Realms doesn't immediately halt and save a world when the last player leaves; the simulation continues for up to about 7 minutes. Some consequences are that the Minecraft time of day will be different when you join than it was when the last player left, and inventory and armor dropped when a player dies can despawn even if they disconnect.
Original description:
1.16: In realms it always is night time when someone joins.I know this because only 2 people play on this realm.
Related issues
is duplicated by
Comments
[Mod] Umija5895M
migrated
Oh ok
Auldrick
Adding a bit of explanation for why this happens:
Your Realms server doesn't immediately stop and save the world when you leave it, even if you were the last player. It continues to run for seven minutes or so, which means that if you're the last player and you leave during the day, it will often be night by the time Realms unloads and saves the world, and therefore will be night the next time anybody joins it. Conversely, if the last player leaves when it's night, the next player will likely join during the day. This is a side effect of Realms' design.
The reason it's designed this way is that when Realms shuts down a world, there's a delay for saving it and backing it up before anybody can load it again. If you left the world unintentionally, for example because your internet connection was lost, you're most likely going to want to rejoin immediately, so Realms waits a little while to see if you do that. That way you won't have to wait as long to get back in.
Another reason for this design is that when you die, your dropped inventory and armor are supposed to despawn if nobody picks them up within 5 minutes. In a single-player world you can hedge that by saving and quitting for a while, but this doesn't give you any real advantage in the game: You'll still only have a total of 5 minutes in-game to retrieve them. But in a multiplayer world, letting you quit while your items are waiting to despawn would be a problem because another player could join and steal your items while you weren't connected, and they could take as long as they want to while doing it because the despawn timer wouldn't be running. Keeping the Realm running after you die gives you a chance to reclaim your items while minimizing the opportunity for somebody else to rob you while you're disconnected.
Auldrick
This behavior Works As Intended. Though the consequence itself isn't really intended, it's a harmless consequence of keeping a Realm running for a few minutes after the last player leaves, which is intentional.
I have not been able to reproduce this on my realm. I checked the sun/moon position when I logged in and there was no consistent pattern. I got moonrise, midnight, and mid-morning on 3 different logins. It may be though that the starting "time" depends on what time it was that you logged out, so for example, if you always happen to log out right after sleeping in a bed, or during the day, the next login time might be the same (and night) every time.