CAVCON Meter

Jamie Marchant · **Posted:** Fri Dec 14, 2012 2:55 pm

I think there is some "remainder" from previous months.

DLordofTime · **Posted:** Fri Dec 14, 2012 4:28 pm

@Alien: The donation meter is calculated as though the current total were to be submitted at the end of the month. So, if the current donated amount if less than the month's projected expenses, we get a 2.X number. If they are equal, we get 3.0, and if donations exceed the projected expenses, we get 4.X. Therefore, at the start of the month, the current donated amount is quite obviously less than expenses, so it starts at 2.0.
Does that clear it up for you?

Mac_Fife · **Posted:** Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:38 pm

Yep, what DLordofTime said.

What Alien is suggesting is an alternative way of representing the same sort of information, by showing a running "delta" from break even. But that's not how RAWA has chosen to represent it: Instead, what he's showing is what would (probably) happen to CAVCON if we had no more donations this month. I'm not sure if either of the two methods is any more useful than the other. Maybe what give the current method a bit more weight is the fact that it observably shows the progressive status towards making the monthly target: With something that starts off the month implying that everything is OK, if then doesn't get updated for a week or two it'll still look OK, but the real position might be that there's very little donations been made. There'd still be a "error" with RAWA's method, but it'd err on the safe side, by understating the position.

Coincidentally, I wrote up a chunk on CAVCON over on the OpenUru Blogs earlier this week: So, what is this CAVCON thing?

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:24 pm

Way to go, Nev'yn & Dalken! Congrats on the linkage by RAWA.

Awesome article, Mac. Very informative and should answer a lot of questions for many. I especially like the last paragraph about why Open Source needs MOULa to stay alive. Excellent work!

Jamie Marchant · **Posted:** Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:14 pm

Good article Mac

Charura · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:14 pm **Posts:** 1773

Best in my opinion..

Calumon · **Joined:** Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:38 pm **Posts:** 1673

I've linked to the CavCon article on the HN website. :)

chrissifniotis · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 4:05 am

/me raises my hand.

I suspect you may be quite busy RAWA, but why's the login/age visit/user info missing for the last few reports?

Scarchu · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:14 am

Mac_fife, please, allow me to quote two things...

First is from you:

Quote:

Why should I donate to MO:ULa, especially since there’s been no new content for two years?
No-one is obliged to donate to MOULa – that’s the long and short of it. But if someone doesn’t like what MOULa is doing (or not doing) and sees “some other shards” as better alternatives then presumably they don’t use MOULa either. If they do still use MOULa, then there must be some “value” to it, in some form, so it must be worth donating “something” for that value. Provided, of course, that they feel able to donate in the first place. I think that Cyan created MO:ULa for “its fans” and not just for “the fans who are able to pay for it.” Encouraging or reminding the community at large to donate is no bad thing, but badgering individuals over it is something to be avoided.

The second is from mystonline.com's home page:

Quote:

The Ages of Uru are available again. We’ve opened all the Ages, and added most of the goodies in MO:UL. We’re referring to it as MO:ULagain—feel free to explore and enjoy.

And the cost is pretty good. Free!

So, why

Quote:

If they do still use MOULa, then there must be some “value” to it, in some form, so it must be worth donating “something” for that value.

?

May be, just may be, the meaning of "free" is different in Bulgaria and America...
A do not mind to donate, but i want to do it from my will, not because someone in the "city" says constantly "donate donate donate"...
If CYAN says it is free to play, then i understand it is free and they made their calculations to keep the server on-line.
Now, if they count on the users (players, fans and so on) to donate at any cause so they keep the server on-line, while it is "free" - i think they must get a decent accounter!!!
May be it is my Bulgarian way of thinking ... i don't know, but i will donate only if there is a reason to like developing new content, a story or something... but donating only to keep the "free" game on-line does not motivate me.

Please, i don't want to argue, just want to be explained to me in normal words.
And things like "go to different shard if you don't like it" ... please save it, if you don't have what to say, just don't say anything.

Thank you

DLordofTime · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:05 am

You do not have to pay anything to play Moula. But you can donate. Now, if there were no worth to Moula, no-one would donate, because there would be nothing worth supporting. As it is, there is a lot of worth to Moula, and it's only going to get bigger, meaning that people want to see it continue, and so they donate.

Rayhdeeyoh · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:41 am

Scarchu, I think that's a good point. I'm not from the US nor from Bulgaria, but I suspect the meaning of the word free (in this context) is in both cases: at a cost of zero. (As in: free beer.)

Leaving aside the question if anything can ever be really free, I think the sentence "And the cost is pretty good. Free!" may be somewhat misleading. More like a bit of marketing than anything else. No, URU is not free, but the idea here is to share the cost proportionally, in which everyone who is willing and able, pays an amount they think is reasonable for the worth they're getting.

So perhaps the word 'Free!' is used here to draw people into URU. Which is not a bad thing at all, in my opinion. We should just be aware of what it really means.

Scarchu · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:45 am

What you mean with "bigger" ? Recently i watched my "buddy list" i can tell you 89% of 115 people don't enter anymore.
If CYAN don't have a policy about clearing of inactive users, it is not my problem.

My problem is, and that is why i wrote my previous post, the contious Cavcon shouting in the city!
By this, i start to feel like i MUST donate. But i don't want to , cause i see no point to do.
After all, for the 2 and a half years now in this server i didn't see anything new, even a fix of the most common problems like invisibug.... but i see there are new problems like crashing of the Auth. server....
So it turns out, that the donating people donate to play and to recieve no even fix of the problems on that server!

Please DO correct me with facts!

EDIT: just to mention that i work sys. admin. and i HAVE an idea what does cost to maintain a server!

Scarchu · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:46 am

Rayhdeeyoh wrote:

Scarchu, I think that's a good point. I'm not from the US nor from Bulgaria, but I suspect the meaning of the word free (in this context) is in both cases: at a cost of zero. (As in: free beer.)

Leaving aside the question if anything can ever be really free, I think the sentence "And the cost is pretty good. Free!" may be somewhat misleading. More like a bit of marketing than anything else. No, URU is not free, but the idea here is to share the cost proportionally, in which everyone who is willing and able, pays an amount they think is reasonable for the worth they're getting.

So perhaps the word 'Free!' is used here to draw people into URU. Which is not a bad thing at all, in my opinion. We should just be aware of what it really means.

Thank you Rayhdeeyoh !

janaba1 · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 2:43 pm

Scarchu, you have some very good and valid points here (in your posts above) and
Rayhdeeyoh affirms this quite nicely when sayin'

Quote:

... I think the sentence "And the cost is pretty good. Free!" may be somewhat misleading.
More like a bit of marketing than anything else. No, URU is not free, but the idea here is to share
the cost proportionally, in which everyone who is willing and able, pays an amount they think is
reasonable for the worth they're getting.
So perhaps the word 'Free!' is used here to draw people into URU. Which is not a bad thing at all,
in my opinion. We should just be aware of what it really means.

The situation we're in here, for Cyan Worlds and the community as well, is a very delicate one, and
at this point Mac's excellent Blog post he's referring to above comes in ... I believe everyone trying
to understand the situation better should read this beforehand ...

I'm not going to post quotes here, it is for a reason that he didn't post this all here, but I'd like to add
to Raydeeyoh's comment that it seems to be fact that Cyan actually cannot afford to keep MOULa and
the servers up 'for free' which makes the sharing of costs necessary, so, you're absolutely correct ...

Why Cyan Worlds as a company 'has to declare' MOULa 'for free' and declare again and again not being
willing or able to do a stroke of work for Uru, not more than the necessary maintenance of the server etc.
(no money, no man power etc.) to keep the 'whole thing' strictly seperate from their 'income' as a company
etc. is nicely explained in Mac's Blog post mentioned above as well as why it might be worthwhile to keep
Cyan's MOULa server up and running despite having many Shards available and Uru already being declared
Open Source and how it might benefit all involved ...

What is not very easy to handle is the way the CAVCON is being 'cared for' in a way that nobody would feel
more or less directly or indirectly forced or compelled to donate ... Maybe the constant vigorous call should stop ...
We all understand where this is coming from, when there is fear to lose sth etc., but the energy going along with
those processes and events is just disturbing, and new not yet so very passionate explorers might refrain from
coming back again ...

Yeah, I just wanted to throw this all in for those not reading Mac's Blog and for general clarification ...

Mac_Fife · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:09 pm

I'll attempt at address a couple of Scarchu's points: In the quotes given, there's nothing that I see as contradictory. Donations are exactly that - given by free will and no-one should feel that they're being pressurised into donating. In fact pressuring people is possibly counter-productive.

I think it's unlikely that there's any difference in the meaning of "free" between Bulgaria and the US (but I'm not in either

) - there is a wider meaning of "free" when you start to talk about open source and licenses, but that's an aside. But, free-to-play does not mean free-to-run, and it's important to realise that Cyan aren't running MOULa as part of their business, they're simply running it "because they can". There's no profit in it for them, but equally they can't afford for it to be a drain on their finances either. So it has to be self-supporting via voluntary donations. I don't believe the costs are huge (you can probably get a good idea of the costs just from reading Amazon's pricing), but neither, I suspect, are the donations.

Contrary to Scarchu's assertions, there have been many bug fixes that have gone into MOULa, at least since the CWE code was released, and there are several more in the pipeline. But Cyan's server code is not open source (for a variety of reasons) so it's not possible to fix any bugs in that. Fan shards run different server code (e.g. MOSS or Dirtsand) that is open source but may have their own bugs and quirks.

However, it is true to say that there has been no new content in MOULa. That is coming but it'll take time - there's a lot of legal unravelling that needs doing to get out from the ties of the "closed source" era of previous Uru incarnations. In the meantime, there are others besides Scarchu who've voiced the opinion that they're unwilling to donate while there's no new content. That's a position they're entitled to take.

Anyway, the way I look at is not so much either "pay for free" or "donate to play" but rather "donate what you think it's worth to you" and only the individual can decide on that "worth".

@chrissifniotis - The CAVCON state probably comes from the accountants and the number of player accounts is probably easily checked by RAWA himself, but the other data probably needs someone like Chogon to sift through server logs and I'm guessing that the "someone" has been otherwise busy over the past few weeks.

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