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Mabus · 08-07-2009, 06:45 PM

Many of their users are "multi-accounters". When I played it was not unusual to see a group of 5 characters all controlled by the same player. This is often looked down upon by the players more active in role-play aspects of the games, and was a constant friction point on official forums, but was not uncommon at all. You can only log in 1 character per account.

Each of these accounts was paying at least $14.99 (for one character) at the time (may be $!9.99 now, unsure). and premium subscription was $25 more. Platinum subscription (a different server, with more interaction and perks) was even more expensive. Then you had "up sells", which are staff-ran events where special quests could be had, or special items could be bought, and/or hundreds of people would sit in each "shop" room waiting to be chosen to have lines of text changed on their items. The tickets for these were never less then $25 per character and often would run much higher for "really special" events.

This is one game (Gemstone) out of 5 they run, and at least one other (Dragonrealms) had a separate server (Dragonrealms, the Fallen) where people payed to play on a completely moderation-free server. There is also the "Hero Engine" (graphical MMORPG) which they have been leasing to a few companies.

Most of the coders and other staff are volunteers or low-pay sub-contractors. The company owns their own servers and software. Their main costs are likely the internet T-1 bandwidth, their customer rep and on-site tech staff, the building and utilities. I haven't seen them advertise in years.

The chance that they are breaking a million is high in my estimation.

08-07-2009, 06:45 PM	#21
Mabus Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 213	Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs Many of their users are "multi-accounters". When I played it was not unusual to see a group of 5 characters all controlled by the same player. This is often looked down upon by the players more active in role-play aspects of the games, and was a constant friction point on official forums, but was not uncommon at all. You can only log in 1 character per account. Each of these accounts was paying at least $14.99 (for one character) at the time (may be $!9.99 now, unsure). and premium subscription was $25 more. Platinum subscription (a different server, with more interaction and perks) was even more expensive. Then you had "up sells", which are staff-ran events where special quests could be had, or special items could be bought, and/or hundreds of people would sit in each "shop" room waiting to be chosen to have lines of text changed on their items. The tickets for these were never less then $25 per character and often would run much higher for "really special" events. This is one game (Gemstone) out of 5 they run, and at least one other (Dragonrealms) had a separate server (Dragonrealms, the Fallen) where people payed to play on a completely moderation-free server. There is also the "Hero Engine" (graphical MMORPG) which they have been leasing to a few companies. Most of the coders and other staff are volunteers or low-pay sub-contractors. The company owns their own servers and software. Their main costs are likely the internet T-1 bandwidth, their customer rep and on-site tech staff, the building and utilities. I haven't seen them advertise in years. The chance that they are breaking a million is high in my estimation.