I want to briefly address some of the questions from [link] (without bumping it up due to its size).

First of all, I have no problem with people who want to advertise BYOND, so long as it is in moderation. Telling friends, promoting it at school, those are all fine. We probably shouldn't make a scene on SlashDot or any of the major gaming sites just yet (although I'm sure it's not _that_ easy to suddenly get thousands more users). We might run the risk of another DBZ-like plague (no offense to you DBZers of course :), and I'm not sure the community is ready for that. I wouldn't mind some slow growth right now .. we've been sitting pretty steady for a few months, which is ok too.

As far as costs go, I'm pretty sure that our new server can support many more users (the first goal is 50-100K) without requiring any substantial upgrades. So we're ok there. Before we ramp to that number, though, we will have to institute the new profit model (discussed in [link]) and restrict the ability to upload files to the hub (you'll have to use your own webspace or buy at cost through us). I don't think either of those things are major hurdles that will affect the community much.

The main issue for me is simply one of support. Right now I spend a good part of my day just trying to deal with the emails and site issues that occur with a community of our small stature. This cuts into my development time, which is why BYOND 4.0 is six months behind schedule. I'm working to get other users on board staffing these duties, but its a slow process.

As far as the $1/user/year goes, that's not cost, that's just what I roughly estimate as a lower-bound for us to maintain this project. At 100K users that would bring in $100K/year, which could be used for the central servers (cost and upgrades) and to pay the various BYOND staffers. It would not make anyone rich, but I think it would be a good start.

Hopefully that clears some things up.