As i was smelting glass and quartz for my bulding blocks, i head back to my build area which was around 50 blocks away and continue build for 5 minutes. I came back to my furnaces and they were only done smelting less than 10 ores per furnaces, my hoppers going in to my furnace were still slowly pushing less than half of my stack of blocks in my chest into the furnaces too.

Update: Sheared sheep do not eat grass, Crops do not grow, bees do not harvest honey, all were found to not work unless you have another player nearby loading the mob and block updates. 

Due to the fact of the new mob spawning changes, other block updates were affected. This factor of discourages players to move away from their base to explore as their personal farms are not loading when they go out to explore.