server costs

I'd like to know this myself. I'm sure its a good amount of money to keep a popular server such as this one up.
 
I don't know for sure what the contract is, but a standard server from our ISP with 2x quad core, 2GB of ram, and some bandwidth a month is $500, for just ONE server. Our leased server is a lot more than that, plus we have 2 servers. Just for the servers themselves I would imagine it's around $1000/month and I am certain we go over our bandwidth allocation by a lot which then is another additional cost. The 3rd server which I provide, a server I own and shipped to our ISP to host, costs me $109/month, which because we don't get sufficient donations I do not get any re-imbursement, and many many times we've gone over my bandwidth allocation, which is an extra charge. The most I, personally, had to spend a month for my server is around $220. My server alone only being $109 a month would need just under 8x people to platinum donate to cover.

The bulk of the cost comes in with the bandwidth though, which can vary from month to month, depending on how big of patches we make, how many people do Re-Patch all and re-download all the patch files, browse the forums, hit the website, etc.

We've been using my second zone server, to help keep the game running lag free, for almost a year now and I've spent over $1700.

It's not cheap. I'm sure most of you never realized how much time, energy, and money the GM's actually put forth to try an provide an excellent game for this community.
 
not sure if this is even feasible, but do they take donations of hardware? I wouldn't mind donating my computer if/when I decide to get a new one.
 
Harazan said:
not sure if this is even feasible, but do they take donations of hardware? I wouldn't mind donating my computer if/when I decide to get a new one.
Click to expand...

No, we would never consider this unless someone had a dual quad core server with 4GB+ ram, RAID 5, and dual NICs ... but since those are typically thousands of dollars, I don't think it'll be happening.
 
Awww....and I was about to pitch in with my old 486DX2. /sniff

Guess I'll have to stick with cold hard cash. Donator=me.
 
Xardon said:
how many people do Re-Patch all and re-download all the patch files
Click to expand...

Just a point of clarification... actually repatch all on the new patcher just goes and recalculates the checksums of all the files locally to see if they match what the server has. If they match, the file is not downloaded again. Some small saving of bandwidth anyway.

I'd like to emphasize what Xar said about the amount of work that does into setting up, maintaining, backing up, etc... the servers that all happens invisibly behind the scenes. I was surprised to find out how sophisticated the back-end was, all to make it more reliable and maintainable.
 
newb to shards but not the game, donated! thanks for the server and the excellent content, feel free to /tell me in game!
 
Wow, for sure is alot of cash.

Wouldnt be viable to add google ads or something like that on our forum, homepage, etc? (Cant remember if we can, a few years ago i read that we couldn't because of legal rights of the game we can gain any money of it)

Well, for another idea, why not host the patches in a public server, just like rapidshare so people can download from it? I know it would come some harasment for the players, but who knows a bit less charge on bandwitch.

Maybe add some ingame store, like buy illusion clickies, some fame, clicky teleport, etc? (again legal stuff from the game)

I would donate myself if I had a international credit card, which is the only paypal accept on my country. Plus right now I'm unnemployed :(
 
Well, it wouldnt have much difference the shop. Only really usless stuff.

I would never buy, but i know this ingame shop in MMOs make a sucess
 
I figured the upkeep was quite high, and that's why I've always tried to be a donator when it was feasible. Hooray for helping.
 
The costs can be really high. The only way to really cut the costs is if you own your own servers and bandwidth and such. Even then there is still the electric bill and domain cost and etc, etc. so yea, it can be pricey.

My partner owns his own servers, but as yet they are not really being used....because again, concidering electrical consumption and things....

Honestly, some of the figures posted abouve seem a little cheap, concidering the overall resource usage, man hours put into it....etc...

I wonder if those of us who own our own servers could like host a zone or something to help with bandwidth and stuff.....that seems like a feasible thread to start maybe...
 
"This zone is brought to you buy X" lol

Would anyone be brave enough to host Athica? i bet that would take a lot of strain off the server.
 
I'm not qualified to speak on technical feasibility of a distributed zone hosting system, but I can say that I'd fear patch days more than ever if we had to send out 50 different binaries to 50 different locations.
 
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