Server Longevity?

[Bonesy]

What is the average half-life of RO servers these days? I'm not looking for a server but I sometimes look at the Low Rate Server list to see what's going on. I was surprised that since I last checked a bunch of servers I've never heard of crept into the top 10. I have to wonder how many of these are flashes in the pan that will probably kick the bucket at some point leaving peoples' progress in the wind.

[jacobo_bobo]

If I had to guess.. I would say only 1 out of 100 servers survive their 1st year and maybe 1 out of 1,000 survive their 2nd year.

That being said, I've been around long enough to see how most of the big/old low rates started up. I clearly remember TalonRO and NovaRO when they had only 100-150 players online, maybe for more than a year..before their population boomed. OriginsRO i think was up with 50-100 players for 2-3 years before their population boomed.

All it takes is for a current big server to fall/close and the population will find the next stable server that has potential..then that server grows and becomes a big/established server is maintained properly.

Then again, I've seen several servers that spring up with almost 1k online in their first few months and then within a year or two their population is full of 100-200 AFK merchants and close soon thereafter.. mostly because of poor management and bad decisions.

I would say the average server longevity is 3-4 months.. after that most server owners give up because their populations never grew past 20-30 players.

[Wolfie]

Most servers are made on those cheap subdomains - server.ro-game.net, server.ro-online.net - and the owners don't even bother to change most of the links on their front page. 90% of them still have the testimony from Brightix. Most server over-promise. It seems to be the only way to get people through the door. But people aren't stupid and eventually realise their mistake.

[yC]

Most servers are made on those cheap subdomains - server.ro-game.net, server.ro-online.net - and the owners don't even bother to change most of the links on their front page. 90% of them still have the testimony from Brightix. Most server over-promise. It seems to be the only way to get people through the door. But people aren't stupid and eventually realise their mistake.

I think I have seen over 9000 of those servers (due to validating server listings), and every time I see them I ask why open a server and be so lazy not even bother to put a few minutes into the website.  There are at least a few listings a week that I have to delist them because their website is ... well just a website with the template from their host and there's no download link / no rate info / no communication.  Basically people clicking the link to go to their website will not be able to join their server anyway.

I think, minus these obvious ones that you should not even join at the first place.  There are once in a while server owners who really want to put their heart into a RO project and want to make it good (or a server that has some unique features either paid to have the feature developed or have its own dev team), these could last a couple months then go into one of the paths below:

1)  With some luck, could boom and last for much longer.  I mean luck because it depend on what other servers are available at the time.  Or if it happens that a big server closed and one of the player found your server then bring a lot more.  Or like right now, covid-19 make people stay at home is bringing everyone back to RO.

2)  Server owner loss interest in the project / life get busy / run out of funds / not getting the result the team expected:

a - Server stay online but server not doing anything extra to attract new players, developing the server becomes a hobby of the team/owner. 
(While in this phase, the server is still possible to go back to #1, however after the start-up period the chance to boom is much lower.  That also explains why we see server close and new server start all the time.  I notice many "new servers" are opened by the people that closed "old servers".)

b - Server shut down.

3) Server continue to grow slowly as long as the server owner / team continue to work on the server and promote it.

[Flex]

I sometimes wonder about this too.

[Neffletics]

Most servers don't even have long-term plans to begin with. 

[Playtester]

From my 10+ years of experience, most servers survive exactly 3-6 months. But of course there are some than run for a very long time which would push the average up.