It seems we have quite a large map.
See, I suggested trimming it again and again, but did anyone listen? Honestly. If I ran the planet, we'd be in so much better shape.
Not really. We'd all be so screwed I'd be in the Guinness Book of Records.
Have you seen any server plugins relating to reminding you how long you've been playing for?
So like players can do a /dailylimit 120 and then after a total of two hours in any 24 hour period it starts telling you to get off and do other stuff?
Ha, no, but that is a good one. "Do some fucking work"
Wow, that's a speedy process isn't it! All for what? A few new monsters and a higher sky? Whoop whoop!
It's not affecting the monsters, and it's more than just adding height.
It's a complete change of how the data is stored, which makes it more efficient and more flexible for mod authors.
It shouldn't take as long as it is, but I guess that's a combination of:
1a) Minecraft storing each region (512x512 block areas) in individual files;
1b) Us lot having explored and built things across relatively vast area;
1c) the server being Windows, which isn't great at handling large numbers of files;
2) Mojang not bothering to performance test the process on non-small worlds, and thus putting little/no effort into optimising the code once it was completed.
(Mostly I suspect it's down to reason 2 there.)