Secrets of Asherah Forum

I, personally, just don't want to see our friendly, wonderful little community die out.  Even if that means no access to the game for the time being, I'm alright with that.  As long as I can keep interacting on some level with you all.

The $120 isn't for hosting, it's a total average monthly expense. I do the actual game hosting. Even if we dropped the hosting out completely, it still only reduces the load by $15 a month.  And hello, Creeper...

To clarify something Avi said, the "not necessary at this point" refers to being online all the time, not to the money! Unfortunately, except for the cost of the electricity (which goes to zero if I have the comp off), I have to pay the rest of those expenses whether the game is online one hour a month or 720 hours a month.

I don't like the way this is boiling down to "Hey, give us money", although Avi has some good points (both in his posts and in our conversations) that argue favorably for going to a subscription structure.  But from the very beginning, B said that the game would always be free. (Of course, "free", as I pointed out above, meant that someone else was subsidizing all the people who played, not that there weren't any expenses involved.)  Am I overly idealistic to hope that we could keep it that way? And if we have "subscriber areas" that are unlocked when you pay your monthly fee, is that going to cause a Ragnarok-style class war that got us a lot of players in the first place?

Would YOU pay $5 or $10 a month to know that anytime you wanted you could get online and walk around a world many of you actually grew up in, and to talk to some of the old people, some of whom go back to 2003? And to be able to share it with your kids? (And know that they aren't going to hear all sorts of bad things - except from you when you hit an invisible wall in the mine for the third time in ten minutes!) We can't make THIS SOA into an absolutely amazing, state of the art game like the kinds that have multimillion dollar development budgets. But we CAN be here for you. And we can continue to develop other game material which will hopefully be fun.

Again, this is NOT a conclusion. I would like to know what you think.

Dias, I'm still reading the links in the links from the links you sent yesterday. There is a LOT there. Very informative.

Well unless things have changed drastically, about 4 years ago we paid about 17.99 or something like that for our hosting. 120$ hosting is probably a pretty nice setup for sure but an FSO server doesn't run very much, unless we all planned on playing some battlefield 4 on our own server we could definitely find something much more cost efficient

I figured I should probably show my face here as well, after quite some time!
It's very nice that you guys... after all this time, are still here to support us

It's true me and Asherah have still been in touch... a lot. We both really WANT to bring the game back online, but for reasons Ash mentioned earlier... It's just... Very difficult
Asherah and me have discussed all of these options over the past few months, but we're both really different in these things and haven't found any solution that we both support and we both feel would bring Asherah back in a stable and reliable way.

We've considered the crowdsourcing option the longest... But the problem is...
Asherah is a small community, and even though the size of it has changed a lot over the years... It's always been relatively small... Crowdsourcing would mean we'd have to step outside of our community, and promote an idea for a game (or a project a LOT of people get really excited about)
This is a very tough thing to manage for a team as small as what we have... Especially considering that we're not specialized into game design... We're more focussed on our community!

So... Back to the real issue... We'd need about $120 every month to keep the game running 24/7...
Ofcourse that's not absolutely necessary at this point, but it's something we'd like to offer in the future...

Any money we could make out of advertising would help take some pressure off, but at this point... there's just too few of us to be interesting for advertising companies...
Our low number of current players also means that Asherah doesn't necessarily have to be online 24/7 at this point. The last time we where online we had certain "peak" moments with 8-12 players online, and a lot of times in which just... noone logged in...
We could look into the option of going online for 1-2 hours a day... an "Asherah hour" if you will... This would drastically cut our costs for now and allow us to go back online... partially... I'm interested in what you guys think about this idea

However, If we want to be able to stay online, we're going to need a lot of help from you guys... Because with just me and Asherah (And me being occupied with a master's study), it's tough to manage a game, make it grow, help new players and fix problems (of all kinds)

The donation thing would also be my ideal solution to the problem, but I don't believe that it'll be a permanent solution... We're dealing with monthly costs, and the best way to manage monthly costs is... With monthly revenue...
If we're still going towards bringing Asherah back, I'd personally like to see if we can adjust the game to support some kind of "Subscription"
Players would pay a monthly fee, and unlock some small extra's, like some new areas, a different chat color in broadcast and some other minor things... Not really game breaking, but nice enough...
If we could get 20-25 players on a monthly subscription at just $5 a month... we'd be out of trouble permanently, and we could keep hosting this game for a loooooonnnnggg time in the future

But yeah, I'd also like to hear what you guys are thinking about these ideas... Considering that I'm just throwing my thoughts on this board
It's good to still hear from you guys, and with support like this from our community... it's impossible to just let Asherah disappear
Thanks!

Well I'm assuming this is the newest forums! I'm not sure if anyone remembers me but I used to go by Creeperboy back in 03 04 ish? Anyways I used to work on my own game KSB (which is FSO) but that was like 4+ years ago. ANNNNyways, I would be more than happy to lend my services such as hosting, coding, mapping, and digging up our old graphics from KSB to put forth towards SOA being fully functioning again just shoot me a message.

Also What happened to Baldon, and Kaneda?

An example of a successful kickstarter would be this:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-adventure

In that example they included quite a few features for people who are willing to fund the kickstarter. They presented what they're offering fairly well, and included some features to attract the funding. They pointed out the game style, and made points to what they wanted to accomplish and the realistic cost of it all.
Also to note is that the person or group have created a fairly notable game before.

There's also alternatives, this website mentions a few:
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/03/how-to-fund-your-next-game-hint-its-probably-not-kickstarter/

As for direct cost of servers, http://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-hp-proliant-dl360-g3-2-port-better.html shows a price for a refurbished HP DL 360 server. By adjusting the components, the cost can be at minimum $134.95 to what I selected, which is:

- 2.8ghz single core xeon CPU (1st Socket)
- 2.8ghz single core xeon CPU (2nd Socket, optional. I chose the second socket to spread the CPU throttle, and also as convenient redundancy.)
-4GB PC-2100 RDIMM (For Secrets of Asherah i'm unsure of RAM usage, I assumed 4GB as a default for a Windows OS (Windows 7 I recommend 4GB)
-36GB 10k RPM 3.5" SCSI Hard Drive (The nice things about SCSI is simple Raid capability)
-36GB 10k RPM 3.5" SCSI Hard Drive (As an instant backup, using Raid means being able to mirror the 1st hard drive and when one fails, the other still operates perfectly fine.)
-Smart Array 5i+ integrated (For the Raid configuration)
-Redundant HP 325 Watt PSU (Includes two power supplies, extra is in case the other fails.)

Price: $219.93

This address link shows the nice design of airflow of the DL 360, and the redundancy of the fans.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/DL360_Inside.jpg

Like I said, I don't want my post to be taken negatively. It's not "goodbye" or "abandon ship!"

I think when presented with challenges the point is not to say, "This won't work" but "How can we make this work?" Options a through g are all completely possible and I'm sure there are a lot of other ideas I haven't thought of. There absolutely always is a way.

And I appreciate your support and of course we can keep working together on things!

Of course, I agree with all of this! I'm glad you have a positive outlook on it.

I can't say I have a solution, but something I was thinking is /yes/ I will contemplate how the current game should be hosted, advertised, or even sold. And personally, I will work on hosting the browser based client in your place, once it's ready if you'd like. I have a decent computer dedicated to hosting my games. Why not host the browser based SoA server? I know it's a thought that is really only relevant to the future, but having some experience in hosting games for a company (my own) I would be more than glad to take that responsibility, especially since a lot of it is my work. Also, this could help with dealing with (when the time comes, that is) who will watch over the server.

I realize that I can't host your original server, but this is one thing that I find feasible and relevant overall.

Still leaves a lot of thought to be done, but this is what comes to mind as of today.

Also, sorry if this is rambly. Still not feeling well, but my consideration is out there.

Like I said, I don't want my post to be taken negatively. It's not "goodbye" or "abandon ship!"

I think when presented with challenges the point is not to say, "This won't work" but "How can we make this work?" Options a through g are all completely possible and I'm sure there are a lot of other ideas I haven't thought of. There absolutely always is a way.

And I appreciate your support and of course we can keep working together on things!

I won't say "You should keep the game going" blah blah if it's at all unrealistic a plan.

What I will say is I will continue my share of the work, despite you being unable to do most of yours in this project. I entirely understand.

That being said, I would still like your direction in my side of the project, Asherah, if you don't think it too redundant at this point. Let me know what you think however you believe necessary. Either way, it's been real.

SO, we are now OFFLINE and, at this point, will be until I get another comp to put the game into. We were pretty lucky the last few days.

(Please note - what follows might sound pretty negative. It's not negative as much as realistic. I want to keep running the game. I love this game. I always have. But we have to be both honest and realistic. There aren't any CONCLUSIONS here, really.)

So here's a big problem. The game has to be self-supporting.

John and I were talking about this yesterday, and I mentioned the public broadcasting model. For those of you not familiar with public broadcasting, they generally they have an annual fundraising drive for a week or so, during which time all (or most) regular shows are suspended and a group of people sit around and talk about how awesome public broadcasting is and how it hasn't got any ads and how it would be a darned shame if they didn't make budget and had to shut down.  Everybody HATES fund-raising week. People pledge a certain amount once a year which is generally paid through credit card on a monthly basis. Depending on the amount of the donation, the donor gets anything from a nice thank you letter to a T-shirt or mug or a CD with operatic highlights or something.  They don't get their own SHOW or get to tell station managers how to run the station.  They don't even get to fight monsters or have a house or anything else.  They, like everyone else, can simply can turn the radio or television on and listen to precisely the same shows as people who don't give a cent. And they raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

I like that.

I have always disliked and have always argued against selling items that have a substantial effect on gameplay (what's the point of having a game if people with money simply buy their way to the top? That's NOT a game) or that could have the effect of buying favoritism. I strongly feel that the point where B started selling sets of armor for $100-200 was where we lost the game. There is statistical evidence to back that up. It led to substantial player dissatisfaction, both among the people who had paid money and those who didn't.

People have often asked me (and B) how much it costs to run the game. In the early years, a lot of the expenses were absorbed because adults were paying all the bills. He had access to excellent computers ($1500-3000 each) and for the first few years we ran without having a lot of extraneous expenses. The massive increase in the electric bill was of concern to the people paying the bill, but that wasn't B. so other than noting that they were upset about it, it wasn't an issue.  And at that time, right or wrong, ethical or not, we had unlimited free advertising. There were days when we had 20 to 50 new players.

When he moved out and became at least partially self-supporting, the game changed. It was subtle - we didn't talk about it, but suddenly we were in the "items for cash" world.

To give you a rough idea of how much it costs -

$10-20 a month computer amortization. The game has to be the only thing on the comp. There are two reasons. A) Everything else slows down the game process. B) The game will fry a comp in a matter of 6 - 12 months. When it goes, everything on the comp goes. This is a low figure, estimating a CPU to cost somewhere between $70 and $100. Some have cost considerably more. It would be REALLY nice to have an expensive comp, but that's completely out of our range at the moment.

$35-48 a month for electricity to run said comp and since it's the only thing on the comp, you can't assign partial allocation.  This is a non-negotiable amount.

$15 a month hosting fees/domain name registration, etc. Relatively non-negotiable. We've been with the same hosting company for almost ten years. I'm satisfied with them. They're stable and responsive when there's a problem. I could possibly shave a few dollars off hosting fees, but the site has to be hosted from a professional site and domain registration is a non-negotiable price. I don't think we can possibly get a better deal that I would be more comfortable with.

$80 cable. I don't NEED cable, except to run the game. Even if you only allocated 50% to the game, that's still $40. It's a non-negotiable price. In reality, we should have a commercial cable account which would provide better, more stable service but also cost between $120 and $500 a month.

That's a minimum of $100 - $163 a month out of my pocket. Yes. Out of MY pocket. Personally.

I didn't add in lots of other incidental expenses (backup storage which is absolutely necessary and could easily run $100-200 a year, other hardware and software, etc. and the BIG one, which is advertising. Advertising can be 60-80% of a game's budget. I remember one set of ads B. bought cost $160, ran 24 hours and netted us 0 players.). Please notice also that there is not one penny in there to compensate me (or anyone else) for time spent working on the game, running the server, monitoring it, doing customer support, writing support documents, keeping game and financial records, fundraising, etc.).

Thus, per year, I pay out of pocket $1200-$1944 for the privilege of having the game online even if not one player is on it. That means that since we went back online, I have spent (yes, spent) a MINIMUM of $3600 - $5,542 to run the game. That would be a fairly nice car that I can't have because I chose to do this instead. I have received in donations/item sales, a minor fraction of that amount. To each person who has given money, it seems like a lot, especially in comparison with the perceived received rewards.

If you give us $800 a year, or $200 or even $100, you would expect something pretty substantial in return. If you were paying $100-$163 a MONTH for something, you should expect to get something pretty substantial out of it in return. It should AT LEAST meet the expenses.

If the game isn't worth supporting, the game isn't worth having.

And I personally would rather (much rather) see small financial donations ($10-20 a year) from MORE people who are simply happy to have the game online than have a few big contributors. And you can't really compare this to any of the other "free" games that have millions of players online, a small fraction of whom will buy items. Nor can you compare it to a game that you buy for $15-60 that sells millions of units.

I have had very generous offers from other people to run the server. The problems are
a) it has to be the only thing on the comp
b) you cannot be downloading or otherwise putting a heavy load on the cable because it'll slow the game down
c) I have to have access to the computer 24 hours a day through a virtual network. (I really don't like using virtual networks.)
d) I have to be able to call the host 24 hours a day and say, "Hey, the game crashed" and have the host drop everything and reboot. If you have a reasonably normal life, this is going to be unpleasant and I am reluctant to enter into that kind of a relationship with someone else at this point.

Those factors make "farming the game out" unattractive both to me and, without a doubt in a short period of time, to the other person.

The strategizing is done from a financial standpoint with the current game. I don't see how I can possibly run the game cheaper than I'm already running it (or not running it).

I am not COMPLAINING about this. This is simply the reality of running a small game and if we're going to make good decisions, we have to take all the factors into account without setting any aside. (People like to tell me "You can't count the electricity!" Yes, we HAVE to count the electricity!)

We have options -
a) try to get outside funding (loan, grant, crowd sourcing)
b) try to increase the number of players with the understanding that only about 10% will contribute financially. In other words, we have to bring in 9 people who won't contribute for every one who will! That's going to be a LOT of players, given that the average contribution per contributing player so far has been about $15 a year.
c) develop other Asherah-related products/games, etc. to increase potential income, etc.
d) sell advertising
e) partner with an ad company that would provide development money in exchange for promotions
f) sell the game
g) "rent" the game out for events (LAN parties, for instance)

There are undoubtedly other ideas that I'm not thinking of at the moment, but you might. Options d, e, and f would allow us to continue the game but would change the entire game culture.

So what do you think? Some of you who have run games in the past are familiar with all of this. I'm sure a lot of you have really good ideas.

This morning I'll keep the baldon account on gmail open if some of you want to message me.