I\'d like to clarify a few things:
1) While we don\'t have any intention of booting people once we issue them accounts, I think that we should have an informal agreement that at least allows us to withdraw our offer should the guild become non-functional (based on fuzzy guidelines) or dissolve. This is to ensure that we get a comfortable level of commitment that show that the guilds appreciate our services. I personally don\'t think the quality of the webpage matters, but instead whether the resources we provide are used effectively. If not, we should have the right to give the account to another guild. I can promise you that we will not boot you for no rhyme or reason - We would like to think of ourselves as mature, responsible young men, who can at least be rational about the decisions we make.
2) This offer should not be construed as some kind of political leverage. Fragnetics and the PlaneShift devs function very independently of each other but share a close \'working\' relationship. I say \'working\' because we take it more like a collaboration (or in PS terms, Fragnetics are contributors), rather than co-\"workers\". Our guys enjoy hosting the game, although we don\'t play it regularly, and we certainly hope PS takes hold in our region of the world. Furthermore, we do not expect to be the sole host of PS in future and hence don\'t see ourselves as any kind of political force.
3) When we make this offer for free hosting, we are not implying that these guilds are any better than the rest. Frankly speaking, our hosting quality is not as high as other hosts (we only offer 99% compared to say 99.9% availability). Also, we\'re making this offer because we think that some guilds, regardless of reputation and stature, may find that they could use a hosting service with no popups, side-ads and stuff. We are offering an alternative, and not suggesting that this solution is any better than others.
4) We are limiting the number of guilds to 3 for the time being - This is because I think that offering too many would dilute the exclusivity of the offer. This may sound like it contradicts point 3, but I beg to differ. Instead, what we want is just to have guilds show a decent level of commitment to this offer, just as we make the commitment to host them. To put things in perspective, if such a scheme is successful we may decide to issue more accounts in future. If it really sucks then you should know where these accounts are headed.
5) We will not be providing domains to these guilds but can issue them directories under a subdomain such as planeshift.fragnetics.com (I will need to discuss this with the devs before I can issue this) or guilds.fragnetics.com (which we can decide on unilaterally). Guilds who purchase their own domains can park them with us for free as well. We are providing this service at no extra financial cost to us, hence we do not intend to offer domains as part of the deal.
6) This offer has been made without consulting the PS devs (so far). We\'ve taken this step because we\'re only offering a hosting service and not tying it to PlaneShift directly (which is why I can\'t just issue accounts under planeshift.fragnetics.com).
7) I would like to point out that Fragnetics is not likely to be an exclusive host for PlaneShift in future, and so your decision to apply should take that into consideration. We will continue to support web hosted guilds regardless of which server they play on, since we think PlaneShift is cool and are committed to the gaming community centred on it.
I\'m speculating a bit on our status as hosts because as contributors we are not privy to sensitive discussions that go on within the PlaneShift committee. However, based on our recent correspondence we are confident that we will be hosting PlaneShift for a looonggg time to come... As long as we don\'t suddenly shut down anyway
