’ll be adding a new main world. Previously we’ve based our world names on the Greek or NATO phonetic alphabet — Alpha, Delta, Gamma. From those lists, these are the names that people have submitted. Please vote which names you like, and then vote which name you’d prefer most.

Horses, hardened clay, carpets, and leads — these are what I would call the highlights of this update, but you can read the details over at the wiki’s version history. Here’s some things you should know about the new stuff on this server.

Updated information below as of August 15th.

Horses

Horses are per-world. You cannot move horses from one world to the next (except through alpha nether portals, I think). This limitation is true for all servers. If you find a horse in the outworld, please don’t ask me to move it. I can’t. They will spawn very slowly in plains biome. They can only spawn when there’s room left on the animal cap for that world, which includes loaded animals and villagers. (not hostile mobs, bats, or squid) We currently have horse ranches on Delta and Gamma with plenty of untamed horses to go around. You can share horses with specific players using “/share horses” (use “/unshare” to remove that share) or give a horse to another player using “/transfer horse “.

Saddles

Normally saddles are found in dungeon chests or from villagers. If you don’t have a saddle and can’t find one, I have some in the coin shop. It’s cheaper than what you can get from villagers.

Nametags/HorseArmor

Like saddles, these cannot be crafted. They can only be found in new worlds, so you’ll have to search the outworld or outworld nether fortresses, which now have many loot chests.

Leads

They are not yet secured. Anyone can break them off of fence posts, and in fact they break on their own sometimes when chunks are loaded/unloaded. I’d recommend putting your horses in pens instead of just tying them to a fencepost. Only use leads tied to posts temporarily or to pull animals.

Minecarts/Boats

Don’t forget you have to sneak/shift to get out of them now. 😉