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.

Mossworld will always be free to play. To create an account and sign in, you don't need to pay any money, and you never will. To the best of my ability I will always keep it that way. And I have a plan to make sure it stays free forever, see below.

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:

• A magical copper ring with +10hp for $10. This item would be eternal (never breaks).
• A mossfire lamp with +1 to detect secret doors.
• A skill point puzzle box (solve the puzzle and you get a skill point for advancement; can retry if you fail the puzzle)

Now, why are these not pay to win items? Because around level 25 there would be an area that drops rings with +10 hp. The rings you can donate to get are available before then. But they by no means break the game. A mossfire lamp? Allows you to auto-search 10% of the time. Helps, but not game breaking. A skill point puzzle box? These are randomly found throughout the game (1 in a million chance on mob death – maybe something like that). Be patient! There are 60 levels and it's one-per-person. Buying one of these is not game breaking at all.

So I think if it is well done, donation items will help support the server, not be game breaking, and not be pay to win. The FUN of adventuring 'from scratch' is it's own reward! And there may even be a bit of reverse luck here; special things available to people who haven't donated. Such as participating in the New Player lottery. Ahh! Yes, the new player lottery. New players get a free ticket, everyone else pays in 1 silver. The prize is the total bought in – but if a newbie wins, they get an extra gold coin. Who knows! The goal is to keep it fair. You will note this is the longest section in this article. That is because I have given this a great deal of thought to keep things balanced and fair. I am open to discussing this too, if anyone has any questions or concerns.

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 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 guarantee 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.

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.