Motorway Extension Gurus

The Motorway Extension Gurus (MEG) are a Nether highway mining group on the 2b2t Minecraft server.

The central objective of the group is to build, widen and extend the server's highways. Before the group's inception, the existing highways were generally small, short, and not suitable for long-distance travel. The members of MEG are tasked with digging tunnels that enable smooth and efficient travel between spawn and different regions of the nether with relative ease. Ultimately, this allows players to travel efficiently, as well as venture to previously unreachable regions of the map.

The dimensions of the tunnels that the group digs vary from project to project. The minimum tunnel size is 3x3, that being 3 blocks wide and 3 blocks tall. More recently, the group has switched to digging highways with a tunnel size of 6x4 for straight highways and 7x4 for diagonal highways. This change was actioned to 'future-proof' the highways and support cheat-assisted travel (i.e. ElytraFly, BoatFly, and/or EntitySpeed) with elytra, boat, or entity.



Founding
On October 15, 2019, Citadel2222 was traveling to the -X, -Z overworld border via the nether and stopped at -5M, -5M (-625K, -625K nether) to check if any interesting structures had been built. He flew around the area and stumbled upon a player name illville502 about 3,000 blocks away from the portal location. Both individuals expected immediate death. However, neither were hostile and so forth a friendship began. An interesting note is that at the time, the nether highway did not extend to -5M, -5M (it ended at approximately -4.8M, -4.8M at the time). With this in mind, the meeting of these two players in and of itself was highly improbable.

The two players decided to build a milestone at -5M, -5M due to there being nothing more than a small sign wall. For two weeks, they built a large milestone. This cooperation between two strangers on this relatively unmaintained highway was a significant achievement.

After this mini-project, the two players decided that their next project would be to extend the -X, -Z nether highway to the overworld border (-3.75M, -3.75M nether). However, to their surprise, upon re-entering the nether the highway had suddenly been dug. Both players were understandably confused, so they followed the extended tunnel and left several signs at the end in an attempt to make contact with the unknown digger(s).

The unknown digger was a player named VeryVon, who happened to be extending the highway with a custom baritone-based digging bot. After a short introduction and discussion, the three decided to band together and dig to the -X, -Z world border as a collective. It was on this date, November 28, 2019, that the Motorway Extension Gurus was formed.

Growth
In the months that followed, several players would run into Citadel2222, illville502, and VeryVon. While most encounters were brief, three individuals demonstrated a clear interest in supporting the group's objectives - they were DantezWrath, harritaco, and KevinKC2014. These were the next three members to join the group.

Upon completion of the -X, -Z world border dig, the group received a huge influx of people interested in digging nether highways, especially after well-known 2b2t YouTuber SalC1 released his video about the project. Most notable of these new members were Jonanen, Paragon, Kurakuea, and Parzi who joined in May and June 2020.

Several notable diggers joined the digging team in the late summer of 2020, consisting of Yesnik, JenixBlue, and ToxicAven, all of whom have contributed massively to the digging process.

Stash Incident
In late July of 2020, tycrek discovered a massive stash belonging to a shop owned by the reputable player ufocrossing on one of the highways. Being a relatively new player with little need for the absurd amount of items, he donated the stash coordinates to MEG to assist with future projects. At the start, the group decided to just steal crucial items such as pickaxes and golden apples. Unfortunately, partway through the operation a member of the group, maksitaxi, leaked the coordinates to the group Infinity Incursion. Upon learning about the leak, MEG decided to self-grief the stash as it had been compromised in an effort to take away the satisfaction from the Infinity Incursion. They kept it a secret from ufocrossing, but a member of the group messaged ufocrossing about the grief. This caused the first member in the history of MEG to be kicked out of the group because they did not want a bad relationship with such a well-known player. The relationship between ufocrossing and MEG was hampered after the incident. Though, due to MEG maintaining a low profile this has mostly been ignored. MEG retains a neutral relationship with the majority of groups on the server.

Completion of Diagonal Highways and Some
Following the completion of the (-X, -Z) world border project, the group made it their objective to dig the remaining three diagonal highways to the world border. The first of these new digging projects (+X, +Z) was completed in just three months and was primarily dug by harritaco, Jonanen, and KevinKC2014. All three were digging nearly 24/7.

Upon the completion of the (+X, +Z) world border dig, the digging bot was further optimized and the diggers learned how to use it effectively without disruptions for longer periods. This meant the remaining two diagonal highways could be completed at a faster pace.

On October 14, 2020, the third diagonal highway, (+X, -Z), was completed to the world border. It was dug out by the now well-known diggers illville502, Citadel2222, and tycrek. The dig of the final diagonal highway, the (-X, +Z) highway, was markedly delayed, having been severely impacted by Elytra-flight being patched on September 4, 2020. The dig was also slowed due to block-breaking not working as intended on the server. That is until a member decided to email Hausemaster, who was then able to fix the problem and improve digging speeds. At the start the project was slow-moving, but it quickly picked up pace as the diggers 'hyper-focused' on the final dig. Being only halfway in after 3 months, the pace really picked up after New Year. The final highway dig was completed on February 12, 2021. This marks the date on which all diagonal nether-highways had finally reached the Overworld world border on the server.

Due to the growing size of the group at this point, MEG expanded its ambitions in late July of 2021 and started working on more projects at once. Most notable of the completed projects include the +X highway expansion (widened to 6x4), digging of the 125K, 250K, 500K, 750K, and 1M ring roads. The 125K ring road was also paved.

1B Netherrack Dug and The Highway to Connect Them All
With 2021 came the release of an extremely powerful and digging tool known as Highway Tools, which was developed by Constructor. After benchmarking this new tool and comparing it to the old digging bot, MEG decided to try and hit 1 billion total netherrack dug before the end of 2021. This goal proved easy with the new automation provide by Highway Tools and MEG hit 1 billion total netherrack dug on the 17th of May 2021.

It was joked around in mid-2020, but MEG now realized they had the capability to dig the World Border Ring Road within a reasonable timeframe due to the aid of the new Highway Tools module. Near the end of 2020, MEG started the project by assigning eight different 'legs' to the diggers. This would be the biggest project in 2b2t history, with over 720,000,000 netherrack being dug and thousands of hours being dedicated to the project. The project was completed on the 1st of August, 2021.

The Highway to Nether World Border
A lone digger, Hare_Hare_Yukai took the task of digging to the +X nether world border into his own hands. He began digging a 1x2 tunnel which was parallel and 28.5k blocks away from the +X highway. He documented the entire journey in a detailed report, while also experimenting with the fastest way of digging. In the end, he got to around 300k nether per day (which is about 3x as fast as a normal 6x4 tunnel). Upon reaching the world border, Yukai asked to be part of the MEG crew, which was accepted with delight.

Diagonal highways
The diagonal highways extend from 0,0 in each of the four diagonal directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest) to the overworld world borders. Diagonal highways are 5.3 million blocks or 5,303 kilometers long.

-X, -Z
This was the servers and groups first completed diagonal highway, which was dug from spawn to the -X, -Z world border. This dig was completed by Citadel2222, illville502, VeryVon, DantezWrath, KevinKC2014, and harritaco.

Milestones


 * -10M, -10M reached on 8th of January, 2020.
 * -20M, -20M reached on 12th of April, 2020.
 * -30M, -30M reached on 26th of May, 2020.

+X, +Z
This was the server's second completed diagonal highway, which was dug from spawn to the +X, +Z world border. This dig was completed by KevinKC2014, Jonanen, harritaco, Paragon, and 5K5K.

Milestones


 * -10M, -10M reached on 9th of July, 2020.
 * -20M, -20M reached on 13th of August, 2020.
 * -30M, -30M reached on 4th of September, 2020.

+X, -Z
This was the server's third completed highway, which was dug from spawn to the +X, -Z world border. This dig was completed by illville502, Citadel2222, and tycrek.

Milestones


 * 10M, -10M reached on 24th of July, 2020.
 * 20M, -20M reached on 2nd of September, 2020.
 * 30M, -30M reached on 14th of October, 2020.

-X, +Z
The fourth and final highway was finally completed in 2021. The completion of this highway marks all diagonal highways finished to the world border at MEG's 3x3 minimum tunnel size. This dig was completed by Roy4lRondi, tycrek, Citadel2222, Juderenee, and Frencheagle. Milestones


 * -10M, 10M reached on 5th of August, 2020.
 * -20M, 20M reached on 31st of December, 2020.
 * -30M, 30M reached on 13th of February, 2021.

Cardinal highways
These are secondary highways that are not the main focus of MEG. They are being worked on but are not the main priority, at least until the diagonal highways are completed.

+X
This tunnel was originally dug by the +X Digging Group 1 wide, 2 high. MEG subsequently widened this highway to 3 wide, 3 high to improve travel speed for individuals using elytra and/or boat flight.

This dig was completed by Kurakuea.

Milestones


 * +10M reached on 23th of August, 2020.
 * +20M reached on 4th of September, 2020.
 * +30M reached on 26th of September, 2020.
 * As of May the 16th, 2021, player Hare_Hare_Yukai would complete digging the + X to the nether world boarder (30 Million Nether) under the MEG name

-Z
The first cardinal direction to be widened for paving to 6x4, previously only 1x2. Originally the widening project was started by 2 Highway Workers Union workers, but within a week the project was halted as the 2 workers disbanded. The project started getting traction again after the completion of the 250k ring road, as Harritaco started digging it. Yesnik soon joined in on the action as well. FreedomHolland came in a little bit after Yesnik and together, the three crushed it in no time.

This dig was completed by Harritaco, Yesnik, and FreedomHolland

Milestones


 * +10M reached on 14th of February, 2021.
 * +20M reached on 11th of March, 2021.
 * +30M reached on 31th of March, 2021.

Ring roads
Nether ring roads make it significantly easier to travel between each of the eight highways, allowing a player to reach off-axis coordinates with minimal open nether travel. MEG has completed several of these ring road projects to reduce travel times for the server's player base by several magnitudes.

125K
After completion of the -X, -Z highway, MEG created the 125K nether ring road, which equates to 1M overworld. The dig was started on the 9th of June, 2020.

Once the dig was completed, paving of the 125K ring road was initiated on the 19th of August, 2020. This project would use 5 million obsidian and took approximately 5 months to reach completion. This project was completed by Harritaco, Paragon802, CorruptedSeal, illville502, and DantezWrath.

Milestones


 * The 125k ring road was completed on the 1st of August, 2020.
 * Paving the entire ring road was completed on the 13th of January, 2021.

250k
Along with the last diagonal highway being dug, MEG raised its ambitions to dig out yet another ring road. This time it would be at 250k nether or 2 million blocks overworld. This project required 18 million netherrack to be mined. This dig was completed by Harritaco, Jonanen, and Paragon.

Milestones


 * The 250k ring road was started on the 1st of December 2020.
 * The dig was completed on the 3rd of January 2021.

Statistics
As of the 31th of December 2021, the group has dug 2,600,000,000 netherrack.

Since the group's inception (28th of November, 2019), 136,798 netherrack has been dug per hour. *needs updating*

On average, 6.8m netherrack is dug out per week, as can be seen on the chart to the right. These stats were pulled before the group implemented Highway Tools (now as a Lambda's plugin). Since this has been implemented, the numbers have skyrocketed! MEG has spent over 3,000 hours on each highway, adding up to nearly 12,000 hours of digging. This is excluding the 2 ring roads and the cardinal highways which MEG has also helped to dig. The most influential diggers with the highest netherrack count are as followed:

YouTube
On May 29, 2020, 2b2t YouTuber SalC1 uploaded a video titled "The Longest Road Ever Built in Survival Minecraft (The 2b2t Nether Highways)". The video highlights the accomplishment of reaching the -X, -Z world border corner, as well as the group's plan to extend the remaining highways.

On January 30, 2021, the YouTuber SalC1 uploaded a video about the highways, titled:"I Went to 2b2t's World Border". The video tells how the youtuber traveled to the +X worldborder using nether highways and a new elytra hack while visiting the major milestones on the way.

On March 29, 2021, the YouTuber Fastvincent1 uploaded a video about the group, titled:" How a 2b2t group revolutionized diagonal nether highways". The video showcases the group's achievements and history, going into detail about how the group has evolved since the completion of the initial -,- highway.

On July 3, 2021, the YouTuber fitMC uploaded a video about the highways, titled:"2b2t's Nether World Border Has Been REACHED (30 Million Minecraft Blocks)". The video underlines the complete history of the race to the nether world border with the various teams involved in this project.

Reddit

 * The first diagonal highway to WB (-X,-Z)
 * The second diagonal highway to the WB (+X,+Z)
 * The third diagonal highway to the WB (+X,-Z)
 * The fourth and final diagonal highway to the WB (-X,+Z)
 * +X widened to the world border
 * MEG's stash being discovered on the +,+ highway
 * Wide photo of the +X,-Z wb, taken by u/No_Sorbet_3317
 * Nether World Border Reached