Seriously, players need a list of what game mechanics and items are disabled. There's already a list of illegal blocks somewhere (I don't remember what warp was it) and rules, but I haven't seen this anywhere. Imagine yourself putting all the effort in getting gold apples and a potions of weakness (a brewing stand, a bottle and all the ingredients), getting and isolating two zombie villagers (mobspawn recently disabled tho) and trying to breed the villagers you just made (to get an iron farm for example), just to find out it's disabled. Really, really disappointing. The list could be either on this forum and/or in the game somewhere. Also many players don't know the old crafting recipes apply (not sure if it's written somewhere, didn't see that either) Things I've discovered so far (.net): Lava fire (because of nether portals?) Fire spread (same as above? anti-player-dumbness?) Mob spawn (because of server lag?) Villager breeding (same as above?) New crafting (fence, ladders) (older server.jar) Silk touch on grass (that's actually quite reasonable)
Placing rails is disabled too. People craft them and use up their resources to build a rollercoaster and it doesn't work. (Exception is powered rails) Weather is disabled. PvP is disabled. (Can't even push someone off a cliff ) Certain mobs are disabled, like zombies....blazes. (Some older players have blaze spawners if they were placed before the change) I don't know if it's normal but bats despawn. You buy bat eggs and they don't last long. Squids despawn too. This is all for .net, btw.
The server follows most of vanilla 1.7.9-10 mechanics. This means that anything you usually do in vanilla can be done on the server. The exceptions as you mentioned is firespread. Firespread isnt to prevent dumbness but to prevent griefers using fire to destroy islands. Obsidian when right clicked becomes lava, and if you right click the obsidian with a bucket in hand, it becomes a lava bucket and the obsidian will disappear. This is thanks to a plugin. Thanks to a plugin known as tim the enchanter, any item in the game can be enchanted, even blocks, and can be enchanted with all enchantments in the game at the highest levels. Yes, natural mob spawning is off for reasons such as lag and island/item security. Iron golems and zombies are disabled due to being used in iron farms, same as zombie pig men for their gold nuggets. Yes silk touch disabled on grass to stop grass farming as grass blocks are currency. Disabled mobs in mob spawners are things like withers, ghasts, wither skeletons, blazes, witches, zombies, zombie pigmen, horses, iron golems, silverfish (hopefully) and 1.8 mobs (until update presumably). PVP is disabled, but you can take other sorts of damage on islands. You cannot die at spawn explosion damage is turned off. animals can despawn, sometimes due to clear lag plugin, others naturally (ocelots, bats, squids). Clearlag also deletes placed paintings. I agree that somewhere there needs to be a list but for suggestions like these its best for the community to share their knowledge.
All I can say is to not be lead to disappointments, read the rules and use common sense. Like iron farms. It would be a cheat to have a functional iron farm, therefore disabled. But this thread is very useful. Thanks?