Whats in it for them?

[Crom]

Conspiracy theory: Maybe the gold sellers are GMs themselves... dun dun dunnnnnnnn

That is not such a crazy theory. Just imagine with 8k players how much money they can make if 5% (a conservative number for a private server) of the server decides to buy gold. That being said, it sounds far fetched that someone would put all that effort into a server just for that. I wouldn't be surprised though if they had something to do with the gold selling (and I wouldn't mind if I am entirely honest).

[pootpoot]

Conspiracy theory: Maybe the gold sellers are GMs themselves... dun dun dunnnnnnnn

That is not such a crazy theory. Just imagine with 8k players how much money they can make if 5% (a conservative number for a private server) of the server decides to buy gold. That being said, it sounds far fetched that someone would put all that effort into a server just for that. I wouldn't be surprised though if they had something to do with the gold selling (and I wouldn't mind if I am entirely honest).

Yes, I'd rather they sell gold, than T2 like (the server I'm not suppose to mention).

[Slicy]

For love, glory and candies !

[Crysthal]

It's nice for your career. With their skills most of them are working in IT and thus being able to run such a big stable server with all it's needs is a big point when applying for a certain job.

Recruiters usually love people who do/did things in their freetime for "greater goods" especially when the project fits in your line of business.

I'd say donations are not the main motivation as most players won't donate a single penny and if so they donate "a few dollars" once. The maintenance costs and all the organisation is vastly higher than the donations.

Recognition might be a thing too. I mean you provide a server to thousands of players who already spent CENTURIES of playtime here.

Maybe the admins want to play vanilla just as much as we do but found no server and just made their own.


But I'd say the first part is the most valuable. I mean you are leading a small yet vastly succesful company!

[Hireynip]

My theory is that this is actually a secret project by Blizzard to see if there is actually any demand for Vanilla servers

[Ohr]

My theory is that this is actually a secret project by Blizzard to see if there is actually any demand for Vanilla servers

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!

[Crom]

My theory is that this is actually a secret project by Blizzard to see if there is actually any demand for Vanilla servers

Last time I checked my WoW sub payment was going to a french company..This server is in France...

*grabs tin foil hat*

END OF DAYS!!

[Crysthal]

My theory is that this is actually a secret project by Blizzard to see if there is actually any demand for Vanilla servers

Would explain the lack of communication. And the caring about premades and DM farming - the qq worked.

Still here is no shop so this is 100% not blizzard

[Xaeminos]

I'm not sure the amount of work required to run one of these servers. But, a long time ago I used to run a text version of an MMORPG that is strictly accessed to telnet. This is waaay before most of your times, as games like this were pre-internet. Some of them still exist today. They were called Multi User Dungeons or MUDs. Look it up. All text. Nothing graphical.

So you'll type in a direction like "east" .. text will scroll down and say, "You are in a temple, there is a bug freaking monster about to kick your a$$ and eat WoW for lunch." But same concept. Level up your character, get gear, and kill stuff (and in some MUDs other people - where if you died you DID lose your gear).

We ran our own. There was essentially a template code base that you could use, but it provided very basic functionality. Everything else you had to code yourself (in C language). It was a fair amount of work, but very fun. We did it strictly out of enjoyment.

But man, some of you are so whiny that it'd be hard if I was a GM not to mess with some of you.

[AverageJoe]

I heard the guy behind this is really just an incredibly rich Frenchy who has more money than he knows what to do with.