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 May 1, 2013I love the idea of the plugin, I just have a few questions for customization's sake.
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Posted Apr 27, 2013With NewPlayersSpawnInHomeRegion: true, people are spawning at y=0 and falling into the void or suffocating in bedrock on first join. Help please?
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Posted Apr 25, 2013@X_angelz_X
Any chance of getting an early release download for your next update?
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Posted Apr 21, 2013Would a LITE version be on the cards? I love this is but I just want one command to take a player to a nice spot away from others. Dont need the rest. Just something like /FreeLand or what ever you like.
I know you'd have to maintain 2 then, but i guess it wouldn't need many updates. thanks!
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Posted Apr 19, 2013@MC247
That's correct and appears to be intended. Leaving the region post? Simply type in another destination or /randomregion.
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Posted Apr 19, 2013I'm not sure if I'm missing a configuration option somewhere, but while testing this plugin, I've noticed you can build/destroy below a region post. The area at and above the region post appears to be protected, but at my first region, I'm able to dig out all around the region post and make it very hard for new players to leave the region post.
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Posted Apr 17, 2013@Dutchrastacraft
Use /nameregion
X_Angel_X
Was there a difference in the config file from 3.7.4 to 3.8? I didn't see anything change.
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Posted Apr 17, 2013How can I add the region that I am in?
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Posted Apr 16, 2013@X_angelz_X
Keep up the great work and thank you for all you do.
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Posted Apr 15, 2013@Icefuzion
Geez calm down :P If you read the comments this is actually being worked on.
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Posted Apr 15, 2013Alright, I obviously over-estimated this plugin.
Random regions spawning in my spawn city = nope. Disabling until this gets fixed.
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Posted Apr 14, 2013@belakian
Oh boy, that is totally out of my Ball Park, I've only just started learning Modding xD, trying my hardest to update this plugin aswell as add in new features to make everyone happy. It's getting harder and harder everyday, thinking about asking around if anyone wishes to join me :)
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Posted Apr 14, 2013Have you considered making this a mod instead of a plugin. I have had to remove mcpc+ as well as bukkitforge and run just forge.
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Posted Apr 12, 2013@JerryFord
Definitely need to maintain the 400 block regions, i have HUNDREDS of regions.
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Posted Apr 12, 2013X_angelz_X
Thanks for being sensitive to the users.
I'll get it to my test server this weekend.
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Posted Apr 11, 2013@JerryFord
Actually to say, the size implementation wasn't implemented yet, I compiled the wrong build. xD But the one I did upload did contain the posts not auto spawning, so yes the next build will contain a size configuration for the regions.
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Posted Apr 11, 2013X_angelz_X,
Would it be too much to ask to make the size also configurable?
Many of the players have put structures around existing posts. Even a small modification to the size will impact many of those builds and player claims.
For an example of this, please visit the Extreme Survival server.
Thank you for addressing the item on auto-spawning the posts.
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Posted Apr 11, 2013@JerryFord
Hmm, I should make it configurable, thank you for pointing that out,
and their 430 x 430 now, when you uploaded the new update to your server, it should've taken a bit longer to load, it auto redid your regions, I knew there would and might be a problem with that.
I'll throw out a build right now which will make it configurable for them to auto-spawn.
Edit: Sorry if it's caused any problems, It's a bit hard to please everyone xD
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Posted Apr 11, 2013X_angelz_X
You noted that you've fixed the posts from automatically spawning until move-in. Previously regions are 400 x 400 with set posts... easy to calculate where the next post will be. In the Wilderness, players have expected that post to be there in order to jump back to their homeregion or a named post. New users tend to jump off of their spawn posts and run into the Wilderness; never reading the signs on the initial posts. Conveying to them the slash instructions may cause grief to the newest players.
Did you make this a configurable option?
Edit add: I just saw a previous comment that you changed the region size.. what are the dimensions now, and what effect will that have on existing posts. My server has over 20 named regions. Please advise.
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Posted Apr 10, 2013@Icefuzion
0.o, need to add another command /regionremove to remove the region itself 0.0
Give me a moment it shouldn't take long to make this :)