To stop alts and altocalypse

[niltrias]

It has been suggested before, but I dont recall a response, so Ill pose it as a question:
Why not accept donations?

[jorb]

It has been suggested before, but I dont recall a response, so Ill pose it as a question:
Why not accept donations?

Because we'd have to pay taxes. I'm undertaking a little investigation of the legalities, but It looks to me as if said donations would be considered, by the Swedish IRS ("Skatteverket", literally "the tax agency"), as taxable incomes, on account of us providing a "service", in spite of there being no contractual obligation regarding payment between us and the donor. That basically means that we would have to go through the whole broo-ha-ha of filling out tax returns and maintaining proper accounting for the "venture", even though we'd only be accepting donations. This, of course, significantly raises the bar for when I would consider it worthwhile to do so. If this strikes you as absurd and criminal, that is because it is.

I might be wrong, but I don't think so. I'm looking into it.

[Colbear]

It has been suggested before, but I dont recall a response, so Ill pose it as a question:
Why not accept donations?

Because we'd have to pay taxes. I'm undertaking a little investigation of the legalities, but It looks to me as if said donations would be considered, by the Swedish IRS ("Skatteverket", literally "the tax agency"), as taxable incomes, on account of us providing a "service", in spite of there being no contractual obligation regarding payment between us and the donor. That basically means that we would have to go through the whole broo-ha-ha of filling out tax returns and maintaining proper accounting for the "venture", even though we'd only be accepting donations. This, of course, significantly raises the bar for when I would consider it worthwhile to do so. If this strikes you as absurd and criminal, that is because it is.

I might be wrong, but I don't think so. I'm looking into it.

You're in university. Find a law student and talk them into giving you a hand with this, because I really, really think donations are the way to go, on this one, at least once you get the map reset in and fix more lag/optimization problems, because both will bring in more players and donations maximize the number of players you keep (versus subscriptions or whatever).

Some preliminary googling shows that Sweden doesn't seem to have inheritance OR gift tax. I also see something that implies you need to earn above a certain minimum amount before you're required to pay taxes on your income, though having to record "people gave me money through paypal" laboriously would still be a huge bitch (unless you could do it monthly -- "Paypal donations: X US Dollars (equivalent to Y Krona)", "Expenses: Y Krona on hookers and blow and servers and bandwidth").

[jorb]

You're in university. Find a law student and talk them into giving you a hand with this,

I am a law student.

Some preliminary googling shows that Sweden doesn't seem to have inheritance OR gift tax.

Both true. The problem is that donations like these would probably not be considered as gifts in the relevant regard, as there is pretty obvious causality between us providing a service and us receiving an income. The point is that contractual obligation doesn't seem to be a necessary component of a taxable income. I guess it makes sense in context. Granted, tax law is not something I've studied extensively.

I also see something that implies you need to earn above a certain minimum amount before you're required to pay taxes on your income.

True, but that is really a different question altogether. That amount is 10k SEK a year, which is about what I make in a month.

I'm going to look into it in more detail, and try to get an idea of what we'd have to do to get something set up.

[niltrias]

If the "donations" were needed to continue service, then they would not be doantions, they would be payments for service. At least according to American law, which is probably completely different. If it did work at all like America, you could just put up a paypal account that said "GIVE TO US! WE ARE JORB AND LOFTAR, STARVING COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO NEED BEER!" And if people donated, well, that has no implications for your MMO. After all, no MMO service is being provided or refused as a result of donation.
But, as I said, probably the laws are completely different.
All the same, if you do get donations running, I will definitely be donating.

[Ai_Shizuka]

Jorb, sometimes I think you severely underestimate what you two are doing here.
You are creating an Ultima Online on steroids here. The mother of all modern MMOs, but 10x better. This game has the potential to become what we've been waiting for for years: a new, original, fresh MMO, totally different from the 12579 boring MMO out there. "Kill 99 rats and bring me their eyes for 12 xp".
Just look at the numbers. A few hundreds of players in an early alpha stage, and you are not even advertising this thing.

I think you should definitely investigate further into the donation option. I'm sure there's a lot of people willing to send you a few bucks to help this project. Heck, just look at Dwarf Fortress.

[Ford]

People just make alts, come to bottleneck, and trash anything that isn't on someone's property. They take dozens of hides and dump them in the lake, or grind 200 LP to get lumberjacking and chop down all the public firs, mberries, and appletrees. The only things we could do is have a 24/7 patrol (crazy) or wall around the whole town and lock it up (gigantic undertaking). I don't have anything against raids by legitimate players but it's stupid how someone can make an alt and be down here griefing a few minutes later destroying days of work when even if they die they only lose a few minutes of work. Even if they get killed they can just make another alt right afterwards with a different name and be right back down here griefing and noone will know he's the same guy who was just there or a legitimate beginner until the damage is already done.

Jorb, sometimes I think you severely underestimate what you two are doing here.
You are creating an Ultima Online on steroids here. The mother of all modern MMOs, but 10x better. This game has the potential to become what we've been waiting for for years: a new, original, fresh MMO, totally different from the 12579 boring MMO out there. "Kill 99 rats and bring me their eyes for 12 xp".
Just look at the numbers. A few hundreds of players in an early alpha stage, and you are not even advertising this thing.

I think you should definitely investigate further into the donation option. I'm sure there's a lot of people willing to send you a few bucks to help this project. Heck, just look at Dwarf Fortress.

Truths. I'm in the Mortal Online beta (multi-million dollar game using the UT3 engine) and they aim to give it basically the same gameplay elements H&H already has, except that H&H will have more freedom in worldbuilding.

[Delamore]

People just make alts, come to bottleneck, and trash anything that isn't on someone's property. They take dozens of hides and dump them in the lake, or grind 200 LP to get lumberjacking and chop down all the public firs, mberries, and appletrees. The only things we could do is have a 24/7 patrol (crazy) or wall around the whole town and lock it up (gigantic undertaking). I don't have anything against raids by legitimate players but it's stupid how someone can make an alt and be down here griefing a few minutes later destroying days of work when even if they die they only lose a few minutes of work. Even if they get killed they can just make another alt right afterwards with a different name and be right back down here griefing and noone will know he's the same guy who was just there or a legitimate beginner until the damage is already done.

Truths. I'm in the Mortal Online beta (multi-million dollar game using the UT3 engine) and they aim to give it basically the same gameplay elements H&H already has, except that H&H will have more freedom in worldbuilding.

I like how you left out the option of expanding the town area over the affected areas and instead only listed the hardest possible options.

Jorb, sometimes I think you severely underestimate what you two are doing here.
You are creating an Ultima Online on steroids here. The mother of all modern MMOs, but 10x better. This game has the potential to become what we've been waiting for for years: a new, original, fresh MMO, totally different from the 12579 boring MMO out there. "Kill 99 rats and bring me their eyes for 12 xp".
Just look at the numbers. A few hundreds of players in an early alpha stage, and you are not even advertising this thing.

I think you should definitely investigate further into the donation option. I'm sure there's a lot of people willing to send you a few bucks to help this project. Heck, just look at Dwarf Fortress.

There are many flaws with the game design that H&H follows making it impossible to go large scale without as much effort as goes into large games like Mortal.
It's just part of the whole design that doesn't work on a larger scale.

[Humps]

There are many flaws with the game design that H&H follows making it impossible to go large scale without as much effort as goes into large games like Mortal.
It's just part of the whole design that doesn't work on a larger scale.

Like what?

[Delamore]

There are many flaws with the game design that H&H follows making it impossible to go large scale without as much effort as goes into large games like Mortal.
It's just part of the whole design that doesn't work on a larger scale.

Like what?

That any sizable group can kill anyone else and ruin everything they're worked towards.
The fact that it's alot harder to add content to a game like this than it is to the normal MMO type game.
Limitless growth for levels, so people can always get more powerful forever.