seeing as notch will continue to patch minecraft indefinitely, won't this continue to be a problem in the future at intervals of a few months? anyway, i think for now stick with the map we've got and try to work the updates around it in the best way you can. at some indefinite point in the future, when resources/ space have been exhausted or a patch makes the current map untenable, we will have to start afresh. so for people who like this option, it will probably happen at some point in the futue just not right now. for the moment though i think there's still life in the old minetown map yet. PS if we have a house we want to save from destruction how can we communicate if we can't get on the server and take a screencap?

i would be slightly annoyed if we just kept cities and wiped out everything else. some people (like me) don't like building in cities but prefer going out into the countryside so they can create their house with more freedom to use different shapes, sizes and forms. i agree that there is too much clutter, and random small stone houses, but a lot of the cities are also full of boring box houses, they're just surrounded by giant cobblestone walls rather than out in the countryside. i do think however that keeping say at least one home each then resetting the chunks is a good idea, as it means we will keep only our favourite homes or objects and the best things will survive. it will improve the aesthetic of the map as a whole. i have two homes, and have never built anything else. both are out in the countryside, one in the shape of ET and one like a glass conservatory built into the mountainside near the south tower, which is incomplete. to be honest i rarely travel to the ET one anymore, so could sacrifice it if neccessary, and i'm sure other people could do the same with stuff they've built but largely abandoned. but i don't think we should only keep the cities and reset everything else. a lot of the most interesting designs are out in the country.