Migrated from: https://dev.bukkit.org/projects/shopkeepers/issues/134

Originally posted by Dawgzx (May 7, 2013):

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.  Create shopkeepers at spawn area
2.  Create additional shopkeepers at remote location (a few thousand blocks away)
3.  Go to remote location, shopkeepers are not there.What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
The shopkeepers at the remote location will be there IF a player goes to this location and then I reload the plugin.  It's as if the shopkeepers will be there if the chunk is loaded when the plugin loads.  But, if the player then leaves that location and returns, the shopkeepers will have disappeared.  I do think the server knows it is supposed to load those shopkeepers, however - because when any player goes to this remote location, even though the shopkeepers are not there, the server gives the notice about "unable to spawn shopkeepers" at that location.  Again - if I reload the shopkeepers plugin, they show up.  But as soon as the player leaves that remote location, they disappear.  Or, if no player is there when the plugin loads, they never appear in the first place.  The shopkeepers at my spawn location are there all the time.  They never go away.What version of the product are you using?
The most current version - created when the issues came about with 1.5.2.Do you have an error log of what happened?
There is no real error log - only the notice that the plugin was unable to spawn the shopkeepers in the location - when a player arrives there.  It's like the server loads that chunk, and the shopkeepers plugin realizes they are supposed to be there...but for some reason, they never appear and the message shows up in the server log that it was unable to spawn them.Please provide any additional information below.

Originally commented by nisovin (May 10, 2013):

Do you have any plugin that might be preventing them from spawning? This kind of problem is usually caused by another plugin.

Originally commented by Dawgzx (May 11, 2013):

I have no plugins installed that were not installed before the 1.5.2 update when all shopkeepers were working fine.
Also - some of the shopkeepers spawn with no issues. The ones in my spawn area are fine. Only the ones further away are not staying. And even with those...they will appear, but only if a player is in the location when the plugin loads.
Plugins I'm using:
WorldGuard, WorldEdit, Essentials, Towny, Essentials Group Manager (permissions), CoreProtect, LWC, mcMMO
I will, however, wait until we have everyone logged out and I will remove everything except Shopkeepers and test that theory and see if I can isolate it to one particular plugin causing the conflict.
I guess if I had to guess - it may be WorldGuard. The shopkeepers that I am having no issues with are in Towny Towns. The remote shopkeepers which are causing the problems are in WorldGuard protected areas. However, it would seem that if WorldGuard were blocking them, they would not appear at all (even when players are in the area when plugin loads).
I will confirm and post results.

Originally commented by Dawgzx (May 11, 2013):

Confirmed plugin conflict with WorldGuard.
I have not yet been able to figure out if there is a particular setting in the WorldGuard config that is causing the issue...but it is definitely something to do with WorldGuard. If I remove WorldGuard, the shopkeepers come back and work with no issues.
I will continue to experiment with settings and see if I can determine a setting that is causing them to fail to spawn.

Originally commented by Sa5mmm (Jan 11, 2014):

This is interesting I am having this problem currently. I have Mob Arena and World Guard. I figured Mob Arena was preventing the shopkeepers from appearing (trying to make a mob arena upgrade shop in the mob arena). So I do /shopkeepers and none spawn in the arena. Not until I reload or I change the dimensions of the arena and go out of the area then back in the area.. So I know that Mob Arena is preventing the spawning of another mobs inside the arena. I don't know how to get mob arena to stop preventing the spawning of other mobs though. I know world guard isn't doing it because I also have world guard and I spawned in Shopkeepers into a region and they work.

Originally commented by blablubbabc (Jan 11, 2014):

@Sa5mmm:
MobArena is blocking mob spawning on highest priority, if the arena is currently not running :( So there is nothing I can do there..

I sent them a ticket asking why they are blocking other plugins from mob spawning there.
WorldGuard is no problem anymore because they can be bypassed because they are not listening on highest priority.

        Edited Jan 11, 2014

Originally closed by nisovin (Jul 5, 2013)

Originally commented by Dawgzx (May 11, 2013):

OK - so I have experimented with the block-creature-spawn in WorldGuard config file and I have not been able to get this to work. It is currently empty because I don't really want to block any mobs - but I went in and added silverfish just to see if it would work. I can do without silverfish if it brings my villagers back. Well - no luck.
I see in the main page that the config option for block-plugin-spawning can be set to false - but "it may cause other side effects". Just curious - what sort of side effects are you aware of if I just go this route?

Originally commented by nisovin (Jun 12, 2013):

@Dawgzx:
The side effects would depend on what plugins you have that might be spawning mobs, and whether you would want them to spawn in zones where you've disallowed mob spawning.