XecutiveRO

[Regret]

Sad to see such a close-to-official server with a small, but friendly community disappear out of the blue.
But as of now yesterday (13. March 2013), their homepage is not accessible anymore.

I keep asking myself why people actually start servers only to shut them down after a few weeks?
It makes me very sad.

See for yourself:
Homepage
Forums

[Playtester]

Flaid doesn't seem to be the person to just close down a server like that. He was chatting on RMS chatbox just yesterday too. Maybe it's just a problem with the webhost? Let's ask him first.

I keep asking myself why people actually start servers only to shut them down after a few weeks?

Often it's because the player base didn't end up as high as expected. Hosting a server costs $200 a month or more depending on how good the server is, so if you end up with only 5 players it's probably impossible to cover even half the costs from the donations.

[yC]

I wish hosting still cost as much as $200 these days so that make opening a server slightly take more effort and seriousness.  In fact many of the vps hosts (or ro specific hosts) are charging less than $20/mo to put up an RO server.

Yea I don't think Flaid's abandoning the server (yet).  I'll try to find him on irc and see what happen, it's rare he isn't there.

[Playtester]

From what I know if you get the best possible server, it costs around $600 a month. And even the common RO server providers that I don't want to mention by name (not to advertise them) cost $200 a month if you want a fairly good server with all kinds of protection. Plus $200 for Harmony and maybe advertisements.

Of course you could always simply host a server even on your PC at home for free if you want. I did that and could even support up to 10 players!

[Flaid]

All I will say here now is that the server is not and will not shut down anytime soon.

We currently have some troubles with our webhost, that's pretty much all. It will all be back very soon.

[Strange]

Playtester you are Right.
To get a good host it Cost a lot.
But at the beginning you can start with a 30-50$ Host you don't need to pay more for 100-200 Players.
If you Reach that amount you can Change it.
It's just Most Owners want to Create a own Server to dominate there or to Claim Money.
If PvP is dead the Hoster lose the Interesting and close.

[Playtester]

That only works until the players start complaining that they have 150ms delay when connecting from another continent and how unplayable it is with such "high" delay.

[Strange]

Okay, thats maybe true.
But for most Players it will work lagless or delayless.
you are right for a Good Server you need a good Host.

[Kiyoshiro]

Well, the site may be down, but you should still be able to go in-game. I was able to log in just now.

[Flaid]

The site is back up (it might come to another small downtime, I am updating a little here and there) and the forums will be back very soon, too.