I think that Notch and the crew should make the admininum layer smoothe and then make the nether right below the adminium it would solve the problem of the nether on multiplayer servers.
2) extending the world down would cause performance issues.
Not necessarily. If the game were set up to only load the nether chunks separately it shouldn't effect performance anymore then traveling off on your own in a world. It should also be possible for the game to calculate the 8 - 1 distance and spawn travel gates accordingly. This would also allow for instantaneous travel, but should probably still load the chunks before it send you.
I'm not sure how feasible stacking chunks horizontally is but I really wish smp nether would become a priority.
1) notch said the nether is not below the minecraft world.
2) extending the world down would cause performance issues.
Not necessarily. If the game were set up to only load the nether chunks separately it shouldn't effect performance anymore then traveling off on your own in a world. It should also be possible for the game to calculate the 8 - 1 distance and spawn travel gates accordingly. This would also allow for instantaneous travel, but should probably still load the chunks before it send you.
I'm not sure how feasible stacking chunks horizontally is but I really wish smp nether would become a priority.
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As you travel
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Playing Minecraft since [Friday, March 19, 2010, 9:20:21 PM] (First indev world save)