Gilen wrote:I have never gotten a straight answer on this and have not had the time to research it myself. What does it take to setup a server? Do they have rented ones you can own as a private land and control who comes and goes on it?
There are basically 3 (soon 4) options for multiplayer Minecraft
Direct Connection
You can set up your game as a multiplayer host while you are playing it. Your friends can connect to your client, and you can play from there. The problem is, Minecraft worlds can get pretty big, and everybody is off doing their own thing, it can dramatically slow down the performance of your client. But for 1-4 players, this is a good option. The only thing you lack is persistence. You've got to be running the host for others to connect, obviously.
Personal Server
You can set up your own standalone server, but as I said, Minecraft can get pretty demanding as you get more people online (even a large handful of them), also most people don't have a good enough upload speed on their home Internet connections to make this very fun. If somebody has a good, stable internet connection, and a good PC lying around, this isn't a bad option at all.
Instructions on the Minecraft wiki
Rented Servers
There are several companies that offer private Minecraft server rentals so you and your friends have a persistent world to play on. There are some free options, but they generally limit you to 4-5 users logged in at a time.
RedstoneHost - Server for 1-16 players is $12.95/mth, or $9.95/6mth.
ServerCraft - Server for 1-14 players is $19.99/mth.
Those are just two examples, there are many more.
(Upcoming) Minecraft Realms
Mojang is going to start their own server subscription service called Minecraft Realms, its currently in invite-only beta. The beta is currently limited to 4 concurrent users at a time, but they've said that will change. Right now, what we don't know here is pricing and server capacity.
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Obviously I'm just starting. I've played some offline and I'm having fun, but I haven't gone online yet to play with NOR members. I don't know how many NOR members are interested in playing Minecraft regularly, nor what kind of capacity we'd need as far as "concurrent users" goes.
That said, it would be really nice to have a NOR Castle to defend from creepers.
