Financing Servers?

[Astenorh Dunkel]

I know i will be the first to dare ask it but I will do it because I\'m not blind to the problem with financing servers.

Good servers are expensives and you special connections provide the Internet Provider to have a well performant server.

Actually PlaneShift has only 3 servers on the world, and actually no localted near strategic points like scandinavia or U.S.A. (they are the best players).

PlaneShift is OpenSource so it is made with volunters who are working on it, so not commerciale. I always ask myself it would be possible to make a Free OpenSource MMORPG face to this problem.  The project had succeed but has always a lot of problem with Connection Crash, Slow connections.

I thought that it would possible to do like Freshmeat http://freshmeat.net/, using ads on their site web, they\'re quite discret. It would make possible to finance servers without destroying the OpenSource Community.

Many will start to critize me, i\'m sure. Telling that great projects had succeed like OpenOffice without financing, but most of them are supported, Linus Torvalds is aid by Intel and AMD, in order to make comptatible the system before the selling of new technology, OpenOffice is supported by Sun Microsystems. PlaneShift has a lot to do before a Corporation decide to support them, it would need to have really performent game, enough to make a shoadow on things like Mankind or Anarchy Online, before Ati or Nvidia  for example start to support. (I tell this ones because, for me it\'s probably the most probable to support PS because PS needs a good configuration)

I really want this project to arrive to version 1.00.00 and become very popular (for Open Source project) but it think the first thing to do is to make the menace of expensives servers problem a slight thing.

PS: I don\'t know where to put it.

[steuben]

you\'re not the first. it has been asked many times, in many different way.

arrangements for other servers have been made.

[DeathsAngel]

Originally posted by Astenorh Dunkel
like scandinavia or U.S.A. (they are the best players).

Ahem

Maybe they are the most present people on the game, but are they really better?

For me everyone that play nicely is as good as anyone else that plays nicely too.

[Karyuu]

Forum Issues wasn\'t the best place for the post ;)

PlaneShift has no costs :) Money doesn\'t come into it. Servers are donated, and everything the team uses is free. If that ever changes, perhaps they might consider donations. However, the idea of bringing any sort of money into the project does not work with the team\'s goals for the game.

And I, for one, would hate to see ads on the site.

[Vjorin]

I\'m pretty sure that with the PlaneShift support players have already given, there will, no doubt, be help for the game.

One small comment though...putting adds on the page wouldn\'t generate squat for money anyways.  I had adds for my game once, and it only generated about $40 a month, and that was with about 1,700 unique hits a day.  PlaneShift probably does better than that, but it still doesn\'t amount to much.  

We always did fine with player donations, which MORE than pay for server costs.

[Astenorh Dunkel]

ok

[Vjorin]

If you\'re concerned, you could always offer to host a dedicated server...

[Bereror]

I think a fast mirror for the updater is more than welcome. Especially because the mirror 3 ran out of the bandwidth.