We are not updating until 2015

7 November 2014

Most people are already aware of this, but I'll post about it anyway because we keep getting asked:

We won't be updating to 1.8 until 2015. Even then, probably not for a few more months after that.

For those who care/want more in depth reasoning, it comes down to a number of things:

• Bukkit (the server software) is no longer updated or available, so the updating of the actual server will take much longer than usual because:
• It's being remade as Sponge. A brand new piece of software being completely written from scratch to take Bukkit's place. It's nowhere near finished, and even once it is:
• We'll have to wait for plugins to update. This step will take even longer than usual as most (if not all) plugins will have to be completely rewritten with the Sponge API. There is a Bukkit->Sponge wrapper being developed I believe, but again that's more new stuff to write from scratch.

Given that it normally takes a month or so for that last step even when we were running Bukkit, I'm expecting it to be a few months probably as everything needs redone. If we get unlucky with the release of Sponge (ie, Christmas), it'll probably be even longer. I can't speak for other devs, but I know if Sponge gets released sometime in December I likely won't even begin updating my plugins until early-mid January.

Yes, there are protocol hacks available to allow 1.8 players to connect to 1.7 servers, and yes, they are extremely buggy and break a lot of useful stuff. So no, we won't be using them.

And as always thanks to Mojang for releasing the Mod API that makes this whole thing much easier. Oh wait, they still haven't made it.