Greetings!
Since there was some discussion in the cut-throat thread on what we're actually doing with all the cash you send us, I thought I'd do a little update post on the present status of the economy. Since the primary currency of our account is SEK (Swedish krona) I will give figures using that currency. I'm sure you can find exchange rates yourself, but this morning a cursory inspection reveals (Forex) that a US dollar is worth somewhere between 6.86 (buying) and 7.5 (selling) kronor.
The present balance(s) on our donations account is: 7 006.67 SEK.
Our expenses thus far (since we started accepting donations) are:
One new server motherboard
2 x 2 new sticks of RAM for the server
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- 2340 SEK
One new UPS battery
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-€49.10 EUR ~= -490 SEK
Donations have ranged from 0.99 US cents (smallest) to $200 (largest single cash donation).
The money you have been kind enough to donate has been spent solely on those hardware upgrades, and our basic philosophy is that that is what we will use donated money for.
So why is the game still lagging?
As has been stated before the issue that we have to solve right now is the bandwidth issue. I currently run the game, account and web servers from my student dorm (10 Mbps half duplex) and that line is more than maxed out during peak hours (350+ users). We have been looking at dedicated hosting and the like, and that research (IIRC) revealed that we would need about 16k SEK to rent a server for a year. If the tooth-fairy does not deliver us a better, less expensive solution (100 Mbps full duplex is available in many private homes here, so I do have half a hope for her), then, basically, we're saving up for something like that.
And that is really the gist of things. As always, I will express my sincerest gratitude to all those who have thrown the fiddlers a coin or two, and I can only hope that the game continues to deliver that same experience that made you donate in the first place. Thank you!