The Internet advertising market is in the dumps. While
larger sites like Yahoo! continue to get some money for
their banners smaller sites such as NetDragons.com's ads
are worth just a little more then dirt. This means we can
no longer generate enough money to pay for our web hosting
with the little money the ads are bringing in. Fortunately
NetDragons.com saved some cash from when advertising was
worth more and is no immediate danger of shutting down.
However, the current model of relying on ad revenue is just
not working. This leaves us with few options in the short
run. In the long run, if we can make it that far, the
release of Vagabond's Quest 2 should give us sufficient
subscription revenue to reduce our dependency on ad
revenue.
Option One: Batten down the hatches further. This means
taking the second arena server offline and reducing the
number of people that can enter the dungeon. This will
lower bandwidth costs, our major expense, and allow us to
keep the site up and running a little longer. It also
means that unless you're very lucky you won't get to play
VQ+ at peak hours.
Option Two: Ask for donations. We have been doing
this for about a month now, but the donation level has
been pathetic to say the least (We do thank the people who
have actually donated). Your donation really does make a
difference! Going with this option facilitates the need
for donations, if they don't come in another option would
have to be explored.
Option Three: Charge for VQ+. A small one time fee
of $14.95 or so just so you can play after reaching
Master level experience.
As of right now, NetDragons.com has 4 months to live
unless one of these plans is put into place. The choice
is yours...