Hello, all.
We've begun preparing to update the server to 1.18 and are ready to announce a final plan and timeline. Thank you for your patients and input on this.

When

We will be performing the upgrade on December 15th. We'll take the server down at 10pm EST. Per usual, assume the server will be down for 6 hours, though I suspect it will go faster this time around.

Changes

Map Resets
LTS = PvE. The new world borders will start at +/- 10,000, or 20,000x20,000 blocks.

LTS: Survival
LTS: Peaceful
LTS: nether
LTS: end
STS: Survival
STS: Peaceful
STS: nether
STS: end

The STS server was scheduled to be reset on December 17th and we've discussed resetting PvE for months so I think this is no surprise to anyone. Map downloads will be posted sometime over the holidays. Everyone is welcome to use schematic / blueprint mods to copy their builds off of PvE too. We will post limited plugin data for things like homes, warps, and Town information. Anyone is welcome to use the maps however they wish - including for multiplayer servers. The only thing we ask is that you do not try to claim someone else's builds as your own.

Note that as of writing the world downloads will come in around 200GB in total so if you are concerned about trying to download that, consider the schematic route for your builds.

New Spawn

Thank you to SibylSol, Ren, Yopal, and Tholmar for their work on the new spawn. As with the STS server, the new LTS spawn will be in a void world. To reach the survival or peaceful worlds you will need to use /rtp survival and /rtp peaceful.

New Mall

The mall started as a player-run project that the staff eventually inherited once the creators left the server. Most of our staffing resources on PvE are used dealing with menial mall tasks like clearing shops and fixing griefs in unprotected areas.

Based on user feedback and hopes of reducing tedium, we will be making the following changes:

The new mall will be in a void world.
All plots will be the same size (20x16x20 blocks).
All plots will be claimable
All plots can be easily archived with a single command (dead shop storage).
Teleport directly to a users mall plot with a command.

New Shop Plugin

We will be dropping trade shop and chest shop, consolidating on a single plugin we're developing in-house called "Nile." Documentation is available in the wiki section of this forum.

Notable features include:

Server-wide item catalogue that shows all items listed for sale on the server - similar to auction house.
Item catalogue synchronized mall shop stocks. If you put something up for sale in the mall, it can be purchased by anyone, from anywhere on the server, or physically at the mall if you still like to window shop.

New Land Claim Plugin

Towny has served us well over the years, but we've decided to move to a new claim plugin that will again be developed in-house. More detailed documentation is available in the wiki section of this forum.

Notable features include:

Ability to create multiple claim zones (home, treehouse, spawner, etc)
Individual permissions per claim zones. IE: userA can build in my 'treehouse' claim, but not in any of my other claims.
Claim zones do not need to be contiguous. One claim can cover chunks in many different worlds and completely different areas in the same world.

Inter-Server Item Transfer

This may not be ready at launch, but will be implemented by the end of the year. For a small fee, you'll be able to use the /ship command to send items between STS and LTS - this is bi-directional. With the schedule resets on STS, this should make it feasible to treat the server as a resource world. It will also be possible to place items on LTS temporary and then move them back to STS if you don't want to start completely over every time we reset STS. Full documentation is available in the wiki section of this forum.

Economy Changes

This is usually a controversial topic, but I hope we've managed to strike a reasonable compromise based on feedback to the original 1.17 proposal.

The admin shop will only buy and sell diamonds. All other items will be available for purchase from users through the mall and mall catalogue.
User starting balances will be increased to $5,000.
We'll fix the voting rewards (PMC, minecraft-mp.org, etc) and set them to $5,000 per vote. Votes can be submitted once every 23 hours.
The farmers market 'minigame' discussed earlier this year. The market will accept one or two farm-able resources for a "season," something like a month. The more you sell to the market (there is no limit), the more money you'll be paid. There will be reward tiers that payout bonuses at the end of the season for selling x many resources. Farmers market will not be ready at launch, but we hope to roll it out by February of 2022.

See the FAQ for more details on how we came to these decisions.

FAQ

What versions of Minecraft can I used to connect to the server?
As usual, we will not be adding support for 1.18 until we can actually update the map to 1.18 generation. In our experience, it is confusing when people connect using 1.18, but can't find 1.18 game features.

After updating to 1.18 we will drop support for 1.16.x. Only versions 1.17, 1.17.1, and 1.18 will be supported.

Can staff transfer items or builds between the new and old worlds for me?
No, unfortunately this is not something we're equipped to do. The /ship command will not be available until after the 1.18 launch, but will fill that role to a limited capacity moving forward.

Why do you need to reset 😢?
February 2022 will mark 3 years since the last time LTS - then PvE - was reset. In that time the map and associated plugin files have grown to nearly 0.5TB (_500GB). The map was originally generated on Minecraft 1.13. It has had a good life.

The sweeping world generation changes coming in 1.18 are only partially back-portable. Builds near bedrock may be damaged during the conversion process and there is no way to get new cliffs on most of our map. Many of the land claim, shop, and economy changes are most easily implemented with a reset.

We will provide map downloads so not all is lost, and anyone is welcome to continue playing on old maps in single player or multiplayer. We do again ask that you do not take credit for other people's builds or advertise any spin-off servers. The former out of respect for the original builders and the latter for Internet safety of the community.

Why are we changing the economy? Life is hard. This sounds like real life.
The staff has discussed at length our discontent with the current "economy." It doesn't feel like it provides much of a challenge and is incredibly hard to balance because some users have millions of dollars and some have hundreds. We further tire from endless debates about what items should and should not be in the admin shop. On top of that, we try to consider user shops in the mall when we do set prices because we don't want to monopolize certain products if someone is trying to sell them.

Based on feedback from the community, it seems like the main reason people like the economy is because /baltop is like a scoreboard. The admin shop also makes it easy to coordinate mega projects with scarce resources.

Our solution focuses on taking the gamification and trying to add new mechanics - farmers market - that were meant to be gamified. The seasonal market cycle means competitions for top-tycoon can continue month over month and makes it easier to new players to get involved because everyone starts from zero.

The mall catalogue should help ease the burden of finding the items you want to buy and sell for mega projects. This also gives more opportunity for people to setup successful or specialized shops because you're not disadvantaged by having a bad shop location or not carrying every item in the game.

Will Creative Plots be Reset?
No. We do not have plans to reset the creative plot server right now.