Hey Folks,

I saw that minecraft 1.21.6 released today, and I wanted to talk about why we are still on 1.21.4 natively on the server (and how long it may take to update).

When there is a Minecraft update, a lot has to happen to get the server to that “native” version. Usually, within a few days, we will have our “proxy connector” updated, which will let you join the server using a newer client version, but the features available are still based on the server’s native version. That’s fine, and works well, but people want the new features (understandably). So, When there’s an update…what has to happen?

1. Minecraft update is released.
2. Spigot update is released.
3. Paper (A fork of Spigot) is released.
4. Our custom server software is released (A fork of Paper, that updates within a day or 2 of a stable release from paper).
5. Then I have to create a test server, to ensure one of our 70 plugins isn’t broken.
6. Then I have to wait for many of the plugins to update to support the newest version.
7. Then I have to do more testing, and once I get everything done – I can then go through the process of updating the actual server.

Now, Point number 3 in this list is the reason why we are not even on 1.21.5 yet. Paper recently underwent some major changes in how they distribute and update things. They did this in order to facilitate “faster” updates to the latest version. They did this with version 1.21.4 (which took a month or 2 to release in stable form). Then in March of this year – 1.21.5 released, and now (almost 4 months later) there is still NO stable release for 1.21.5 – Which means our custom fork hasn’t been updated either. Now, I am not hating on the paper team – they are an AWESOME group of individuals who do a ton of work for free, and provide awesome software. However, this has been incredibly frustrating. Especially after they claimed they re-worked things to push releases faster.

That being said, I did see where they said that 1.21.6 should release much faster than 1.21.5. So, I am hopeful – but there’s a lot of work to be done on several developers end, and then my end. The proxy version should be updated very soon – so you can connect with 1.21.6, but the actual feature set of 1.21.6 is likely a few weeks out (and if the updates to our software are delayed, it could be much longer).

I will continue to update this post as I find out more, and work on the new updates.

Unrelated, if you’d consider supporting the server – it would be much appreciated. There is never any obligation to begin or maintain your subscription, but I feel I don’t do my due diligence in informing people that a supporter role is available.