This one reminds me of old school SimCity.  Very nice.

Latest MC 1.8 prerelease:

Changes:
Mineshaft generation halved
Three strongholds now spawn per map instead of one

Bugfixes:
- No more lag when experience balls are dropped
- Furnace now smelting all items correctly
- No more client crashes when placing chests
- Can now break blocks in Nether
- Now able to go into position over broken Nether blocks in Creative mode
- Actual silverfish name displayed when they kill a user instead of base name
- No more items being wiped when accessing Creative mode
- No more randomly catching fire in Creative mode.
- Unlimited water is now available in Creative Mode
- Dyes are now in palette
- Endermen no longer hold grass with side texture visible on top
- Missing items from Creative Mode inventory have been added

I'm missing the ability to hit F3 to see the mobs :(

Well, 1.8 is now out. HOWEVER, BE CAREFUL UPDATING IF YOU STILL WANT TO PLAY ON THE SERVER. Until Hansrote announces that the server has been updated as well, it would be wise to just not update at all.

Known as the "Adventure Update", meant to flesh out the game a bit and make exploration and combat more rewarding.[1][2] Note that this is not Adventure Mode.[3][4]

• Three new mobs.
  • New Enderman mob.
    • They take damage from water.
    • They emit purple smoke particles.
    • They drop Ender Pearls.
    • They open their mouth when hostile/looked at.
  • New Silverfish mob.
    • Will spawn from rarely generated blocks, that look identical to stone, or stone bricks.
  • New Cave Spider mob.
    • They spawn in Abandoned Mine Shafts.
    • Their attacks are venomous, and turn the player's health yellow upon being poisoned (will not kill you but will make you lose 4 health bars, if you are below 4 health bars then it will bring you down to heart).
    • Have a unique mob spawner.
    • They are smaller than regular spiders.
• 9 new blocks and crafting recipes
  • Stone Brick
    • Stone Brick Slabs
    • Stone Brick Stairs
  • Brick Slabs and Brick Stairs
  • Fence Gates
  • Glass Panes
  • Iron Bars
  • Melons
  • Melon Seeds
• New Creative game mode.
  • Flying by double tapping Space
  • Unlimited resources
  • A new screen, the Unlimited Item Selection screen
• New features in the terrain generator; things which will only appear in new worlds/chunks.
  • Optional structures
    • NPC Villages with farms and "town borders".
      • Contain houses, "smithies", and wells: all of which are connected through gravel pathing
      • Made of: Cobblestone, Mossy Cobblestone, Wooden Planks, Wood, Torches, Cobblestone Stairs, wooden stairs, Gravel, Fence, Glass and/or Glass Panes, Ladders, Wooden Doors, Crops, Farmland, Water, Lava, Furnaces, Iron Bars, Black Wool, bookshelves and Pressure Plates.
      • Will spawn only on flat areas.
    • Strongholds, consisting of 4 new blocks: Stone Brick, Mossy Stone Brick, Cracked Stone Brick, and Iron Bars.
      • Will only spawn 3 times in a map.
    • Abandoned Mine Shafts
      • Contains naturally generated Cobweb.
    • Underground Ravines including canyons on the surface and ledges to walk on.
  • New, fractal-based biome code, spawning much larger versions of existing versions along with 5 new biomes
    • Rivers flowing through/in between biomes.
    • Ocean Biomes, that are deeper and much more vast than before.
    • Mountain biome.
    • Swamp biome, which is the only biome to generate vines on trees. Mushrooms are more commonly generated here as well.
    • Clay is now much more abundant
    • Snow in Taiga and Tundra biomes does not generate for technical reasons. They will return in Beta 1.9
• New combat Mechanics.
  • Hold-to-charge bows.
    • 3 different charged states; takes less than 1 second to fully charge.
    • Fully charged bows causes the player to walk slower.
  • Critical hits.
    • When the player hits a mob while jumping.
    • When the mob is hit by a fully-charged arrow.
  • Player blocking attack animation and hostile mob attack animations.
    • Block "stance".
  • Mobs killed by the player drop tiny flashing Experience Orbs that add to your experience bar.
• New Food System.
  • There is now a food meter.
    • Food no longer heals directly but indirectly: if the food meter is above 80%, heals about every 5 seconds.
  • All food (except Mushroom Stew) is stackable.
  • Food takes 1.6 seconds to consume, accompanied with an animation.
  • 5 new food items.
    • Melon Slices.
    • Raw Chicken.
    • Raw Beef.
    • Cooked Chicken.
    • Steak, which has Cooked Porkchop's old texture. Cooked Porkchops' new texture is a tan shade of the same sprite.
  • Eating any raw food or Rotten Flesh has a chance to give the player food poisoning.
• New farming options, more interesting farming.
  • Plantable pumpkins and melons, each with a central stem that grows to max size and spawns a fruit next to it.
  • Melon Seeds.
  • Pumpkin Seeds.
• A new achievement: "Kill a skeleton with an arrow at 50 meters".
• Sprinting: By double pressing the forward button, the player will move faster.
  • Sprinting is limitless, but will deplete your hunger bar.
  • Hitting a mob while sprinting sends them flying.
  • Jumping while sprinting boosts the jump to a length of about 4 blocks.
  • Sprinting makes particles come up from the ground.
  • While sprinting, the field of view slightly increases.
• Mob changes
  • Passive mobs will randomly flee if attacked by the player or other mobs (such as Wolves).
  • Zombies drop Rotten Flesh instead of Feathers.
  • The snout on pigs now protrude from their head.
  • Skeletons now hold full-size bows.
    • Skeleton arrows originate from about their eyes to the bow, instead of above the head.
• New uses for shears.
  • Vine
  • Tall Grass
• New improved lighting
  • Day/night cycles no longer require chunk updates. Lighting is updated via a texture, whose coordinates are the block's sky light and block light levels.
  • The lighting on a block is given a tint based on the most prominent source of light
    • Redish from Non-sunlight light sources
    • Blue from Moonlight
    • Total darkness keeps the same black tint
    • Sunlight gives the same white tint
• Main Menu/Options changes
  • The Main Menu's background is now an animated scene.
  • In the Main Menu, the version in the main menu is in the lower left, instead of the upper left.
  • New sliders for Field of View and Brightness
  • 4 new entries in control list
    • "Attack" and "Use Item", default to left and right click respectively
    • Player list, default to tab
    • Pick Block, defaults to scroll-wheel click
  • Improved server join screen: The server join screen features a list of servers.^[1][2][3]
• New texture for Moss Stone.
• Clouds change color during sunrise and sunset to match the sky color.
• New particle effects.
  • Performing a critical hit on any mob will cause 'sparks' to fly.
  • Explosion particles are now shockwaves instead of smoke.
  • Tiny stationary bubble particles can be seen when underwater.
  • Fog is now thicker and darker deep underground, and gives off particles. Due to this, the void appears black.
• Changes with debug-view (F3)
  • Mobs are no longer visibly labeled with their entity ID
  • The world's numeric seed is displayed in a field below player position.
• User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay.
• Cloud height raised to the top of the map, so clouds no longer go through buildings.
• Cloud movement syncs with the time.
• Rain and snow renders faster.
• Armor bar moved to above hearts, due to food bar.
• Player to mob damage decreased by half a heart.
• Pressure plates can now be placed on fences.
• Arrows that hit a mob visually "stick" to the mob.
• Improved chest model with a 3D lock and an open state/animation.
  • They are now slightly smaller than one full block, and cannot have a breakage texture applied to them.
• Rollover labels for items.
• The ability to allow moderators to enter creative mode in SMP.^[4]
• Easier changing of the max level (map) height.
• Shift-Clicking items will craft the maximum possible amount of what you are trying to craft with the limit at 64 and will directly put it in your inventory without the need to drag it there. (e.g. You have 16 coal above 16 sticks and you shift click the torches, a stack of torches (64) will appear in your bottom usage bar)

Bug Fixes:

• The Shift+Click crash bug from 1.8pre2 is fixed.
• Fixed Redstone circuits not working after /time set x glitch going to be fixed in SMP.
• Destroying boats and minecarts now creates particles.
• Ghast attack sounds are fixed in SMP.

New bugs:

• Version number is still shown at the top-left of the screen while debug is off.
• The destruction animation for chests is missing.
• If you place a torch underwater, the torch will fall off but its light will remain.

due to the minecaft.net outage the server is unreachable, once its back up ill restart the server and you should be able to reach it, ill also launch a 1.8 server at port 25566

also i give you the winner of ther server name contest

Nibiru  for our prime map

go wick ... so you win a minecraft tshirt pick one out from http://www.jinx.com/shop/coll/minecraft/sty/tshirt/?gclid=CJffne7inasCFcYKKgodyxBFgA or another site if your familer with one shoot me your shipping info in a PM

the new map (1.8 non modded) will be named Marduk

As a result, publicly, our server is going to be presented as NibiruCraft (IE, on our forums, in our listing on the MC Forums and Planet Minecraft, etc).

Hansrote, I would like to request that you possibly register a new URL - maybe nibiru.dyndns.org or something like that?

The names I've suggested, in the meanwhile, are going to be included in-game as names of various regions and creations of my own.

had already planned on that. we can drop the dyndns as well i think, i pay for service with them. i dont remember all the details but will be posting in the next few days

nibirucraft.dyndns.org

Woo Hoo!! This is like the first thing I have won in my life........ that isn't poker related.

Our server would typically get 1 or 2 views a day for a while on PlanetMinecraft. I updated it and changed the name to NibiruCraft and since I did that yesterday evening (about 11 hours ago or so), we've gotten 35 views. :o