Ores, Fortune & Mining
Fortune on Diamonds
The Fortune enchantment has a debuff on SMPOnline. 50% of the time, mining Diamond Ore will only drop 1 Diamond. However, the other 50% of the time, Fortune calculations are applied. This means that the benefit of Fortune when mining Diamond Ore is reduced by 50%. No others ores are affected at this time.
Diamond Generation Rates
As some of you may have already noticed, the Diamond generation rates have been reduced on the server by about 35% across the board. This reduces the amount of Diamond exposed in Caves, as well as generated underground, by a not insignificant amount. This was done in a manner to reduce the amount of Diamond available via all methods rather evenly.
The purpose of this, as well as the Fortune change, is to give Diamond a more "rare" status on SMPOnline. With the addition of Emeralds dropping from Mob kills, there's a secondary, fully player-controlled market of alternative currency that can be traded at variable rates between the two. Keep in mind that there is no official Diamond/Emerald exchange rate, so it's up to players to determine how much of X is worth Y and vice versa.