Hello,
I have recently been updating my Minecraft to the newest, 1.2.5 version of Minecraft. I have experienced an issue where, if I edited the options.txt in options, it would apply to survival/creative worlds, but not servers. I don't know if this is a bug, since on Java maximum render distance on servers is 16, I think this is a bug, so I am reporting it. Thanks for taking your time to read this, I am going to attach pictures below of what this bug is. In the pictures below, I attached the render distance I get on one of the partnered servers, Mineplex; and attached the render distance I get on a creative world.
Servers have a set render distance so they can support high numbers of players. The same applies to realms.