Mojang has announced the North American availability of Minecraft Realms, official Mojang servers that make setting up and playing Minecraft with friends a simple and easy process.
"Minecraft over the internet is a lot of fun, but it can be tricky to set up," Mojang says of the service. "To make things easier, we’re creating Minecraft Realms. It’s a paid service that lets users quickly set up an online world which can be accessed by an approved list of players."
Minecraft Realms costs $13 per month. The servers are always available and can be restored to an earlier point if something goes wrong. Realms are currently only available for the PC version of Minecraft, though Mojang does have plans to release it on other formats in the future.
