Salem

I'm thinking that there is some terrain that was altered manually, am I correct?

The server town claim areas certainly appear to be hand-made. Possibly the coastlines as well. Other than that I haven't seen anything that stands out.

Do note that players are able to shape the landscape considerably, even going as far as creating artificial grasslands in the middle of a forest.

The terrain inside the darkness becomes all squares after you pass a certain point, very close to the map edge. It looks like someone became lazy and decided not to make it look any decent anymore.

qbradq wrote:The server town claim areas certainly appear to be hand-made. Possibly the coastlines as well. Other than that I haven't seen anything that stands out.

Do note that players are able to shape the landscape considerably, even going as far as creating artificial grasslands in the middle of a forest.

Oh yeah obviously the towns are, but I have seen some perculiar evironmental shapes far out in the wilderness - guess that would be players who have come and gone, I see ghosts. And some wealthy neighbours

You should see the top of the mountain on Plymouth... most definitely inserted manually. Otherwise, yeah, it's all randomly generated. No two servers will ever be the same (unless the same seed is used).

is there a terraforming guide someplace? I keep trying to make my bumpy claim flat and all I get is bumpy dirt instead even when i ctrl click xD

While digging, if you hold control when you click, you level a tile uniformly. Of course, there's only so far you can drop it if one side becomes too steep. Use control when dumping the dirt to raise the tile uniformly. If done right, you can start from that one tile, slowly work your way around it, and get as large a flat space as you want. You'll know it's flat when you can't dig there anymore (or drop more dirt in the case of raising).

For a visual representation (terraforming easy mode), use the Ender client. Ctrl + L allows you to select an area and it'll show you what is and isn't flat