Deprecated Darkstar fourms

Azure sky has shut down and the database and DNS was given to me. Worndown has decided to leave the FFXI world and pursue ventures in real life lol. I am making changes to the code for my server as well as fixing things but currently and still refreshing myself on how I to do this (haven't messed with dark star in like a year or so). All my players are encouraged to report bugs on the bug tracker. I will try to post all the fixes I do so it can move the darkstar project.

I will not be asking to have my server put up on the Wikia because at some point I MAY be taking donations for a month or so to pay for a .com and possibly an offsite dedicated server to run the server so I don't have to worry about my internet connection. (some asshat keeps DDOSing me)

So this is what, the second time he's done that? He could have told us himself; he just re-joined the project a few weeks ago even...

/sigh

I do believe he is serious this time, (was GM on his server the first time he did this) but even if he does come back I'll still be helping out (more than just scripting food this time i swear lol)

We appreciate any [constructive] help we can get

What's wrong with accepting donations?

Many emu's do it. Good one's just have open accounting so people can see the server costs / monthly donations.

It cost's money to run these and one person shouldn't have to bear the entire cost.

My 2 cents anyways.

What's wrong with them?

Darkstar devs write server.
Random person throws up server and takes money.
Darkstar devs get none of that money, but do all the work.

Also, taking donations tends to attract notice, since it implies profits, and profiting from a server emu is what takes it from "legal gray zone" to "outright illegal in 9/10 countries."

google wowscape

It really depends on how the donations are run. I have played on some emu's where it's obvious the people are trying to profit from the server.

While other emu's i've tried are fairly open about their costs. IE provide information on the bandwidth usage and costs for server equipment if it breaks. Lots of folks are ok with donating to cover those costs, it's usually not a whole lot.

Although it really is a grey area as you have said, there are court cases where for profit emu's have won the right to continue taking donations. There are also court cases where emu's have been shut down for the same thing as well.

It really comes down to the fine details of how a private server is managed and run as well as what country the server resides in.

I can assure you that emulation is legal in the US. Supreme court has ruled that much at least. Also, If a server is only taking donations up to the running costs and nothing more, It won't attract much attention.

It is your project though, so I can understand your desire not to see it get bogged down in legal turmoil. It's just hard to imagine a private server staying up for a long time without some form of donations.

WoWscape should be a case study of what not to do with an emulator.

It was quite obvious that they were not following "fair use"

They were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month as well as actively selling in game currency. Hard to claim you are a non profit with that kind of financials on top of the fact they were illegally selling game currency.

I doubt many people would be willing to go to court and fight a big game company regardless of the legality of donations either way. The point is to not accept more than you need, and many emu's have run for years on that principle. They aren't worth the effort to pursue legally because of how little money is involved.

What I did was set up a surefile.com account, and when I finish source coding for abilities(ones that I did on my own) I throw them up on that site, and put download links [free and also ones for surveys] so that people can "support" the server if they want to by just doing the surveys. They themselves don't pay us, but we still make money from our own development.