Of all of the games I've had the pleasure of playing, W2 is by far the greatest. It is now a poor imitation of what it used to be... with defining qualities such as:
Small community of players that will likely only diminish as time goes on
Major server issues like hosting [port forwarding - which is not user friendly to the average person] and periodic lag
Some concern over hacks
I don't have the time to do this, but here is the solution. I spoke with Lance about what's the next step... because we are all bickering or talking to each other back and forth and no one has actually stepped up and done anything. He said that he has to outsource the work that's left to do on this game to a team of developers because there is no time for him to do this probono. He is a very busy man that has to put food on the table. He has intricate knowledge of the coding and of the problems, and could potentially minimize the workload for a developer team to about 200-270 man hours. On the low end, this project would probably cost 30,000, with it topping out at about 50,000+ US Dollars. Lance would be the lead guy on the job but he won't be doing this for profit.
The solution is: Raise the money.
Q. How do you raise 30,000+?
A. Someone start a GoFundMe crowd funding page and start advertising and spamming the fuck out of it. Go door to door, spam friends at school, bug co-workers, beg family members for early Christmas money or prostitute your body. The question is, who will champion this project and give the money to Lance?
PS:
ONE student of mine raised $112,000 for kids in Haiti via crowdfunding and selling everything she owned. She was 17 years old at the time and did it in 9 months
ANOTHER student of mine raised $27,000 for an organization named Mariposa which deals with youth development and she did so by spamming her GoFundMe page on facebook and at school and did it in 4 months.
I had ANOTHER student raise $16,000 and did it in about 6 months.
It is all possible. Now let's do it! Please reply below and/or begin this. We need 1 championleader for this project to direct all of us. If we all go about our business as usual nothing will get done. Someone designate themselves or someone else to lead this project. I would do it, and I'd be one of the more qualified peoples to do it, but I'm sorry I will not be able to. However, I would be willing to match some donations to get the ball rolling.
The money will solve a lot of undercurrent issues. It won't help me because I am temporarily in the Dominican Republic and the PvPgn server conflicts with most 3rd world country providers. BUT, it will help out all of us fools that are in the US, Canada and Europe. We get this shit fixed guys, and we can have a game where the sky is the limit. 200-10k people on at any given time. We just have to fix our basic problems.
Yamon says he could "get the money today". I doubt it, but it'd be nice to believe him. Someone pester him? We now have clear direction and a solution. Our only barrier is money. Lezz do it!
IF NOTHING HAS CHANGED BY JANUARY, I WILL BEGIN RAISING MONEY AND EXCLUDE ALL OF YOU WHEN I GET A TROPHY. <3
EDIT: YOU WILL BE ASKING FOR DONATIONS, THERE IS NO INVESTMENT. NOONE WILL BE GETTING PRIVATE SHARES OF THE W2 SERVER OR ANYTHING. THE MATH EQUATION HERE IS IF LANCE HAS 30k = PERFECT W2 GAME.