For those who don't know: 2b2t is a famous minecraft server known for its true "anarchy" configuration.<p>You can do absolutely anything on it. Modded client, x-raying, item duplication. There are no area protections. PvP enabled.<p>It is difficult to leave spawn :)
> It is difficult to leave spawn :)<p>I know 2b2t is old enough to have had many different eras, but when I heard about and checked it out in 2018, the spawn was barren, of course, but I had no problem leaving and surviving out to a pretty far distance to build a little base.
You can use a modded client, everyone does, but there _are_ some protections. So you can get kicked, you just won't get banned.
It is also the oldest anarchy server in Minecraft
Thanks for the info. I was just about to post as a old fuddy-duddy WTF is this. lol
>You can do absolutely anything on it.<p>As long as that anything doesn't consist of putting anything bad in chat or a sign such as a cuss word like "shit" or building a build or map art that someone may find offensive.<p>If you want to do absolutely anything you need to find a different server.
This was kept completely secret, so three days ago a separate group released their 200k² world download.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t_Uncensored/comments/1tefffd/introducing_2b2torg_200k%C2%B2_spawn_download_2026/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t_Uncensored/comments/1tefffd/in...</a><p>Ups.
I'm so continuously confused why Minecraft doesn't have a show-off mode where a team of people can build something, and then someone else can spectate it, without causing undue server load.<p>I should be able to give you a URL to some location, and when you click it, it opens up Minecraft, streams the blocks, and you're viewing it.<p>minecraft://server/loc?w=0&x=0&y=0&z=0<p>w is the overworld, nether, end, etc.<p>And if you want to set up a server where you and your friends can interact with each other and make edits, the server should be able to stream blocks from some backing server, but copy-on-write them to your own local storage.<p>How is this not a thing?<p>If you want to be really awesome, set it up like bittorrent, where you can share the load, so the central server isn't hammered.<p>And if bittorrent doesn't really work as a model, then set it up so that "downloader pays" for bandwidth, plus a small royalty for the creator. As a downloader, I get to set up rate limits, etc, to not accidentally spend more than I want to, etc.<p>This whole 2b2t would cost $2,111.04 to download from AWS, if I'm doing the math right. But that's a trillion blocks. You don't need a trillion blocks to enjoy flying around some awesome maps.
It's easy enough for a server which wants to provide some sort of "easy viewing cool builds" functionality to do it multiple ways such that something native would only be a minor convenience and many would still just use the more customized methods anyways.<p>2b2t wants to provide a certain anarchy server experience which would not align with that kind of functionality, spending quite a bit of effort in the opposite direction really, so this project is more about fighting to do cool things on the server than it is about dealing with Minecraft limitations.
Yes, the anarchy and inability to truly protect anything is part of the appeal of 2b2t.<p>There was an interesting base project wherein the true coordinates were only known to the top leaders. All other builders connected through a custom client that offset the coordinates to hide the true location. If anyone became untrusted, they were simply blocked from the client and could not expose the coordinates. There was care taken to ensure the area outside the proxy was never shown, block place directions were randomized to prevent reversing the proxy, etc.<p>The base apparently thrived for months or years before finally being discovered and destroyed.
It's not in the base game, but there is a plugin that generates a map of your server and hosts it, called Bluemap [0]. It has an example. [1] I always toss it on the servers I host.<p>[0]: <a href="https://modrinth.com/mod/bluemap" rel="nofollow">https://modrinth.com/mod/bluemap</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://bluecolored.de/bluemap/" rel="nofollow">https://bluecolored.de/bluemap/</a>
A +1 for Bluemap. Plus because it's actually tied into the server[0], all your wacky mods have their blocks rendered correctly instead of confusing whatever map generator you're trying to use.<p>[0] Plus you can get live player positions, update markers in real time, etc.
> I'm so continuously confused why Minecraft doesn't have a show-off mode where a team of people can build something, and then someone else can spectate it, without causing undue server load.<p>You'll be confused by Minecraft in general then. Mojang's core team seems like they never changed a bit in all these years despite becoming a billion dollar studio, for better or for worse. Last time I played it, mods can still make the game run twice as fast.
They actually added a lot of indirection to the code soon after being acquired. Instead of an array containing the number 1 (meaning dirt) it now contains a pointer to an object with a string name and a hashmap of properties. Instead of drawing a cube in code, it's loaded from an interpreted DSL - all possible calls to that DSL are fixated at load time. The chunk generation process creates and executes a graph of micro-tasks which forms that weird pixel map you see when creating or loading the world. It transitions each chunk through about 15 different states on the way from nonexistent to fully loaded.<p>They used to talk about wanting to store block update relationships to prevent BUD (block update detector) behavior. I didn't like it at the time, but from a certain perspective it would have been an improvement. Instead they spent their complexity points on pointless memory waste.
> I should be able to give you a URL to some location, and when you click it, it opens up Minecraft, streams the blocks, and you're viewing it.<p>> minecraft://server/loc?w=0&x=0&y=0&z=0<p>Probably no real reason why not... but I think it'd make more sense to take a snapshot, upload, and then have it viewable on the web.<p>> And if you want to set up a server where you and your friends can interact with each other and make edits, the server should be able to stream blocks from some backing server, but copy-on-write them to your own local storage.<p>How is this different from just loading your world in a server and having your friends join?<p>> If you want to be really awesome, set it up like bittorrent, where you can share the load, so the central server isn't hammered.<p>BitTorrent isn't going to work. You could shard it so different parts of the world are handled by different servers. But it gets complicated and Minecraft's server software doesn't support doing this out of the box
> How is this different from just loading your world in a server and having your friends join?<p>Because player location, inventory, actions, are all load on the server. That's why servers have player limits.<p>> BitTorrent isn't going to work.<p>You and I are talking about different things. I'm talking about serving up the raw blocks alone.<p>And yes, I know, Minecraft servers don't support static file serving, or streaming from another source, or copy-on-write. I'm saying these are all nearly trivial to implement.
I have a Minecraft-compatible game engine and it'd be an awesome project to host a copy of this world that people can fly around in if there's no legal issues.
2B2T really has an extremely interesting and long history, and some of the most interesting exploits/security vulnerabilities found just for it, for example <a href="https://2b2t.miraheze.org/wiki/Nocom" rel="nofollow">https://2b2t.miraheze.org/wiki/Nocom</a> where the attackers had a blunt server DoS and through it <i>influenced</i> the server owner to report it to PaperMC, and the fix for the DoS gave them ability to track other players just as they had hoped.<p>> In July 2018, 0x22 and Babbaj created a coordinate exploit, using the groundwork laid out in the lag exploit. The two theorized that, if the server didn't return a response for unloaded chunks, but returned a response for loaded chunks, the rough location of players in 2b2t could be approximated. However, prplz's patch returned a response regardless of whether a chunk was loaded or unloaded, requiring a second patch to Paper that would only return a response if the chunk was loaded.<p>> Knowing that the issue would be resolved if Hausemaster reported it to Paper, likely through the method they laid out, 0x22 and Babbaj began intentionally, repeatedly, and blatantly sending CPacketPlayerDigging packets, causing the Paper watchdog process to output a stack trace, which included the line added by prplz.
People have also tried to create merge requests into my plugin to reintroduce the issue into 2B2T.<p><a href="https://github.com/GrimAnticheat/Grim/pull/1131" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/GrimAnticheat/Grim/pull/1131</a>
that is quite funny, tbf. looks like the person who opened is friends with eva, a member of "server scanning inc" [1] so they thought it was worth a shot<p>[1] <a href="https://eva.ac/" rel="nofollow">https://eva.ac/</a>
and then once they had the primitive, they used a compressed sensing algorithm or HMM of some kind to create a live player map. truly APT-level tradecraft.
2b2t is so interesting. It is a toxic place, yet you can find really nice things, builds, messages, ... It's fascinating.
The highways especially. You'd think they'd be completely dysfunctional in a place like this.
My buddy and I used to plant shitloads of melon farms there. The idea was, anything could happen, but at least you won't starve.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDyze1YlOrI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDyze1YlOrI</a> is a good explanation of what they did
> Providing a Torrent for this amount of data is not easy whatsoever. We are currently working on creating a Torrent that includes all data, but this may take a few weeks.<p>What do they mean by this? I understand that it would be a download on the order of 26TiB (if we extrapolate from the recent 200k^2 download, which is a ~1TiB torrent[1]). If bandwidth costs are the issue (certainly it's <i>an</i> issue) they could throttle their seeding speed and let the swarm seed it. That's what bittorrent is for.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t_Uncensored/comments/1tefffd/introducing_2b2torg_200k%C2%B2_spawn_download_2026/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t_Uncensored/comments/1tefffd/in...</a>
This is a great video trying to understand the artistic side of 2b2t as a persistent world (rather than the anarchy its more well known for): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09m5BAkkOtw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09m5BAkkOtw</a>
Ah, The 4chan of Minecraft servers, a silly place.
Maybe a dumb question but since 2B2T (as I understand it) is a single instance of everyone modifying it to their heart's content, why does the download look like the standard biomes of a fresh minecraft map?
It is running on a single machine so the player count is relatively low. Today the limit is ~1500 concurrent players but it used to be much lower. And of the players online probably half are bots which don't build.<p>The map is 30Mx30M blocks so outside of the very center you'll not see that much player activity.<p>DonutSMP is the largest Minecraft server today, the overworld is 225,000x225,000 blocks and the map is modified wherever you look.
The world is mind bogglingly big; as are most minecraft worlds, but this one especially.<p>People sprawl far to prevent PvP encounters.
Besides the spawn area, most blocks have never been touched. It's a lot of blocks.
You gotta zoom into the center to see the main chaos. And if you zoom in elsewhere, you can see all the generation differences from different versions of the game.
Does anyone happen to have world data from a Minecraft survival server? Could you please share it with me? It would be great if it has some player history included. I'm trying to gather about 10 of them, but it's not easy.
> A search for vertical 5x5 obsidian/crying obsidian pinwheels was also made, and only 1258 were found, with only 613 within a 25k radius of spawn. There were many more than this in December of 2025, so this is either a sign of other players removing them, or the owner(s) of 2b2t worldediting them all out at some point.<p>I did Nazi that coming.
Minecraft world downloading is an interesting problem, because attempting to solve it by brute force (Loading all chunks in x radius) increases the problem space, because most likely not all of those chunks have been loaded before. So brute forcing it increases the amount of data you must download.
Can someone please explain in layman's terms to me what this means?<p>Background: Only heard the name of Minecraft.
This other comment ITT has a good explanation:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48181033">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48181033</a><p>The TLDR is a Minecraft server with ""no"" rules, where hacked clients, item dupes, and griefing are allowed. Only thing that's really banned afaik are lag generators and things of that nature that explicitly stress the server and ruin the QoL for everyone.
Glad I am not the only one who found that title and the subsequent readme completely unhelpful, despite standing up and maintaining a VPS server for my son and friends.<p>HN is great but sometimes has the ultimate “tell them about the features instead of the reason why you should care/benefits” posts and many people probably miss out on good links as a result.
2b2t is anarchy server where every form of cheating and hacking is "allowed".<p>And thanks to that, people are extremely motivated to find various 0days in anything related to minecraft, to gain an advantage.<p>This server spawned some notorious black hats :)
woah, the web map viewer even has parallax when zoomed in
$3000 for this?
Wouldn't be cheaper to just hack 2b2t DB and download it?
<i>With severe weaponized autism, the help of several people involved, thousands of dollars spent, and countless hours wasted, we present you the largest world download project ever</i><p>Never underestimate the power of severe weaponized autism!