I had a survival world in which I hadn't slept in over 3 days (so phantoms were spawning), then I got the 1.8.0 update.
I found another bug while playing (it has its own Issue page), so I made a creative copy of my world to isolate it.
I spawned in survival mode (I thought I was supposed to spawn in creative mode?) and used /gamemode 1 to switch to creative.
After night fell, phantoms started to spawn.
I think this is a bug because it would be annoying to have to sleep in creative (especially if you want to see your build at night), so this is a bit like phantoms spawning in the end or nether (because you can't sleep there).
Comments 4
Thank you for your report!
However, this issue is Working as Intended.
Phantoms have a chance to spawn above any player who hasn't slept in at least 3 days and is under the sky, whether the player is in creative or survival mode. However, phantoms will not attack a player in creative mode.
The reason you were in survival mode when you opened the copy is that you were in survival mode in the original world when you copied it. The setting you changed was Default Game Mode, which is only applied to new players joining the game. To get yourself into creative mode, you can either change the Personal Game Mode setting or use the /gamemode command.
Technically, worlds aren't either creative or survival mode; only players are. It only seems like the world is in creative mode when you're creating a new world because in that case you're joining the world for the first time, so you get the default mode.
You should be able to control the phantom spawning with the command /gamerule doinsomnia false