GM Moneybags

[crysiscore3]

Donates. Right or wrong(opinion)
There's nothing wrong with offering some items for money. Nor is it wrong if an admin makes a few thousand bucks a year on something that even compensated at minimum wage would probably earn over 10k.  By the time someone "donates" $50 they've probably put 500 hours into the game. Earning 1 cent for every hour your server population has played(9/10 people don't donate at all) is a lot closer to communism than it is capitalism.
Even on the most heavily donated servers, the admins are not really raking in giant piles of cash. Particularly not if they live in the West.

Purpose
If your server has been around for more than a few months, it's purpose is probably not a cash cow for your admin. They run the server because they want to operate a popular server.
The donates are OP and ridiculous? This is more likely poor balance hoping to achieve an epic new level of competition or over balancing to achieve an end the admin wants IE Ninja should be the most powerful!!!

When to worry
Does the admin actually work on the server? Or is it the GMs doing all the work? In the later case, yes OP donates are a good sign of greed from an admin using his GM's work to enrich himself. But if you have an active server owner(even if you don't often see the owner in-game) it's not greed.

About the only time OP donates appear as a form of cashing out is either when a server is very new, or because the owner is sick of it and wants to cash out before closing shop.
Most cases of imbalanced donates are not greed but poor planning and execution.

Exceptions
I have only played on US, UK, Canadian and German based servers. I understand that servers based in a certain country(I wonder which one  ) far more often fall into the donation scam category. I'm not commenting on those, as I have zero experience.

Misc
That said, just because the "donation" equips are not designed to make the admin rich, doesn't mean it's really a donation at all. Read part 2 of this topic here and offer input there as well

[yC]

I can't believe you didn't get a reply for a day, maybe all the posts went to the other similar topic you created?  I was thinking if you wanted to merge them or keep them separate ... 

Okay, you are talking about a linear situation where you assumed the owner's goal didn't change.  But in reality, money is the root of all evil.  When teenage boys (or girls) get the first taste of making money easy (arguable), given the material temptation in the real world, they will keep coming back for more money to satisfy their material demanding lives.

I'll simply put it, many many server owners started out great, run a server from ground up to medium population, working 16 hours a day on the server and have very balanced donation system.  Then ... disaster happens in one way or another, I'll not talk about the poor decision making including in human resource.  The other disaster is obviously the amount of donation money they handle.  In the US/CA/UK maybe $50 isn't much and can be made in a day of part-time work.  For some countries, $50 USD can be a week's wage.  That means some of these kids can make much more than their parents by running a server.  How can they not keep selling stuff to make a profit if players are willing to pay?  Once they learnt is it a way to make they "rich" without "working".  Then we get copy cat here and there ... like now.

I agree taking donation isn't wrong because it's just one kind of work you do and you don't expect anything in return.  Donation is a bonus, remember you don't know what you get until you get it.  The wrong part is money make people change, the more money you get from "selling items" the more greedy you grow into.  Money has this curse unfortunately.  Haven't we seen enough server started out without donation items or with very little donation items then keep changing the system to make as much money as possible before the server dies?  It just shows either 1) Money is the root of all evil, 2) The scam is well planned to get players initially then squeeze every penny out of their poor soul.

I don't believe everyone here runs a ro server is out for the money.  Definitely I have met people with a heart trying to create a fair game.  Well, some of them I witness the change of heart and some of them never got too successful before fund/fun ran out.  Some examples .. let see:

Paradise RO:  The server JJJ used to sit in the center of Prontera all day.  I remember that server don't even take donation and it was up for months without funding problem.  I think it ended with some WoE issue or something bad decisions were made that drove everyone away.  Or the owner lost interest?  Someone fill me in on this one.

Essence RO:  Used to be good when GM and owner were there.   Then what happen?  Tina (actually forgot her name only ... correction please) became missing-in-action for more than a year.  The version I know is she is working in the real work while donation on the server still going to her account.  So she basically keep the GM team working for her for free.  Then the server had major problem and she became out of reach, GM team decided to kick the owner out ... well new owner isn't too active from what I follow atm.  The original owner was talented in graphic and she did put a lot of work in the server while she worked on it.  She obviously didn't start the server to make a living off donation.  She found life is more important at some point, but free money going to her account every month so why not keep it for as long as possible.  Isn't it only greed is to blame for the ugly end of the story?  I am seeing another similar story being developed in another server that has been up for years, sigh B....

Quality RO:  lol this one, from 2004~.  I remember they posted a hosting bill of a few thousand dollars and expect the player to pay them that much.  That is out right lie and greed.  Although Eternity RO isn't too far behind from this one.

[crysiscore3]

Yeah, I played a few times on Paradise. I agree that it was nice. GM was always on. I was just busy and had no time. A few months passed and it was the first one I was headed back to. But it was already offline 

I'm aware that it is more money outside of the West. Like I said, I've only played on Western based servers in wealthy countries.

I made the topics separate due to one being rather different. Also the tl;dr factor
I expected the other to have more replies. I'm basically defending admins here, whereas the other I'm attacking them. You're more likely to post your objections than agreement.

I suppose I could have made this post #2(instead of #1). If you'd like, you could merge it back over like that. But leave the more popular thread as OP.

[Yuzo]

Essence RO:  Used to be good when GM and owner were there.   Then what happen?  Tina (actually forgot her name only ... correction please) became missing-in-action for more than a year.  The version I know is she is working in the real work while donation on the server still going to her account.  So she basically keep the GM team working for her for free.  Then the server had major problem and she became out of reach, GM team decided to kick the owner out ... well new owner isn't too active from what I follow atm.  The original owner was talented in graphic and she did put a lot of work in the server while she worked on it.  She obviously didn't start the server to make a living off donation.  She found life is more important at some point, but free money going to her account every month so why not keep it for as long as possible.  Isn't it only greed is to blame for the ugly end of the story?  I am seeing another similar story being developed in another server that has been up for years, sigh B....

Sounds just like Blackout. Essence was great for quite a while, but then players became bored and the staff got worse.

I once heard of a guy who released a whole bunch of items previously unobtainable (because they were overpowered) and put them on the donation rewards list. The server obviously went down under, but not before he got heaps of $$.