In Wilder players enjoy a mob cap that functions independently for every mob type. In Expanse, a change has occurred, thusfar unannounced in either the discord or forums, of a new system that affects all mobs as one count, and so in the massive 8x8 chunk square shown up above, only 50 mobs may exist at any given time.

If that's incorrect, then some information needs to be shared to clarify for everyone who has been affected by these changes. However with the information that is available, I understand and have witnessed mobs will despawn no matter proximity once the cap is passed. I personally have seen horses despawn, an entire group of a dozen pigs despawn as cows were fed, and others have reported their villagers (many of them with very good trades) despawning due to a cow farm nearby in one of the towns.

Lag was never an issue before this mob cap was instated, and I will confidently argue that it is not necessary for fluid gameplay. In fact, it's current functionality is an active deterrent to any sort of farms and most forms of player townships due to requiring mob spots be 8x8 chunks away from any others at risk of despawning when you feed another mob.

If this change was felt to be necessary despite its severe drawbacks, I'd ask those reasons be made clear to everyone. As far I am aware, lag has not been an issue on the Expanse, and on Wilder it is moderate but not game-breaking when 50+ people are online. If lag is a problem, then I believe simply lowering the individual caps per mob rather than limiting every mod indiscriminantly would be much more well-recieved than the current implementation that more often than not simply erases progress made by players, rather than making their experience more enjoyable.

Caerix, I appreciate wanting to be kept up to date changes. The first 6 months of running Wilder I kept a really detailed change log for myself. It had over 300 items in 6 months time, so I stopped tracking them myself, because who can keep up with 50+ changes a month? If I announced every single change you all would hate me and be exhausted from reading my endless and constantly updated changelog.

I did make several announcements to the effect that I'm working on TPS and server performance which could impact mobs, redstone, and farms. The changes are experiments, not everything sticks.

These things usually change with every MineCraft update anyway. Nothing is forever on WilderCraft — that's our motto.

It's quite reasonable to expect large public servers are constantly adjusting and optimizing resources to deal with a wide range of player needs and demands — not just large farms — as the needs rise and fall independently over time. There are no magic solutions here. It's all trial and error based on our unique setup.

Short answer:
1. TPS and entity lag — especially since 1.13 — is hard. Mojang has fixed some entity lag issues in 1.14 already and we experiment in the mean time.
2. Mob cap has been a constant struggle for multiplayer servers since day 1 and there are no magic numbers that I've discovered as of yet that makes everyone happy.
3. Expanse and Wilder are different servers, so I think it's fair to expect different behavior between them.

I am not asking for every change to be listed, but large, high-impact ones such as the new mob cap is something that everyone needs to know, because it will destroy bases if/when it's pushed to Wilder. It's not something that can wait until after the fact, after the damage has been done. 

1. I know lag is a constant concern on a multiplayer server. I do not have objections to adjustments to limit its effect, except when the negatives start outweighing positives.

2. There is no 'magic number', but there are thoughtful, small changes that can be made first that will not have such a wide reaching negative impact when enabled. Instead of the drastic change from 50 mobs per 1x1 chunk to 50 mobs per 8x8 chunks, which requires bases and build areas be made 8 times larger to accomodate, instead try 50 mobs per 4x4 chunks, or 25 of a specific mob type per 8x8 chunk instead of only 50 non-specific mobs total.

3. For Expanse, this cap is honestly more harmful than the implementation would be on Wilder. With tp commands, recovering lost mobs is easier, if still frustrating to lose them in the first place. However on Expanse, when I lost many of my horses, there was no way to shorten a trip with a /home tp and get replacements. It required going out thousands of blocks and returning, and then some of those new ones despawned too. As mentioned in the discord, Expanse is also not designed for such large builds that are required to avoid the potentional of despawning mobs. 

Performance is important, yes, but so are the players and their time spent creating their territories.

It becomes hard to enjoy the game when days of work disappear without so much as a word, even if lag has been somewhat improved, which to be perfectly honest, on Expanse I never noticed any significant lag ever. I certainly haven't seen any performance improvements so intense that I feel any less demoralized by the big losses suffered when the changes were first implemented. A game that is fun but not optimized has more appeal than a game that runs like a dream but is frustrating. Now this last paragraph is all my opinion, and perhaps someone else has seen a drastically improved game experience, but I personally have found nothing but greif with the change.

The plugin has been removed for at least 5 days now.