Donation based paid services (not pay2win)

[Poopfeast]

Hey,

I realize this has probably been suggested a lot of times before, and my reasoning for bringing this up once more is to maybe highlight the support (or lack of, if that is the case) stuff like this has within the community.

It doesn't take alot to realize that running an operation like you guys are doing, is a literal money-sink. The running fees are probably at a level where most of the administration have reconsidered the whole operation, at least once. Luckily for every one of us, you have obviously come to the decision that this is something you want to keep on doing.

Now, I have noticed that Nostalrius as a whole does not like or enjoy asking for donations, and you have made it very clear in the past, when you have asked for it, that it is not mandatory and does not give you any benefits what so ever, not even an honorable mention.
I feel like this is the wisest decision you could have made with regards to donations.

But have you considered the possibility of paid services? You probably have, and you have probably concluded that this is to time consuming and will eventually put to much pressure on an already over-worked staff.

What I'd suggest is in fact paid services, but with a cap; either in amount of money donated, or based on amount of customers served. Meaning that if you feel you need to reach X amount to pay of outstanding bills, you set that target amount, and you charge Y amount per paid service until you reach your goal.

This limits the potential work load and also makes sure you have a somewhat reliable source of income, should you need it.

Services could include, but aren't limited to (and worth mentioning; does not have to be completely blizzlike, I'll explain this later):

Faction Change, Race change, Name change, extended/blizzlike GM service

What I mean by "not completely blizzlike" is the fact that building a system for changing race and/or faction isn't an easy task, and the only likely way I see this happening is by the user creating a new character, and a GM boosting that character to the target level (the level of the main character you ordered the change on).

Things like rep gains and quests completed will be an issue, I am not to familiar with Mangos/Vanilla wow, but I atleast think you can copy/paste alot of character data to ensure that people arent exploiting shit by repeating a quest with a nice reward (for instance, 2x blackhands trinkets and so on). I am not sure how this works with quests that are faction specific but yield the same reward, but I am sure it can be solved.

I know this is kinda sloppy, and I wrote it up at work in like ten minutes. But I honestly do believe its doable, I believe there is a huge market for it, and I also believe that by capping these services in a way and making them available in waves, you can ensure you always have a steady income without expanding your workload beyond what you are capable of.

If you're reading this as a regular user, please voice in your support/hatred for the idea and let the administration get a feel for weather or not this is a good idea.

[pomfittes]

Dude, can people start to understand this? NOSTALRIUS is a VANILLA server, that means Faction change, Race change and things were not there.

seriously, go play on a wotlk privateserver with around 200 in population

ill admit being a UD female would be nice tho, but still getting stuff like that would not make it "vanilla"

[Arev]

You should have used the search feature before writing this.

There have literally been hundreds of these threads since this server has started, every single one of them has been denied.

[Rottenbeauty]

"Hi, I want to ninja major domos chest and get away with it"

[Sinjack]

That would be cool, then I could ninja any item I want and just keep changing my name and no one would be the wiser.

[PhilipRed]

Although i dont support this suggestion, the argument "its not blizzlike" is not valid anymore, since they have done some things not blizzlike, for instance PvP queues.

[Viper]

Greetings,

Don't take it wrong but, since more than 5 years now, Nostalrius never had any shop and it will stay like this.
We're doing it by passion, not for money.

Best regards.