Donation System
- This page is about paid cosmetic ranks and perks and the old kit system. For functional kits acquired with vote tokens, see Store.
The donation system allows players to donate for a donation status in-game and gain cosmetic bonuses.
Player donations support the server and help to offset the costs of running the high-end hardware required to make Minecraft run smoothly.
Current Donor levels
Donor
- To show our recognition for your support by donating, your username will be prefixed with a green star: (*)
- When combined with other token kits, the green star merges with the yellow token kit star to be a blue star *
- Access to the /firework cosmetic command in-game to summon an exploding firework at your location
- Ability to give armour stands arms with /posestand givearms
- Access to /colourarmour with "dye" values (see #ColourArmour below)
Donor II
- To show our recognition for your support by donating, your username will be prefixed with two green stars: (**)
- When combined with other token kits, green star(s) merges with yellow token kit star(s) to be a blue star(s) *
- Option to create larger fireworks with /firework large
- Ability to cycle through poses on armour stands with /posestand cycle
- The /hat command to place items on your head
- This does not include blocks
- Wave to players with /wave
- Use /hide to place items in flower pots or jukeboxes
- Options to use wool, old wool, and text colours in /colourarmour (see #ColourArmour below)
- Set the particle and sound effect created when you teleport somewhere, die, or join to fire, water, or portal (default) with /flair
ColourArmour
/colourarmour will create a full set of leather armour, just like /kit leatherarmour. It will only be available to donors who also have Wood Kit, which gives that command.
There are four "sets" of colours available with /colourarmor. To see which values are valid for your account, you can just do "/colourarmour invalid_value" and it will return the values that you can use.
The color values are shown in the image to the right. The top-row is available to Donor, and the other three rows are available to Donor II.
- dye_white (#F9FFFE), dye_orange (#F9801D), dye_magenta (#C74EBD), dye_light_blue (#3AB3DA), dye_yellow (#FED83D), dye_lime (#80C71F), dye_pink (#F38BAA), dye_gray (#474F52), dye_light_gray (#9D9D97), dye_cyan (#169C9C), dye_purple (#8932B8), dye_blue (#3C44AA), dye_brown (#835432), dye_green (#5E7C16), dye_red (#B02E26), dye_black (#1D1D21)
- wool_white (#E9ECEC), wool_orange=(#F07613), wool_magenta=(#BD44B3), wool_light_blue=(#3AAFD9), wool_yellow=(#F8C627), wool_lime=(#70B919), wool_pink=(#ED8DAC), wool_gray, wool_light_gray, wool_cyan, wool_purple, wool_blue, wool_brown, wool_green, wool_red, wool_black
- old_wool_white, old_wool_orange, old_wool_magenta, old_wool_light_blue, old_wool_yellow, old_wool_lime, old_wool_pink, old_wool_gray, old_wool_light_gray, old_wool_cyan, old_wool_purple, old_wool_blue, old_wool_brown, old_wool_green, old_wool_red, old_wool_black
- dark_red, red, gold, yellow, dark_green, green, aqua, dark_aqua, dark_blue, blue, light_purple, dark_purple, white, gray, dark_gray, black
Donor III
- Get 3 green stars prefix next to your name (***)
- When combined with other token kits, green star(s) merges with yellow token kit star(s) to be a blue star(s) *
- New /posestand options:
- /posestand rotate to rotate the limbs of your armour stand in custom positions
- /posestand load to recall saved armour stand poses
- /hat of the block of your choice
- Use any hex code for /colourarmour
- /cartblock to create minecarts with custom blocks in them
- New chat reactions:
- /yay /oof /rekt /noice /wow /rip /bruh /gg
- New flairs - /flair item and /flair block
- /hug to show your love to your fellow player
Donor IV
- To show our recognition for your support by donating, your username will be prefixed with four green stars: (****)
- When combined with other token kits, green star(s) merges with yellow token kit star(s) to be a blue star(s) *
- Ability to change the size of an armour stand with /posestand changesize
- Ability to toggle the base plate visibility of armour stands with /posestand togglebase
- Ability to change the offset of blocks displayed in minecarts with /cartblock [offset]
- Use a number of unique coloured reactions in chat:
- /silly
- /meow
- /heart
- /brokenheart
- /cry
- /smile
- /rose
- Ability to use flairs on demand with /flair
- /eat command to visually eat any item
- /showitem command shows what item you are currently holding in your hand
Donor lounge
Players with legacy kit levels also gain access to the DonorLounge warp.
LWC
- LWC chest limits increase with each kit level:
- Wood level may protect up to three containers.
- Stone level may protect up to four containers.
- Iron level may protect up to five containers.
- Gold level may protect up to six containers.
- Diamond level may protect up to seven containers.
- Obsidian level may protect up to eight containers.
- Nether level may protect up to nine containers.
- Aether level may protect up to ten containers.
- Demigod level may protect up to fifteen containers.
- God donors may protect up to thirty containers (but they don't really need chests anyway).
Why donations?
A voluntary donation system was chosen as a method to fund the server, over a subscription or purchase system. The current service uses donations specifically, with rewards for donating. A subscription or purchase mechanism could result in a banned person potentially legally claiming the service wasn't fulfilling it's level agreement. A similar issue could arise when software is updated due to new releases from notch, with problems during the initial new code release causing service downtime. If the kits were offered as purchases, there would also be tax issues which don't arise with charitable donations.
Instead, the player is offered a chance to voluntarily donate one of multiple specified amounts, and a free in-game gift is offered by way of thanks.
What bit of hardware will my donation go towards?
This is not a question that can be answered simply; while the cost might be imagined purely in hardware terms, in fact the majority of costs are recurring.
Detailed accounting is kept but while the outgoings are continuous, they are not constant - for instance the colocation of the server, advertising in various locations, and other more spurious costs vary from month to month.
Hence it's not normally possible to state that the next X amount of funds will go towards more RAM, for instance, because a rolling buffer of credit for server rent, advertising etc must be maintained on top of savings for specific improvements.
Bitcoin
As of 20 May 2013, MinecraftOnline accepts donations by Bitcoin to the equivalent value of their GBP prices, as an alternative to Paypal. Bitcoin donation buttons appear alongside Paypal buttons for the kit upgrades. Every user gets an account allocated to them, and it's possible to pay by instalments across multiple transactions, potentially taking advantage of Bitcoin's volatile growth rate and avoiding unnecessary exchange fees. The Bitcoin exchange rate is polled from online real currency exchanges in realtime.
Timeline
Most of these dates are based on the wiki's page history; as such, some of these events may have happened earlier, with the wiki update following at a later date.
- 6 August 2010 - MinecraftOnline opened to the public
- 25 January 2011 - MinecraftOnline's Donation System opened to the public, to support running the server
- Kits available were: Wood, Iron, Gold, Diamond, God
- May 2011 - Obsidian Kit added
- September 2011 - Nether Kit added (originally called Hellstone; this follows the addition of the Nether dimension in June)
- October 2011 - Aether Kit added (this follows the addition of the End dimension in April)
- 20 May 2013 - MinecraftOnline accepts donations by Bitcoin to the equivalent value of their GBP prices
- October 2014 - Demigod Kit added
- 9 August 2018 - Mojang blacklisted MinecraftOnline due to the Donation System being against the EULA
- October 2019 - Token system instated, and existing "Donor" levels become "Legacy Donor" levels.
- One "Donor" level remained, and gave only the green name and the /firework command.
- 4 August 2021 - the /store command is introduced
- 8 August 2021 - Wood Kit gains /craftnote
- 27 November 2021 - Donor II added
- Donor I gains additional commands: /posestand givearms, /colourarmour
- Donor II grants commands: /firework large, /flair, /hat, /hide, /posestand cycle, /wave; also more options for /colourarmour
- 4 August 2022 - Donor III added
- Donor III adds new commands: /cartblock, /hat, more /colourarmour options
- 24 November 2023 - Donor IV added
- Donor IV adds commands: /posestand changesize, more /cartblock options
Legacy
"god kit is what people who have too much disposable income buy" - Quizlibet
Historically, the donation system allowed for players to get special commands, kits and resources. However, Mojang blacklisted the server in August 2018 due to this system being against the EULA, so the old donation system was forcibly replaced with a purely cosmetic system. However, legacy donors retain their perks.
These ranks were available in multiple levels, on a linear progression. Each donor level is marked by a name prefix of coloured stars in chat.
- * Wood
- ** Stone
- *** Iron
- **** Gold
- ***** Diamond
- ***** Obsidian
- ***** Nether
- ***** Aether
- ***** Demigod
- *GOD* God
Each kit level allows the donor to obtain a kit of tools or armour of the specified material once every two hours. It also comes with special donor commands.
Players who purchased these kits prior to the close of the old donation system in 2018 have a "Legacy Donor" tag when you hover over their names in chat.
These legacy kits are no longer obtainable via donating, but players can use tokens to obtain the same kits using Store. Kits purchased via tokens are displayed separately from legacy donation kit levels but confer identical privileges.
Trivia
- Due to the success of this style of donation system, MinecraftOnline has inspired several Clone Servers throughout its history, equipped with identically laid out donation kits.
- Nether Kit was originally named Hellstone [1]
- Originally, Diamond Kit for £55 was considered the highest level for practical purposes, but:
- "A "God Kit" gift does exist for players donating £1000 but it wasn't expected that anyone would consider buying it" [2]
- There was an edit war on this wiki page over an allegedly unlisted legacy kit in July 2016 and again in July 2018.
- When the world height was raised to 256, new players were limited to the old 128 build height until they had 100 hours of time played, or purchased Iron Kit