Nice posts. Tarq and I will definitely have some good points to discuss thanks to your wall of text.
I think that a third option to the PVP scenarios you listed may even be to setup a whole new URL address and World for PVP. Maybe MCPVP.bananasmores.com instead of mc1.bananasmores.com. That would definitely depend on the demand for it.
We are working on a donation system and should be able to do some pretty cool stuff with that like quick updates and auto permissions. 😀 We have been discussing donors for a while about what kind of things donors could get with a donation, how much should it be and what kind of permissions are an upgrade but still fair? I was thinking of bringing up a whole new post for that in the near future so that everyone could discuss the options and amounts before releasing so that we could insure a fair and non damaging gameplay. We both like the thought of working for your items so its unlikely people will straight get items for donations but there are many different ways with MineCraft to improve gameplay. 🙂