Be Forewarned(Long Post) Hello Everyone!!!

[Phydough]

Who am I?

I am just a guy who started playing UO on OSI shards, in which I got tired of the problems with the game. I was invited to play a "free shard" and liked it but.... there were things I didnt like also. One day on the "free shard" I was pretty frustrated and mad because of some things that happened. I cooled off a bit and decided it was time for me to educate myself on this "free shard" community.

The first thing I did was came here to RunUO to further my education. Within 2 days I had a shard created (hmm or should I say server?). To make a long story longer......I learned that being an admin/gm/any type of staff having anything to do with running an operation like this is a huge pain in the hiney. People are doing this for fun and not getting so much as a damn nickel for their time spent. Yet I see so many posts here on the message boards of people asking for help. Which isnt necessarily a bad thing but umm how hard is it to click the little search button and type in a key word?......... Anyways sorry I got derailed. Ok so I come to RunUO.......and have the same problem every newblet does with the router situation. Unlike many others who have posted here on the boards I did not ask for help I just spent a few days perusing the posts of others. Here is what I found out.
#1. My ISP does not allow me to run a game server on my machine. (Hmmm he says sarcasticly.... Is that why my friends cant connect to my server?)

I am sure that there are ways around it.....have I searched for the ways? No, I havent gotten out my jackhammer for serious digging yet.

#2. I have so much respect for the moderator's on these boards because their patience astounds me. How many times do you tell someone to modify there serverlist.cs file and not to change the comment lines, before you want to just call them all sorts of expletives?

#3. It really amazes me that some of the people out there even attempt doing their own server. I mean......if you download the latest greatest RunUO version and cant find it because you dont know where it got put on your hard drive......what makes you think that you are going to be able to get a server going?

Ok OK enough of that. Now to the real reason I am here. I am interested in knowing who uses dedicated servers to run their shards. What the pricing is.....If you charge your players that have accounts on your shard to offset the cost of the DS.

If you have made it this far in this post I am guessing you are finding what I am saying interesting enough to read it and for that I owe you a thank you. I will be lurking around the boards some more and I will probably start posting here and there.

I want to say thank you to the RunUO dev team for putting out a labor of love. My hat is off to you people.

And now I will end this babbling piece of shaving cream of a post.............Fare the well

Phydough

[Phantom]

If you charge your players that have accounts on your shard to offset the cost of the DS.

This isn't legal so you wouldn't be able to do it.

[Tru]

wow im impressed
i wish all new people did as much....re search ing as you before making thier first post
Good Job and
Welcome to RunUO

and about hosted servers im pretty sure 99% of the free shards remain free even after getting dedicated servers but alot do get donations from thier players to help
and the cheapest ive seen is around $100 (US) a month (for a dedicated server package)

[Phydough]

Originally Posted by Tru

wow im impressed
i wish all new people did as much....re search ing as you before making thier first post
Good Job and
Welcome to RunUO

and about hosted servers im pretty sure 99% of the free shards remain free even after getting dedicated servers but alot do get donations from thier players to help
and the cheapest ive seen is around $100 (US) a month (for a dedicated server package)

Well I dont know everything but I can damn sure get an answer to any question I may have. lol

[Captain The First]

Welcome aboard.

Nothing to say except that I rarely shun a long post, other than that I can only say what tru and phantom already said (bah I hate fast people :P).

I would not expect donations to keep a shard afloat to be honest. People are fickle but this does by no means mean you can't add a certain amount of more or less unrelated service to your gameplan. You may not be able to charge for uo, but as uo.stratics demonstrates you can charge for many related things.

[David]

Welcome to RunUO

[Phydough]

Originally Posted by Captain The First

Welcome aboard.

Nothing to say except that I rarely shun a long post, other than that I can only say what tru and phantom already said (bah I hate fast people :P).

I would not expect donations to keep a shard afloat to be honest. People are fickle but this does by no means mean you can't add a certain amount of more or less unrelated service to your gameplan. You may not be able to charge for uo, but as uo.stratics demonstrates you can charge for many related things.

Captain my mind was still in rant and rave mode when I was typing the question. I know you cant charge specificly for uo per say .......but you can charge for server use and countless other things as you pointed out. I was basically trying to get an inkling of how many peeps were that dedicated to playing the game to run a dedicated server hehe.