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--- donate [2026/06/28 09:15] – created appledog
+++ donate [2026/06/28 09:32] (current) – appledog
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 = Donate
-The truth is, I have no idea how to receive money as a donation right now. However, long gone are the days of me being in a university on a student loan, I cannot simply participate in the free software movement as easily as I once did. With that in mind, so long as the server costs are paid for, I'm good. I am really worried this will get to like $100 a month or more and I will have to shut it down because I'm a dad and I have a family and it's expensive. With all that being said, here are my promises to all players here:
+The truth is, I have no idea how to receive money as a donation right now, so I can't recieve any donations. However, I'll probably set it up later so I wanted to put this out there so people don't panic when I offer donations later.
+Long gone are the days of me being in a university on a student loan, I cannot simply participate in the free software movement as easily as I once did, and I don't have an institution willing to host this for me. Remember CircleMUD, JediMUD? Hosted at Johns Hopkins university? Well that was a long time ago. So, as long as the server costs are paid for, I'm good. I am really worried this will get to like $100 a month or more and I will have to shut it down because I'm a dad and I have a family and it's expensive. With all that being said, here are my promises to all players here:
 * Always free
 * Never pay to win
-* Donations are rewarded and protected
+* Donations are rewarded //and protected.//
 == Always Free
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 == Never Pay to Win
-Although I do think donation items are a good idea, I think they are a good idea because they allow the player to have a custom cosmetic item, and that's really cool. Now, in order for this to not fall into a pay to win spiral, I guarantee that no donation item will ever be a best in slot item. In fact no donation item will ever be a top 3 best in slot item. Donation items will help you in the game, but not by such a large margin that you can't get the same result by grinding. The cutoff is 100 hours. If you can grind for 100 hours to achieve something, it is too strong to be a donation item. Here are some great examples of donation items:
+Although I do think donation items are a good idea, I think they are a good idea because they allow the player to have a custom cosmetic item, and that's really cool. Now, in order for this to not fall into a pay to win spiral, I promise that no donation item will ever be a best in slot item. In fact no donation item will ever be a top 3 best in slot item. Donation items will help you in the game, but not by such a large margin that you can't get the same result by grinding. The cutoff is 100 hours. If you can grind for 100 hours to achieve something, it is too strong to be a donation item. Here are some great examples of donation items:
   * A magical copper ring with +10hp for $10. This item would be eternal (never breaks).
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 Above you see donations are rewarded. Now let me tell you how donations are protected. I, Appledog, deeply believe in this project and I have set aside $5,000 dollars into what I call the "Mossworld Fund". This fund is used to pay server costs. If anyone ever donates money or buys a donation item this money will go into the Mossworld fund to increase it.
-I guarantee that I will never spend down the principal, and I will only use the money to pay for server costs and my development time. Mossworld will live forever. It is an institution now. So many MUDs and games have simply disappeared -- too many to mention. However you can rest assured that Mossworld will never die. Why would it? Even if no one ever donates, the money I have set aside will pay for (near idle) server costs forever, even in a market downturn. And, as the player base starts to rise and the server starts to slow down, I am sure that someone will donate and we can start looking at a real server.
+I am sure you have heard horror stories of certain minecraft and MUD server owners doing all sorts of irresponsible things with their money and then they end up losing the server. That will never happen here. I invested the money into an index fund that pays out about $20 a month; server costs are about $18 a month right now so we are good to go for a long, long time. I promise never to spend the amount invested and only use the payments from the fund to cover server and development costs. That means we can never get into financial trouble from mismanagement.
+Mossworld will live forever. It is an institution now. So many MUDs and games have simply disappeared -- too many to mention. Leaving people with years of time alone, dreaming of memories that slowly fade. Worlds that disappear and are gone forever. However you can rest assured that Mossworld will never die. Why would it? Even if no one ever donates, the money I have set aside will pay for (near idle) server costs forever, even in a market downturn. And, as the player base starts to rise and the server starts to slow down, I am sure that someone will donate and we can start looking at a real server.
+One last thing. This is the only time I am going to ask players to donate. Here, in this article. If you don't want to donate, that's ok. No pressure. And no ads.
 I really don't need to make a lot of money on this, I just want Mossworld to survive. Together, we can make that happen. Thank you for listening.