Population Density
Automatically places new players where they can find wood, animals, ore, and space to build. Also priority-based login queue, reserved slots for admins, idle boot ONLY when nearly full, entity thinning for lag reduction, and optional limited teleportation. Never again will your players experience a marathon run, spawn room full of portals, or maze of abandoned builds. This is a zero maintenance solution for administrators, and players don't need to learn any commands!
"This is THE plugin for large servers." – Mumblerit of muttsworldmine.com
Looking for a 1.12.2 or earlier-compatible version? Check here.
Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.
This video explains the region post system to new players.
See below for information on administrative features.
Feature Summary
- Assigns starting points for new players so that they can ALWAYS find space to build and beginner resources nearby. Players may be spawned directly there, or you can tell them about a slash command which will take them there.
- Respawns animals, regrows grass, and replants trees in the new player area to guarantee important new player resources.
- Removes idle players ONLY when the server is nearly full.
- Login queue to ensure fairness when your server is full, can prioritize some players over others if you like.
- Reserved slots for administrators.
- Optional teleportation posts which help players socialize and trade, but aren't abuse-able to escape combat or save a lost or hungry player.
- "Thins" extremely-dense crowds of monsters and animals, preventing ridiculous levels of farming or monster grinding from lagging your server.
Overview
Server owners often underestimate the badness in starting a player in a crowded area. Sure seeing builds makes your server look legitimate, but having to explore a long time just to find space to build and beginner resources is a major turn off for players who want to start playing right away. Even when players do find a place to start playing, they're often alone because other new players wandered into different areas.
PopulationDensity is the low-maintenance, easy-for-players answer to all these problems.
It works by automatically locating a region with lots of wood and ore, and then dropping new players in that region until they collect most of the easily accessible ore, cut down most of the trees, or crowd it with builds. Then PopulationDensity finds a new resource-wealthy region for future newbies and starts dropping new players there. If you have a great spawn area built up, you can instead spawn players there, and later tell them to use /HomeRegion when they're ready to start adventuring (or another command you define in commands.yml).
Additionally, optional teleportation commands help players move around quickly to admire builds and socialize while not compromising the game's integrity - players can only teleport from automatically-placed teleportation posts, so teleportation can't be used as an "easy-out" for players who mine or adventure themselves into trouble. That way, players keep the challenge of single player without the "players are too far apart" multiplayer issue.
Finally, if you have a "my server is always full" problem, then congratulations on your successful server! :) With PopulationDensity, you may optionally boot players who are idling so more players can log in and have fun, increasing your feel-good factor (or fattening your wallet, for some). when the server IS full, a login queue guarantees fairness, and administrative slots are set aside to guarantee administrators can always get in.
You can also assign players a queue priority to help them get on the server faster during peak times, to reward them for contributing to the server monetarily or through your community.
Requirements
- v6.0 and higher require Java 21
Setup, Configuration, and Commands documentation
Metrics: Like most other plugins this plugin collects anonymous metrics to see who's actually using this plugin, and this information is used to determine popularity as well as what features matter or not in the grand scheme of things.
Sponsors:

Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.

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Posted Mar 13, 2013I didn't want to post this again, but since no body answered me the first time, and now it doesn't seem like it will be answered, here goes:
I've had a new region generate automatically on my server (the third or fourth region now, I think), but /newestregion takes me to the region that was made before this new one?
Any ideas?
(It used to work fine)
EDIT: Is it possible to customise the signs on the top of the region post? I know you can change 1 of the signs, and all the bottom signs, but I can't seem to edit the others. This, I believe would be a nice feature. :) (Since I've changed commands such as /newestregion to /newest.. etc)
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Posted Mar 12, 2013@imaapseudonym
I think it does. Infact, I am sure it does. Give it a go :)
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Posted Mar 12, 2013@techen84
I'd love to add new features in, but, I am kinda unsure what you all would want inside the plugin, I'll be putting up some polls and what not soon.
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Posted Mar 12, 2013Are you aware if this works on bukkitforge?
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Posted Mar 12, 2013Thanks for taking over this project. Are you planning on adding new features (once your all settled) , or just keeping the current feature set working ?
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Posted Mar 12, 2013Hey guys, I am the new owner/manager of the plugin, feel free to ask me any questions, and I will try my hardest to answer all of them.
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Posted Mar 12, 2013@BlueFusion95
The protection is absolutely necessary. Otherwise a griefer could create a trap for players to spawn into.
You can already use the /newestregion command as often as they like to get to a fresh area, and if they want, they can use /movein to make that their new home.
The other features you mention are disable-able (posts, login queue, animal thinning, grass and tree regrowth). Mind that without the posts, players won't know the slash commands unless you devise some scheme to teach them.
@nicholasooo
Posts can't be moved.
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Posted Mar 11, 2013I love this plugin and the idea behind it, it is genius. I've tried to integrate it into my current server, however have run into a few issues. There are a lot of features in this plugin that I do not want to use, but the config file can only go so far. That is why I am pitching the idea of a "lite" version of Population Density.
In this "lite" version, the only feature would be finding fresh land for players to build on. No login queue, no protection, no region posts, nothing. Also, this plugin would not log player data, allowing players to use the command to get new land more than once. For example, I use the command to get a fresh location for my house. However, a few weeks later, I want to make a shop. I would then be able to use the command again, giving me another fresh piece of land. Everything else would remain the same involving region detection, but not binding players to a specific region.
If you have any further ideas please feel free to add on, and I hope to see where this goes!
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Posted Mar 11, 2013@bigscary
Please read your PM. I need some help, will pay.
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Posted Mar 9, 2013How can I move a post? I have a spawn point picked out that I would like to add as a city.
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Posted Mar 7, 2013Hey guys, I've submitted a ticket to get ownership back. If they let me have it, then I'll be able to select a new owner for the plugin.
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Posted Mar 6, 2013@imaapseudonym
I really hope so. I was just about to start using the plugin again...
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Posted Mar 5, 2013I've had a new region generate automatically on my server (the third or fourth region now, I think), but /newestregion takes me to the region that was made before this new one?
Any ideas?
(It used to work fine)
EDIT: Is it possible to customise the signs on the top of the region post? I know you can change 1 of the signs, and all the bottom signs, but I can't seem to edit the others. This, I believe would be a nice feature. :) (Since I've changed commands such as /newestregion to /newest.. etc)
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Posted Mar 5, 2013@mafima
I agree that multi world support would be good, but the monster spawning is outside the scope of this plugin. It thins overcrowded areas, but doesn't interfere with mob spawning. But multiverse itself has a setting to disable mobs in particular worlds with /mv modify set monsters false [WORLD]
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Posted Mar 4, 2013"This is THE plugin for large servers." -Mumblerit of muttsworldmine.com.
My server is Germany's biggest server. We would appreciate it if the option for multiverse will be added soon. for example one world with mobs, one without.
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Posted Mar 2, 2013I wonder if bigscary will promote another updated manager of the plugin.
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Posted Mar 2, 2013@xpopy
Great....
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Posted Mar 2, 2013@Pixiyo
Yeah, seems like it. He got banned for stealing other people's code.
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Posted Mar 2, 2013Wut, owner has been banned?
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Posted Feb 28, 2013@thegtz
ThinOvercrowdedAnimalsAndMonsters: true
Is if their is alot of animals in 1 place. like 200 cows it will kill some of them to reduce lag.
MinimumRegionPostY: 62
Is so the post that you get teleported to isn't at bedrock level. unless you want it. Or if you want your posts in air for some reason. can set y to like 150