How do multiplayer servers work?

[Powerogue]

I've mostly played in singleplayer so far, I really don't know how multiplayer works in general.

-what's the easiest way to join one of these servers?

-how do mods work? what if different players have different mods set up? Say some guy who had the Aether mod installed is on a server and builds a portal, could I go through it?

-anything else that would help me. :/ Most of what I've heard is jargon involving buckets...

[Profyrion]

The server runs a persistent "server" version of the game -- basically just a terminal window. Players then join individually from their computers over a network. The rest of the game plays just like singleplayer, except there are other people in the world. Everyone spawns initially at a protected spawn point at coordinates 0,0,0.

Mods that alter gameplay in any way are not compatible with the multiplayer game. Those mods must be run directly on the server, and are available to all players depending on how the admin set them up. Mods that alter the UI and texture packs usually work fine in multiplayer. Since mods are not natively supported by the Minecraft server program, they require a 3rd party tool like Bukkit. Mods are then added and configured through Bukkit.

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Bukkit

The easiest way to get onto a Minecraft SMP server is to post in the CurseCraft thread and ask to be whitelisted.

Hope that answers your questions.

[Deleted]

to join a server, you simply get their ip, copy it, then click multiplayer > add server > and paste ip into server address box. it should then show up in your list.

feel free to test it on my server. ip is: mershcraft.mydedicated2u.com:12355

its a temporary map, as we are starting a new map in 1.2 so dont get too attached to anything there :P

[Grokal]

Multiplayer servers can be really fun, but I started out playing strictly single player for awhile and when I tried multiplayer servers I found single player to be much more entertaining. With single player there isn't lag and it really is fun, while every time I go on a multiplayer server I can't play for very long before getting bored or annoyed at the lag and unreliability of most servers.

[Deleted]

I just get bored in single player, most of the fun for me is to see things being built by other people etc.

[FailCow]

Mods (Pluggins) are done serverside.

All you really need to know to join a server is how to copy and paste the IP into the Direct Connect option in Multiplayer