The resource pack has been removed. If you want it, download it here.
The world is going to intentionally corrode, starting no earlier than February 15th.
Your bases will be destroyed.
There are exactly TWO ways to save them.
Preserved chunks will stabilize an area from bedrock to the build limit. Everything outside of the saved chunks will be regenerated weekly.
Signs can say anything. "DAN!" or "x" or "1337" all work equally well.
It is a 16x16 area. You can see see chunk boundaries by pressing F3 + G simultaneously. Also, in the F3 screen you can see the chunk X and Z coordinates.
Variety. When the chunks are removed, the world seed will also change. Your base could be near a swamp one day, and then on the edge of a desert the next. Minecraft will blend the areas outside of the saved chunks so the terrain flows somewhat naturally, which is fantastic. Have your base on the top of a gigantic ice spike or a huge mountain in order to always have a great view, though getting up to the top might be difficult some days.
You can now strip mine to your heart's content or dig up a desert and be happy that the land isn't scarred forever.
It's different from most other servers.
Signs don't require a server mod, so the server can keep running the latest code.
I am also considering adding the ability on the server to mark chunks, though that's outside of the game. I could write a bot and parse game logs so you could issue commands within the game. Those are all harder, but maybe they would work better. However, signs work great for today and it's a much simpler approach.
There's also the possibility that this process doesn't happen for a large range of region files, so we could just mark some regions as "ever-changing" or mark others as "never changing".
Today is the day to provide feedback, reasons to do something else, additional ideas, etc. Email Now!