Blocks reappearing glitch

Question

I am playing on an 1.8 multiplayer server and have the same issue. It is only happening in one specific chunk. In that particular chunk, when I try to destroy a block, it reappears as if it was never destroyed. If I place a block in that chunk, it just disappears as if it was never placed.

However, another player was able to do changes (plant trees, destroy/place blocks etc.) in the same chunk. I am also unable to open doors, chests and use a crafting table. But anywhere else outside that chunk, everything is fine. So what is causing this particular issue to make me experience such things? Is the world corrupt? Is it caused by lag? Or is it an in-game bug?

Answer 1

If the chunk is near the spawn, it's probably spawn protection (See: server.properties) and the player that was interacting with objects in the chunk was a person of a higher rank (in vanilla, this would be an operator).

Determines the radius of the spawn protection. Setting this to 0 will not disable spawn protection. 0 will protect the single block at the spawn point. 1 will protect a 3x3 area centered on the spawn point. 2 will protect 5x5, 3 will protect 7x7, etc. This option is not generated on the first server start and appears when the first player joins. If there are no ops set on the server, the spawn protection will be disabled automatically.

The default protection radius is 16x16x16, which would explain why it is 1 chunk.

Answer 2

I've seen this happen when the area is for certain not spawn protected (for example, mini games where breaking blocks is required). This doesn't explain why it is just one chunk, but it could most certainly be lag. So for anyone where this issue is happening world-wide, not just to one chunk, if at all possible keep breaking the block, I've found that eventually it will break.

Answer 3

The chunk that you are in is probably the spawn chunk, or the predesignated location where every player in the server initially spawns. The other player who was able to edit this area likely had OP privileges or higher.

More info can be found here.

Hope this helps!