Look again. There are dozens of patches of excavation, which will only grow, including a massive hole of your own. *No, there are not that many diamond supporters. Honestly.
They dont call it the grieflands for nothing.. normally its worse around the main spawn point.. SMP6 is getting really bad, last I looked with a death drop right outside of spawn..
ah its normal its onlt ICC going round with TNT jk I know its sand mining but when its in reset zone it will come back
There's no conserving sand. Whether it's 100 or 10k blocks out, there's still going to be a big gaping hole somewhere. You can pull small amounts of sand from dunes here and there, but to support the massive amounts that are hauled back to town for building all those giant pyramids and paving walkways, there's going to be a noticeable amount taken from somewhere. I prefer to mine sand and sandstone away from spawn but I can see why a lot of people choose to travel the shorter distance. What bothers me is technique. I like to take the sand, stone, sandstone, and dirt down to the same layer or make terraces so I don't have a parkour course to run through if I have to run from mobs or have a falling danger because I have a bunch of random blocks and holes to jump around in. What I see in your pictures that I consider inconsiderate is the result of people mining sand or sandstone only and trying to avoid touching the rest, leaving a death trap behind. I also see evidence of people building pillars to orient themselves rather than using Live Map. Although I can't see them, I'm sure there's a healthy dose of diamond miner holes going straight down in there too. With a little extra work and thought, none of that is really necessary.
Then you haven't been to the west have you.. Luckily there isnt fall damage in Utopia but someone has gone and built rows to bedrock in the desert there.. <,<
This is a problem for me too. On SMP3 I can walk along a nice, preserved desert... and then I hit the edge of the protected zone. It looks like a nuke hit there. It's why I almost never go to the wild.
I understand some amount of frustration about destroyed wild near spawns, but that's kind of the nature of the beast. People are told over and over that the wild is ultimately for resource collection. It only takes one person not caring to start something that looks not pretty or is inconvenient to navigate, and the area will only spread. But it's really to be expected. Spawn supports a lot of people who don't want to wander far from town, and they totally have the right to do so. To say they're lazy is to say you yourself are lazy for not traveling far from spawn to avoid the used up areas. Just my opinion! I like to travel far, far from spawn. Personally, leftover tree canopies annoy me.
I remember logging into SMP3 for the first time (my first experience on the server) and came out of the town after claiming a res. I expected the wild to be awesome, with no griefed landscape at all. My RL friend, Djozane, led me out of the spawn, and took me onto a dirt bridge. I asked him why we need to walk across a dirt bridge, that had chunks taken out of it. He just simply said 'Look down there'. Me: 0_0
I know it's pretty annoying to have a giant minefield to walk through if you want to get out of the Wilderness spawn, but in my opinion it is better they mine in the protected spawn area rather than further away. The protected spawn will always come back eventually, leaving a potentially limitless supply of sand for people to hoard on a weekly (or so) basis. If this wasn't the case, and people couldn't get their infinite sand, you'd end up with the SMP2 1.8.1 Wasteland, where those random pits would stretch on for thousands of blocks in each direction, due to months of people scavenging everything they could possibly find. Sure, the destroyed Desert Spawn is a bit annoying, but it's a whole lot easier than it used to be... and that was with 15% our current player count to boot. *EDIT* Also, this:
i actually think the air view is wicked cool, and very nifty, lol that was done for art and looks, what everyone else posted is just.. stupidity. though, Crazy does have a good point, it does still suck to have to be soooo careful and hope your game doesn't freeze for even a second >.<
I agree with the OP. Many times have I died because of random drop offs. I've seen worse though. Try falling into a random deep pit of lava...
