I don't think this person's experience is necessarily representative of all servers, or even most. I've seen plenty of servers where flora abounds. Yeah, I was

I don't think this person's experience is necessarily representative of all servers, or even most. I've seen plenty of servers where flora abounds. Yeah, I was just amused at his description of the initial city, since it accurately describes a few spawn-zone cities I've seen. I kind of suspect it's just a result of high population. Or maybe there's just a type of SMP player who gravitates towards city-oriented servers. Either way, on the private servers where I've played, people do tend to scatter over a pretty wide range (rarely less than a couple hundred meters between two people's dwellings), and most of the land remains unaltered.