i have seen non donators own donators. like you said shake it doesn't give an absolute advantage. but they have access to the donation items so sedy is being so nice by allowing them access to all those items and the titles.

Couldn't agree more

i have seen non donators own donators. like you said shake it doesn't give an absolute advantage. but they have access to the donation items so sedy is being so nice by allowing them access to all those items and the titles.

I saw someone said the titles give an unfair advantage.. To new players yes, but I have seen Cleansed of Scrubbery People LOSE to people with no donator title what so ever..

So it's really just how strong your character and how much skill you have.. Yes the titles give you an advantage, but it's not an absolute advantage.. If you really don't want to donate, but can spend a lot of time on the game gathering gear/tears to get better stuff.. You can compete with people with titles even if you do not have one..

At least some people can I guess.

awesome debate! and i like what joel said "lazy= too damn bad.". and galadriel and sedy give a lot and people want to take what they give and stretch it as far as they can go. servers do need the funding and i mean cash shop items are pretty much free if you don't pay for tears with real currency. you get the CS money for just being online or selling items.

My sentiment as well.

The fact that anyone can get the title by buying the Moolah from a donator speaks for itself. Even the titles you speak of, anyone can get them, donator or not. Things are exactly as you said, if a server is to survive, it needs donations, that's the only way. I believe we manage to balance it pretty well here, giving many ways to people to get tears, trophies etc from the start. And what we got in the way was people trying to cheat us.
So please, don't let anyone talk to me about balance. I've played on private servers and know exactly how it is. This is the best you can get.

I've played a lot of other different games -
private and official ones that had a donation system.
And this one is very well balanced and well thought through. You can get all the donation items by normal play, it just takes longer and is a challenge that you need to work hard for. As it should be... getting 100$ items for nada wouldnt be fair either now would it.

I dont think this needs anymore discussion, its doomed to be a troll thread.

If you haven't noticed alot of ppl in-game now have the latest title, that being said it's not unfair in the least bit. Non-donators just need to work abit harder to obtain donator stuff.

Lazy = Too Damn Bad.

The fact that anyone can get the title by buying the Moolah from a donator speaks for itself. Even the titles you speak of, anyone can get them, donator or not. Things are exactly as you said, if a server is to survive, it needs donations, that's the only way. I believe we manage to balance it pretty well here, giving many ways to people to get tears, trophies etc from the start. And what we got in the way was people trying to cheat us.
So please, don't let anyone talk to me about balance. I've played on private servers and know exactly how it is. This is the best you can get.

The point of donations is to keep the server up and running (server costs can be rather expensive, especially as the population rises).

However, a harmony and balance must be reached since offering high power items that are otherwise unobtainable creates a schism between the donators and the non-donators, which starts to reinforce a self-perpetuating problem where, if you want to be successful on a server you must fork over cash which makes the whole "play for free" thing false, more or less.

However, if there is no incentive to donate, no one will donate, and the server will invariably fail due to lack of monetary resources necessary to maintain the hosting fees.

This is where harmony comes in. Offering cash items that are obtainable in game. That way the only benefit of donating is instant gratification, and not just getting to be overpowered permanently versus people who are otherwise unable, or unwilling to donate.

I feel NS does a good job of this with the exception of the titles. I feel that the benefits they offer are a lot closer to "unfair" than they should be.

As a side note, I find the title itself rather ironic since something like that could be the deciding factor in victory between two people which would prove that the person with the title is more of a scrub than his adversary. Haha.