Financial Announcement

[shamozzle]

I love the server and would gladly donate, but I can't swing an entire month myself right now.
Allowing USERS to pool money is asking for a horrific nightmare and a field day for scammers.

Now if Nostalrius admins were to suddenly ask for a membership fee in order to join these FORUMS, what they do with that money is their business. wink wink nudge nudge.

[Letholdus]

"Well....of course we're not going to be able to come to a consensus in this fashion, because the 10 or so people talking here weren't elected to represent any group of people. We can't vote for anyone else, and in this forum not only can the entire pop not vote, but the grand majority of people won't even be aware there is something to have an opinion about."

THIS^ having a forum discussion with maybe 20% (if you are lucky ) of the pop involved/seeing this forum will most certainly not give us a solid decision .

The idea of letting someone hold onto anything more then a few hundred dollars is absurd also. i really dont care how much someone is respected in the wow community. Its a game, and just that, and money is real, it has actual weight in the real world, we are not talking about gold here and someone we can kick out of a guild if they run off with it, we are talking about the keeping the whole server up for everyone to enjoy. Any person could decide a few thousand dollars is enough to lvl a new char with a different name ( assuming server continues) and losing 600 twitch followers imo

I only see two real solutions (so far) if we have to decide on a method to do this on our own.
Number one being:
We pay monthly, with each months payment being taken by a different guild. ( the 12 biggest guilds willing to take responsibility?) and we set up a chart for the whole year ahead of time so the guilds/members can prepare and are not taken off guard when its their month to donate. EXAMPLE XXguild takes marches payment then XX guild takes April, and XX takes May and so on. The downside to this i guess would be the burndon of paying is on 12 guilds instead of the whole community. Maybe we can think of a way to work out some of the kinks on that as a community? And in return those 12 guilds names get praised on the forums and shouted from the rooftops

Solution Number two:

As Sharax said:
"One nice member pays the server maintenance with his own cash. We see the bill has been paid. Nice member then sets up a contribution site with the funding goal being a 100% reimbursement of what he initially paid. Done.

No worries that someone will scam you as what you donate will just be reimbursing someone who,has already paid the bill."

I personally feel this will be one of our better ideas. I know a lot of the people enjoying this server have jobs, good ones at that, and im not saying the fee is a small amount, but where not all 12 year olds with a 20$ allowance. If someone who had the extra cash to spare was to step up, and pay first, (proof and all exct.) im sure the community would have NO problem reimbursing said person thru a contribution site. If the devs support this we could even get said persons reimbursement site stickyed and on top of the forums so everyone can see/find it. This would allow everyone on the community to continue donating what they could (1$,5$,20$exct.) and we would still get the bill paid and the person reimbursed. I PERSONALLY feel like this is a win-win.

You might ask WHAT IF our devilishly hansom adventurer dosent get reimbursed the FULL amount? (because people ) I dont see this happening BUT even if it does you will obv get some/most back and will have donated to the server yourself and helped the server that we all came to love carry on, and then simply dont step up again if you where unhappy about not getting the full amount back. No one would blame you, for it would be on the community for not paying it forward. Did i mention the part where you are praised on the forums and from the rooftops?

[Codeine]

If there's enough interest, mainly to quell my concern of getting my money back. I can pay 1 month, and link my paypal receipt and link a gofundme.

[melak]

Im probably not the first one to say this, but i think trusting some unknown community person with this will fail. This will lead to a lot of scams and people running away with other peoples money unless there is someone offical.

[Imbaslap]

So basically we sit and wait for the true king of Nostalrius to take his place on the throne.

I for one am going to be quite gracious to our new rich overlord.

inb4 china buys Nostalrius jk.

[Diametra]

There's no foolproof way to do this. Because ultimately, someone has to be the trigger man. Codeine'e intentions are great, but here's the thing: that money you put up is yours, and then you hope to get reimbursed, which you probably would for the following month. But you're not getting your money back because that's what you use to pay the next month. Then your car breaks down or some shit, and you have every right to use the following month's dough to pay for your car, because hey...that's your money you're getting paid back so you need a little more in the coffers to cover the following month. that's how it starts. In this case there's no clear line between your money and the money collected for a cause.

You could ensure you collect enough for two months: one covering your output and one for the following month, but then in this case you are entrusted with "extra" cash that you are supposed to put in the right place.

If we can set up a crowd funded site that is locked into only paying one selected vendor, in this case OVH, that is under the guardianship of several people watching each other, we have a better chance of succeeding for a period of time.

So how about this:

Enlist the aid of the 20 biggest guilds on each realm (or a proportional number, because perhaps the PvP realms hardware is a little more expensive, so say 22-18 or some such) As a council led by GL's whomever they might be. Ofcourse some guilds won't be interested..and also it is hard for us to define "biggest" except by realmplayers without devs input.

They select a guardian for each realm. so there's 2 people to watch each other. The entire council can write whatever bylaws they deem fit for removal of a guardian and their replacement. Also whatever laws to replace one of their own through inactivity or no longer representing a large group of people. The guardians have the PW to place each month's one-time payment to OVH.

Each month it is up to the council to communicate our financial standing in whatever way they see fit, whether it's loosely organized or standardized down to the guild, to the entire server (s). Council members shouldn't be put in a place where they are responsible for X amount of dollars, they should merely be communicators directing folks to the crowd funded site. Point being..each month the crowd funding should collect the exact amount due each month and then cease. No extra collections. There should never be extra, even though that would be ideal from a business perspective. Hmmmm. ok maybe two months, but more than that is flirting with disaster.

It would be nice to report each and every person who makes a donation for each month, but not necessary if it is transparent enough that the crowd funded site is set to a hard cap. But may need an offsite webpage.

The Devs would have to allow the council to make regular "once a week" type announcement in world chat of where we stand. Should be a standardized blurb, not a solicitation, including where to find the complete information on the collection activities and how to paticipate.

that's all I got. I know some people just want to wing-it, but it might be worth hammering out ugly details first instead of after a catastrophe.

[Codeine]

You can set the exact limit to make sure you get your money back. Nothing extra.

Pay for 1month
Show proof/receipts of payment
Get reimbursed for that payment from the community.
Do it again next month.

Honestly, not that hard.

[netameta]

If you guys want, i can make a website that tracks donation - everyone could donate money to a specific paypal account, everyone will be able to see what's the status, and an automated payment will be send from paypal to the hosting company every month - in-case there's enough money.

i could also make a little api with either http or websocket if we want it more live, that you people in nostalrius could put somewhere in the site for people to see.

instead of all this trust issues, people at nostalrius could start a secondary paypal account, and use it like i mentioned above.

Everything will be transparent, everything automatic.. no hassle.

[Cousy]

There's no foolproof way to do this. Because ultimately, someone has to be the trigger man. Codeine'e intentions are great, but here's the thing: that money you put up is yours, and then you hope to get reimbursed, which you probably would for the following month. But you're not getting your money back because that's what you use to pay the next month. Then your car breaks down or some shit, and you have every right to use the following month's dough to pay for your car, because hey...that's your money you're getting paid back so you need a little more in the coffers to cover the following month. that's how it starts. In this case there's no clear line between your money and the money collected for a cause.

You could ensure you collect enough for two months: one covering your output and one for the following month, but then in this case you are entrusted with "extra" cash that you are supposed to put in the right place.

If we can set up a crowd funded site that is locked into only paying one selected vendor, in this case OVH, that is under the guardianship of several people watching each other, we have a better chance of succeeding for a period of time.

So how about this:

Enlist the aid of the 20 biggest guilds on each realm (or a proportional number, because perhaps the PvP realms hardware is a little more expensive, so say 22-18 or some such) As a council led by GL's whomever they might be. Ofcourse some guilds won't be interested..and also it is hard for us to define "biggest" except by realmplayers without devs input.

They select a guardian for each realm. so there's 2 people to watch each other. The entire council can write whatever bylaws they deem fit for removal of a guardian and their replacement. Also whatever laws to replace one of their own through inactivity or no longer representing a large group of people. The guardians have the PW to place each month's one-time payment to OVH.

Each month it is up to the council to communicate our financial standing in whatever way they see fit, whether it's loosely organized or standardized down to the guild, to the entire server (s). Council members shouldn't be put in a place where they are responsible for X amount of dollars, they should merely be communicators directing folks to the crowd funded site. Point being..each month the crowd funding should collect the exact amount due each month and then cease. No extra collections. There should never be extra, even though that would be ideal from a business perspective. Hmmmm. ok maybe two months, but more than that is flirting with disaster.

It would be nice to report each and every person who makes a donation for each month, but not necessary if it is transparent enough that the crowd funded site is set to a hard cap. But may need an offsite webpage.

The Devs would have to allow the council to make regular "once a week" type announcement in world chat of where we stand. Should be a standardized blurb, not a solicitation, including where to find the complete information on the collection activities and how to paticipate.

that's all I got. I know some people just want to wing-it, but it might be worth hammering out ugly details first instead of after a catastrophe.

Or people can just keep everything within their own guild and if you or your guild can't afford it, you don't donate.

This isn't rocket science. The minimum donation about is 1 month upkeep for the server. If you can't afford the minimum donation, you either don't donate or you find people to pool your money together with.

[Solmyr]

So how about this:

Enlist the aid of the 20 biggest guilds on each realm (or a proportional number, because perhaps the PvP realms hardware is a little more expensive, so say 22-18 or some such) As a council led by GL's whomever they might be. Ofcourse some guilds won't be interested..and also it is hard for us to define "biggest" except by realmplayers without devs input.

They select a guardian for each realm. so there's 2 people to watch each other. The entire council can write whatever bylaws they deem fit for removal of a guardian and their replacement. Also whatever laws to replace one of their own through inactivity or no longer representing a large group of people. The guardians have the PW to place each month's one-time payment to OVH.

Each month it is up to the council to communicate our financial standing in whatever way they see fit, whether it's loosely organized or standardized down to the guild, to the entire server (s). Council members shouldn't be put in a place where they are responsible for X amount of dollars, they should merely be communicators directing folks to the crowd funded site. Point being..each month the crowd funding should collect the exact amount due each month and then cease. No extra collections. There should never be extra, even though that would be ideal from a business perspective. Hmmmm. ok maybe two months, but more than that is flirting with disaster.

It would be nice to report each and every person who makes a donation for each month, but not necessary if it is transparent enough that the crowd funded site is set to a hard cap. But may need an offsite webpage.

The Devs would have to allow the council to make regular "once a week" type announcement in world chat of where we stand. Should be a standardized blurb, not a solicitation, including where to find the complete information on the collection activities and how to paticipate.

that's all I got. I know some people just want to wing-it, but it might be worth hammering out ugly details first instead of after a catastrophe.

Still sounds less complicated than our Raid Rules . Should you require legal services drafting said bylaws, Kishkumen & Associates is available for business.