This post originally started with 2026 being on the horizon, whoops. Don’t @ me, I know it is Q3 2026 now. I got busy okay? Anyways, here’s the post:
What a year 2025 has been in the world, but we’re not going to talk about that. Instead we are going to talk about the TNTable servers! 2025 saw quite a bit less activity on the Minecraft servers, but that’s okay! Many things happened in the background which I am feeling good about, and looking forward to.
Overview
- Minecraft server updates
- Hytale servers are available to setup now!
- Major changes and improvements on the server, both hardware, software, and game play
Minecraft Updates
This last year was interesting for updates. Mojang switched to a “drops” style of updates instead of massive changes, which is kind of nice in a way. The game has matured and there are fewer changes to mechanics. This is also the last year where the updates will follow sequential numbering. Starting this year (2026) it is switching. The first update of the year will be 26.1, the next drop will be 26.2 and so-on.
The server started the year with The Garden Awakens (1.21.4) update from December 2024. We were introduced to the Creaking, as well as the pale garden.
- March 2025: Spring to Life (1.21.5) brought mob variants that were based on biome temperature.
- June 2025: Chase the Skies (1.21.6) is arguably one of my favourite updates with the introduction of Happy Ghasts.
- September 2025: The Copper Age (1.21.9) gave us copper armour, tools, and a little guy who can sort chests for you, albeit very slowly. We also got shelves, finally.
- Lastly, Mounts of Mayhem (1.21.11) is the final drop of the year bringing us into 2026. We’ve got spears now, netherite horse armour, new underwater mobs, and more.
SMP Server Updates
This last year was a big year for changes on the server. We didn’t see much player activity throughout the year, little pockets here and there. But in the background I was hard at work optimizing and improving the server experience.
Much of this is a result of the massive overhaul of my servers. I get into the details later in this post. This is an overview of the game play and SMP server-related items that have changed or improved over the year.
- The server map renders live now, integrates with public homes and waypoints, as well as showing the location of online players.
- Death chests has been switched back to gravestones. This means no time limit on picking up your items.
- The server render distance has been increased due to improvements in hardware, as well as game optimizations.
Hardware Updates
I got two new servers, moved some resources and services around between my servers, and ultimately was able to allocate more resources to game servers. It is also time to say goodbye to the original Borden server, a computer that has been with us for 13 years.
New hardware
In 2025 I bought two new server computers. In April, and November. This brings me to 3 servers in my apartment. Each with its own purpose.
Laurier is the NAS (Network Attached Storage) server. It has 6 hard drives in it. This holds all of the backups and media for the services I run, including the Minecraft servers.
Then there is King, it currently runs the Minecraft servers. Though, this is a lie now as I have replaced King in 2026 but that will be for the 2026 year in review.
Lastly there is new Borden. This server runs all my personal services like cloud storage and photo backups and all that. It also runs the media servers now. More on that in the next section.
Reallocation of resources
With the replacement of Borden and addition of Laurier I have been able to reallocate resources to make better use of the computing power available.
Before this I had two servers, King and Borden. King hosted my media servers and game servers. This meant resources were being shared between media streaming and games. It was inefficient and not optimal. Borden ran my personal services.
Now I have moved my media servers to Borden since the CPU is optimised for media transcoding tasks. So King is now free to primarily run the game servers. More resources available, and higher priority access to those resources instead of sharing them. I also unloaded media storage to a different server which has had a positive impact for backups and bulk data storage.
Saying goodbye to an old friend
Part of these updates means retiring original Borden, a sever that has been with us for the better part of 13 years now. It was a trusty computer, it was the second generation of server computer for our SMP worlds and other game servers. A significant improvement over the old Compaq desktop we had. It is still quite capable today, however it was time to retire it for more powerful & efficient hardware. I donated it to Free Geek Toronto, and OG Borden will live a third life as a desktop computer for those in need.
Who would have thought that the money we pooled together in grade 9 would have gotten us a computer that lasted this long? I am very happy we were able to acquire it, and am equally happy that it served us for so long and allowed us to keep the Minecraft servers going over the years.
Software Updates
On top of hardware changes, the software that underpins all of the server hosting has undergone significant changes. The change of hardware was a perfect opportunity to improve the software side of things too.
Pelican Panel
I migrated the server hosting from Pterodactyl Panel to Perlican Panel. Mainly because Pterodactyl had stopped development for a long period of time and is lacking features. Some of the developers ended up creating Pelican Panel as a response to the lack of progress. Pterodactyl has since been revived but I am liking Pelican more. I also migrated server backups to my new NAS.
BlueMap
The server map has also been improved. BlueMap is now running on the server as a plugin instead of a separate service that only ran every 2-3 days. This also means deeper integration into the server, features include showing online player locations, and public homes & warps. For the first time ever the nether and end are also rendered on an active SMP world.
Other software changes
The Discord music bot has been sunset. It was not being used all that much, and it is easy to spin another one up if the need arises again.
Additionally, we tried out a new software for our Wiki but ended up sticking with MediaWiki. Bookstack is great but it does not have the best editing flow for us. Thank you to everyone who tried it out and provided feedback.
Finances
Let’s go over some costs of running the server. Not much has changed from last year, I only have an estimate since it is a fraction of my actual usage, the server runs with other services as well. I estimate about $80 was spent on the server over the year, which averages $6.67 per month. Costs include the domain name, internet, electricity, web hosting, etc… There were no capital expenses on the server this year.
Wrapping up, looking ahead
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Also thank you to all the players who enjoyed the server this year, it is a pleasure to continue to provide a place for us to have fun, hang out, and build together. I look forward to what lies ahead, especially with Hytale coming out.
I will leave you here now and wish everyone a happy 2026.
David