How to Change the MOTD and Player Limit on a Minecraft Server

Direct answer

Stop the server, edit motd and max-players in server.properties, save the file, then start the server again.

Example

motd=My Friends SMP
max-players=12

The MOTD is the text players see in the multiplayer server list. max-players limits concurrent player slots; it does not guarantee the hardware can perform well with that many players.

Player limit vs hardware capacity

A server can be configured for 100 players and still lag at 20 if the CPU, plugins, entities, world generation, or network cannot keep up. Choose a limit based on expected load and measured performance, not only the number you want to advertise.

Formatting and plugin MOTDs

Plugins and proxies can override or customize the server-list response. If changing motd appears to do nothing, check whether a plugin, proxy, or hosting-panel feature is replacing it.

If the server list still shows the old value

Confirm the server was restarted and that you edited the server.properties belonging to the process you actually launched. Multiple test folders on the same machine can make this confusing.

Official references

These references were checked while preparing this guide. Version-specific behavior can change, so use the project documentation for your exact release when a detail differs.

• PaperMC: server.properties reference

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