Realms



Realms, also called Minecraft Realms, is a work-in-progress feature that seems to allow for public servers. Currently, not much is known about the feature and its purpose. Realms were added in snapshot 13w09b, as hinted in the Mojang blog "signature" at the bottom, which was signed // The Minecraft and Minecraft Realms teams instead of the usual // The Minecraft team.

This feature was not noticed until when the few selected players noticed the Texture Packs button in the Menu Screen were replaced with the Minecraft Realms button. It is speculated that exactly 100 random players were chosen to test Minecraft Realms. These players can create their own Minecraft worlds, and can invite any other players into the world, whether or not they were originally chosen to test. Players that are invited will have the Minecraft Realms button appear on the screen, which then the invited players can enter explore the world they were invited in. Cheats are completely unavailable to all players in Minecraft Realm worlds. The worlds act like Multiplayer servers, where players can play in a world at the same time.

Possibility of Minecraft Realms Being a Paid Feature
In the snapshot 13w09b, by viewing the language files in Minecraft via an editor, these lines can be seen:

mco.configure.world.buttons.subscription=Subscription mco.configure.world.subscription.title=Subscription Info mco.configure.world.subscription.daysleft=Days Left mco.configure.world.subscription.start=Start Date mco.configure.world.subscription.extend=Extend

Also, players chosen to be tested have a subscription that expires in 90 days. These information suggests that people might have to pay in order to use this feature when it is fully released.