What's better than seven bits? Why, eight bits, of course!

The Minecraft world we know and love got its start back in the early days of Minecraft Beta, which offered a maximum build height of 2⁷ = 128 meters. With the introduction of the Anvil file format in v1.2.1, the build height limit became 2⁸ = 256 meters. But our server has retained the old build height limit. Why?

• “I designed my build to Y=128, and I'm not about to change it now.”
• “Great! Now we'll have suburban sprawl in the vertical direction too.”
• “Think of all those stairs! When are we getting escalators?”
• “Falling from 64 meters AGL is plenty lethal enough, thanks!”
• “It was good enough for my past reincarnations, and that's good enough for me. Now shaddup and pass me that un-enchanted pick.”

and other things said by no one at all, ever. We used to have concerns about server memory consumption. After moving the server from a single- to a double-wide chest, however, these concerns became largely moot. An unfortunate side-effect of the current build limit is that the terrain generator completely ignores it. The game will quite gleefully generate chunks that have parts we can't plunder for their natural resources, and that is simply not fair.

We've discussed raising the build limit before, but relatively little feedback was received. Therefore, on 3 March 2018, the build height limit was raised to 256.

If you've been thinking about coming back to Minecraft, now might be a good time to dust off those coal blocks and get to picking. After all, 256 meters is enough for a 1:1 scale model of the Washington Monument—among other things.