The world's largest Minecraft free-for-all, '2b2t,' totaling 15TB of data, has been released and is available for download and use.
2b2t.place, a large-scale archive project preserving the worlds of the long-running Minecraft anarchy server '
1M² WDL - 2b2t.place
https://2b2t.place/1million
2b2t.place
https://github.com/2b2tplace
How 1 Million² Minecraft Blocks Were Downloaded on 2b2t - YouTube
2b2t is one of the world's oldest Minecraft servers, operating since 2010, and is known as an 'anarchy server' with virtually no rules. Over 15 years, players from all over the world have repeatedly built and destroyed, resulting in a unique world dotted with vast artificial structures and ruins.
The archive released this time includes an Overworld with 1,024,000 blocks per side, acquired between December 2025 and April 2026, as well as an Overworld with 512,000 blocks per side, an End with 256,000 blocks per side, and a Nether with 100,000 blocks per side, all acquired in the past. Even after compression, it is a massive dataset of approximately 15TB (13.7TiB), making it the largest publicly available Minecraft world to date.
The project began with Phook and Crane at the helm, initially with the goal of finding players' bases and item storage locations. However, while developing a bot to track chunks, they came up with the idea of 'why not just save the entire map?' and it eventually evolved into an archiving project to preserve 2b2t itself as historical documentation.
This project utilizes a custom-developed bot that runs 28 Minecraft accounts 24/7 on a cloud server. The bot automatically patrols the world using an elytra-based flight method that doesn't consume durability, and collects chunks, which are then aggregated on a central server. A new, proprietary world save format called 'zvcr' has also been developed to improve saving efficiency.
The project took over a year to complete, with the download of 1 million square blocks itself taking 109 days. Including priority connection fees and cloud server costs, the total cost reached approximately $3,000 (about 440,000 yen), and the development team is currently supporting ongoing archiving activities through donations.
The downloaded data is not just a file for storage; the included software allows you to freely explore any location. Furthermore, the dedicated viewer with the 'Wayback' function lets you switch between worlds from multiple points in time, allowing you to see how the same location has changed over time. It's like tracing the history of 2b2t, similar to Google Earth's historical images or the Wayback Machine.
Furthermore, analysis of the acquired data revealed the distribution of artificial blocks and Nether portals throughout the server, as well as extremely rare block placements. The development team has indicated that they will continue data mining and preserve and publish this data as historical documentation for 2b2t.
Related Posts:
