Sejanus wrote:Druin wrote:Sejanus wrote:
This is the real world we're talking about, of course there is loopholes.
If you want to know why we can't make any profit whatsoever, check one of the hundred threads about donations.
So non-cash upgrades are classified as "profit"? What if you took on another team member as far as server management goes that contributed their income to the progression of the server, like I'm assuming all the current developers do.
Yes, "non-cash" upgrades still count as profit/income, because they displace money that would otherwise have been spent by the owner on the server. In other words, EA/GW's lawyers aren't going to look at our server like a bank statement ("This month their cash flow was positive!"), they're going to look at it like an accountant's ledger ("Their assets increased without a corresponding debit, take 'em down").
The code we started with about a year and a half ago is publicly available. Other people are free to start their own servers. We're not going to stop you. But they also have to be aware of two things:
1. Any one server that accepts donations, or is stupid enough to think they're the first people on the goddamn planet to think of some clever legal loophole, puts every other server at risk. Nolstarius thought they were clever by letting people pay their bills directly ("The money never touches our hands, so we're free!"). That other WoW server I can't think of thought they were clever for selling microtransactions ("Blizzard doesn't offer these services, so we're not competing!") You are not clever. Nobody is. Also, if you're hosting a private server in the US, you're literally in EA's home court. Yeah, their reach is pretty long and their club pretty heavy no matter where you go, but you're making it a lot easier on them for the chance to scrounge a few more NA players.
2. You'd get, at best, half our current playerbase, plus the people we've banned (that have actually left instead of quietly making new accounts and continuing to play without attracting attention), plus the people who don't play/never played because they're upset that we're not 100% pure-bred WAR. That's at most, what, 1200 people? 700 players peak time. And that leaves us with half the population we have now. If you never release all 4 tiers, you might be fine.
If you think you can work around those things, then good luck and godspeed. Enjoy spending the rest of your time wondering why the client supports little interest management, or tracking down the daily five new accounts of the one idiot gold-seller-wannabe who can't figure out how he keeps getting caught, and dealing with that one Turkish blackmailer who thinks he can do a pretty good impression of somebody he's never heard speak. You can have it all. You can look forward to all the shitty tells from people blaming you for a balance change Mythic made in 2010, just because they stopped playing in 2009 and can't be bothered to Google some archived patch notes. It's all yours.
