Charging for Underlight

[HiRoGIiFiQ]

In order to keep this game under the same ownership and running maybe think about charging instead of making it free to play. I can't see why it would pose a problem for past players and as for new players, you could offer a free trial period.

[Tary]

Are you saying to charge so that the cost of hosting doesn't become an issue?

In all honesty, I think the hosting costs are fairly minimal. The only "major" expense was buying the license from Brent -- and that was a one-time fixed cost which has already been paid.

The ongoing hosting costs are pretty minimal and these days I bet you could run the Lyra server on a home broadband internet connection (provided you had a static IP) with few (if any) issues. In fact, at the end I'm pretty sure that asmodeus (Lyra's production server) ran out of Mark/Hawk's closet* running on a dedicated DSL line.

* So you could, quite accurately, say that the Lyra server was "in the closet."

[Koi-Spark]

Luckily, Wishbringer is able to host everything we need at essentially no additional cost to himself. Most of the tools that aren't already provided through the Lyra license are also easily obtainable, so there has been minimal cost involved. The biggest "cost" to our development team thus far has been in the hours of time from the all-volunteer staff, as it has always been since even the Lyra days.

Wishbringer has stated several times that he has absolutely no interest in making any sort of profit and wants to ensure that it stays free to play, even for PMares, for anyone who wants to play. If you feel like you are robbing Wishbringer, or any of the Koi Team, by playing for free, we are more than happy to accept voluntary donations. See Wishbringer's post on the Announcements forum at http://forums.clashofdreams.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=78.

We are working on having some additional perks for donations, such as an extra PMare allowances, but there will not be anything that will solely require a donation or payment to use, and there will be NO character advancement purchases (e.g. learn an art for $10, 1000xp per $1, fast-tracking, etc.) giving unfair advantages to donating players.

Thank you for your interest and suggestions. I hope to see you all in-game very soon!

Koi-Spark
Game Development & Testing
Level Design & Maintenance
Support & Gamemaster