What makes people play donorfests?

[BRabbit]

What brings people into servers where donations are required to be able to do well in WoE? I remember old AnimaRO having 2k players despite their insane donation scheme: lord kahos and custom donor mvp cards in a 5/5/3 low rate server!

I would never play servers like RebirthRO or AnimaRO (now known as AnthemRO, check that crazy donorpage out) where spending cash is necessary to win. Even some "balanced donation" servers allow their fluff to be vended for zeny, but that's not even close to something AnthemRO does.

Have you played some of these? Why?

[horo]

Teenage boys trying to compensate for their real life failure by boosting their self-esteem online, at any cost. Certainly morally wrong to exploit them, but then again I'd rather have them collected on such servers no decent person would play on than spread out across actually worthwhile servers.

[LiteX]

I was also surprised to see a server like anima having a high population and being a donorfest (Hell, with over 2000 people on a server filled with donor items, I really don't know wtf is going on w/ people), I mean, most of the time donorless servers tend to have about 10% as the pop. of donorfest servers, what I guess is the number of deep-pocket skilless people wanting to "own" in PvP

[Orange]

Simple...

A lot of people are rich(or simply waste what money they have), suck, and want to own in PvP.

[Aozora]

Actually the reason Anima was quite popular was mainly due to the donating thing. Seeing how you dind't actually have to donate! Anima offered a plaethora of so called Ad-sponsors. You know in simialr way that those PTC sites have? Fill out few surveys and earn yourself few dollars. Now put over 00 of these on a site with a profit range of 0.30$-50$ per offer. The possibility to easily fraud said offers by just making multiple accounts and you have people who don't have to donate and the server gets tons of profits from the sponsors. Since basically each sponsor offer done gave money to the server.

So most of the time you actually didnt have to donate.There were people earning literally thousands of dollas on their accounts to use for donation items. There were tons and tons of frauded stuff on the server. And even if you dind't fraud you could still earn a good 100$ to start you off simply by doing free offers once.

[A92FL0163]

Server Stability or the staff being more serious about the server and it's players happiness, although that rarely ever happens. Horo pointed already 99% of the donations reason.

[BRabbit]

Actually the reason Anima was quite popular was mainly due to the donating thing. Seeing how you dind't actually have to donate! Anima offered a plaethora of so called Ad-sponsors. You know in simialr way that those PTC sites have? Fill out few surveys and earn yourself few dollars. Now put over 00 of these on a site with a profit range of 0.30$-50$ per offer. The possibility to easily fraud said offers by just making multiple accounts and you have people who don't have to donate and the server gets tons of profits from the sponsors. Since basically each sponsor offer done gave money to the server.

Even the prices for the items were insane compared to many other superdonor servers. A hundred bucks bought you one Lord Kaho Horn . You would still have to use more money for those MVP cards, some that have even been customized to be more powerful. Anima/Anthem encourages you to do such fraud which is worse than just offering super donor stuff.

Why do people that do not donate play such servers?

[Orange]

Actually the reason Anima was quite popular was mainly due to the donating thing. Seeing how you dind't actually have to donate! Anima offered a plaethora of so called Ad-sponsors. You know in simialr way that those PTC sites have? Fill out few surveys and earn yourself few dollars. Now put over 00 of these on a site with a profit range of 0.30$-50$ per offer. The possibility to easily fraud said offers by just making multiple accounts and you have people who don't have to donate and the server gets tons of profits from the sponsors. Since basically each sponsor offer done gave money to the server.

Even the prices for the items were insane compared to many other superdonor servers. A hundred bucks bought you one Lord Kaho Horn . You would still have to use more money for those MVP cards, some that have even been customized to be more powerful. Anima/Anthem encourages you to do such fraud which is worse than just offering super donor stuff.

Why do people that do not donate play such servers?

Friends is usually the only reason.
On crap servers anyone you ask will be like "I've already played here for 6 months" "i have an mvp card lol" "my friends play here"

[carbine23]

Yes i did... kinda regret it now, but it's all good, can't change the past anyways.

[Descent]

Why do people that do not donate play such servers?

Call me crazy, but playing non-donates on a donation-filled server is a hell of a challenge.

I played EShadowRO(re-learning RO all over again) over three years ago, after I stopped playing RO for nearly a year(before then, I had been on SlashRO, Ethereal, Ceres, Titan, etc). When I hit Max, I took my LK to PvP and was apalled at what I saw...four slot donation wings, the availability of purchasing your build(You could "buy" a MAX on one Stat, as many times as you wanted until you had all 255's), God Items available through donation, MVP Cards were able to be purchased...it was scary.

Especially for somebody who never felt the need or want to donate to a server for items.

Then I saw something that got me and my friends thinking: The donators...played like sh*t. No smarts whatsoever. The things that kept them afloat were having a sh*t-tonne of STR, AGI, and PD. There were a couple here and there who knew their stuff(two pinoy players with donates would rape the entire lot of them), but that was it.

Therefore, we started exploring and exploiting new options. None of the players knew what an Incant did(SAD), and the players that did were banned before I joined, so it was general knowledge that Incant "just sucked your HP and that was it". Used them on my DD/DEX Sin X, and went Crit on my 2HS LK, and AutoCast Bow on my Sniper. Friends did the same, finding what works and rolling with it.

Didn't have Wings? Two Engagement Rings(+5 All Stats) did the trick just fine. Didn't want to donate for Megs? All of us would farm Zeny for a day or two and have enough to buy two or three from somebody selling them in the Vending Area(usually about 700-800M apiece). Who needs Sleips when Moonlight Flower and AGI Badge work just as well?

Eventually the donators found out that they were s*** and complained about it, while those who couldn't handle the fact that they couldn't win by buying their way through it...left.

tl;dr: "Donorfests" can be fun if you know what you're doing, and listening to both the whining in Ventrilo and the BAWWWW-ing on forums after you show them what-for is incredibly satisfying.

[LiteX]

Why do people that do not donate play such servers?

Call me crazy, but playing non-donates on a donation-filled server is a hell of a challenge.

I played EShadowRO(re-learning RO all over again) over three years ago, after I stopped playing RO for nearly a year(before then, I had been on SlashRO, Ethereal, Ceres, Titan, etc). When I hit Max, I took my LK to PvP and was apalled at what I saw...four slot donation wings, the availability of purchasing your build(You could "buy" a MAX on one Stat, as many times as you wanted until you had all 255's), God Items available through donation, MVP Cards were able to be purchased...it was scary.

Especially for somebody who never felt the need or want to donate to a server for items.

Then I saw something that got me and my friends thinking: The donators...played like sh*t. No smarts whatsoever. The things that kept them afloat were having a sh*t-tonne of STR, AGI, and PD. There were a couple here and there who knew their stuff(two pinoy players with donates would rape the entire lot of them), but that was it.

Therefore, we started exploring and exploiting new options. None of the players knew what an Incant did(SAD), and the players that did were banned before I joined, so it was general knowledge that Incant "just sucked your HP and that was it". Used them on my DD/DEX Sin X, and went Crit on my 2HS LK, and AutoCast Bow on my Sniper. Friends did the same, finding what works and rolling with it.

Didn't have Wings? Two Engagement Rings(+5 All Stats) did the trick just fine. Didn't want to donate for Megs? All of us would farm Zeny for a day or two and have enough to buy two or three from somebody selling them in the Vending Area(usually about 700-800M apiece). Who needs Sleips when Moonlight Flower and AGI Badge work just as well?

Eventually the donators found out that they were s*** and complained about it, while those who couldn't handle the fact that they couldn't win by buying their way through it...left.

tl;dr: "Donorfests" can be fun if you know what you're doing, and listening to both the whining in Ventrilo and the BAWWWW-ing on forums after you show them what-for is incredibly satisfying.

Hahaha, same thing happened to me, I was playing a non-donor mage then some stupid donor stalker started hitting me, the stalker was doing s*** damage then I killed him, in other words, there is only two kinds of donators:
1) The ones who just donates for the good of the server
2) The ones who just donate because of the items because they can't win without getting advantage

The worst about Donorfests are just stupid players that even with twice the stats of ordinary custom items can't kill experience nondonors and start nagging on the forums complaining of "cheaters"

[Furious]

Why non donators play:

Donation servers are usually the largest servers out there because they have the revenue to pay for heavy advertising and top quality dedicated servers.

People don't really mind donation servers that much as long as they aren't completely imbalanced, they prefer a large population base than a small one without donates. Unfortunately, until someone is ready to shell out a hell lot of money to buy the necessary components to start a large server, I'm afraid people will keep on playing donator servers.

Why donators play:

Same above, except they are willign to donate and get some cool stuff in return.

[Nanners]

Err I guess this is my new disclaimer? I regret to inform all of you that I play in the donorfest that is rebirthro.

Why do I play there? Well someone was nice enough 2 1/2 years ago to give me his set of donates and angra manyu as he was quitting. I was so happy, I had played for half a year without donates. I continued to play with my friends for another half a year donating about 25 euros worth of stuff. Then I quit for about a year. I was looking for a server to cut some time and was lucky enough to find some of my old friends    This caused me to stay and well a year later ive donated another 45 creds. Do I regret it? Yeah kinda, but I've made some really good friends. I guess that's what keeps me playing :3

[Hutchy]

Aww, I forgot people could buy Angras on Rebirth.

I don't know why people would donate to be "super hax" when everyone else is ALREADY "super hax". It's like shelling out a ton of cash to be on par with - not better - than everyone else. Unless someone handed me donates, I don't think I'd have played the high rate during my time there at all.

[finklestein]

@OP

In the specific case on anthemRO the donation items in game are usually vended ingame by the players that have them, and it really isn't too hard with work and dedication to build your way up in terms of donation gear.

Also, Kahos and all the other powerful items are meant to be a powerful endgame tools, and they cost an appropriate amount of money to make sure they aren't too easy to obtain. Additionally, quests do exist ingame to make the items.

Lastly, whats wrong with centering a server around donation items? The GMs on the server make sure that balance is maintained or as close to it as possible, and the revenue from the donations allows the server to stay alive, as aegis requires alot of expensive resources to run.