You can get it for free by logging onto spigot, clicking the link to their dev builds, and downloading it from there. I checked it yesterday, now that I think about it.
Not speaking officially, here, but, from what I know about MCMMO, as long as the updates didn't change how the databases store the skill levels of each player, then the skill levels would carry over.
Buying McMMO updates. last free version was for 1.7, which just isn't recent enough. This will meen that McMMO will now account for everything added to minecraft in the last year.
Dwarf- your creation "Orcworm the Destroyer" is getting to be very annoying lol. It is saying over and over again in chat that he went up in flames. Very annoying.
Basically it just comes down to time on server with good behavior + contributions to server + admin/mod decision to promote. We should probably have a forum dedicated to promotions with guidelines and a place for requests.