I absolutely believe that they are trying to popularize realms with this.
Who in the right mind would PAY for realms when there are PLENTY of servers to play on? If you don't want to play on a crowded server, you can always host your own. If that's too hard, just use hamachi to host it. Just as easy as installing MC.
I do believe it is wrong to charge for something that is already in a game, but they want every player to have the same experience is extremely silly. Am I not allowed to give my IRL friends special permissions on my server anymore? Are you effin kidding me? The fact is minecrafts age demographic is around 8-14, people who don't have there own credit cards. Why would they beg their mother to throw money at some unknown service and not expect anything in return. People that age need incentives to throw money at servers.
A very large portion of the MC community is going to die.
