/v/ how do private MMO servers even survive? Every MMO is built to "house" several thousand players at a minimum. This requires money, even a small amount, usually covered by subscriptions or cash items. Private servers are run often by donation; but how get enough people to make it properly fun? I never see private server MMOS last 4 months on average before the host decides to stop playing. These games require companies to keep the thing going if the population drops, even temporarily. I have seen this myself with aion in 2010; the population was almost unplayable until 3.0 and a free model and then it exploded to where they almost opened a new server. How do private servers in MMORPG games survive? And why do people spend the time and money to create them?Honest question; help me out here.
I can only speak from my own experience with Mabinogi. I just really like the game, even if I didn't like all of the changes made to the game. I've hacked away at my project for about 8 years in my free time because I genuinely enjoy working on it. The actual playerbase isn't very large, but it still tends to be enough to run content together. That said, that population is too low for most people. I don't personally take any donations, I can't speak for other servers people run.
>>1556029Running a server is a trivial cost, which has gotten cheaper all the time, especially if you have a low population of users. Companies don't shutter servers to save money, it's about avoiding legal culpability and the perception of owning a failed product.
>>1556029lots of people have server racks and gig lines in their basement, or even access to a real ass data center cause they work there or something. "server infrastructure" is a very broad category.
>>1556029>Honest question; help me out here.I ran a heavily modified Conan Exiles server which could host 100 players a couple years back. IT was only about $300 for the entire year. I included a link to my paypal for anyone who wanted to donate. I received almost double in donations over the year it was running. If you're not a shit for brains admin, people will pay to keep you going. They wont fund you a living wage, but you will get that 15% or more who will support you. Now, I am certain a proper 1000+ pop mmo server will run you more than a 100 player conan server, but AWS isnt that expensive either. I'm actually in the earliest phases of researching how to set up and run an everquest server based on the Al'Kabor private server. I will post again here if I find anything more and move forward into funding the server etc if anyone is interested.
sell gold, then ban them after a day or two. Take money from would be cheaters and fuck them over at the same time ;)
>>1556029small ones are cheap, bigger ones sell ingame currency on the black market to their players in secret. The players don't even know they are buying from the people running it.
