I purchased Minecraft yesterday and from what I've read, I understand that there are survival multiplayer servers, but so far none have any survival elements. Most have day/night cycles, but you can't lose health and no creeps spawn.
How can I play multiplayer against creeps?
Update: I found this question on how to host a SMP game.
Best Answer
A further update: As of Minecraft Release 1.0 (as in, after Alpha and after Beta), SMP offers everything single-player does, including Survival mode, Creative mode, and the Nether and End regions. There are still glitches that only affect SMP, meaning certain animations and so forth might not play properly, but the game is no longer woefully incomplete in SMP.
As of Release 1.3.1, SMP and SSP are now using identical code. Single-player is now a one-person instance of multiplayer. Thus, all differences between the two have been reconciled.