Illarion.org

So again I found myself wondering about supporting illarion by becoming a member, but found myself deciding against it because.. well.. the way you sign up for it makes me feel like its the 1990s.

Nowadays to support a game with a membership, all you do is log in, click a button, fill in your paypal info and bam. That's it.
So when I was told I had to fill in a heap of personal information and then mail it physically to someone? No way am I doing that, and I'm sure others agree.

Additionally, the page on the homepage for this is pretty tricky to find to begin with. It's like the game does not want financial support from players who are willing to give it.

And yes I am aware there is a paypal for donations, but if people are going to donate for the first time why would they want to miss out on benefits like extra character slots to their accounts?

Posting this on the proposal forum instead of just mailing Nitram personally because I imagine other players have views on this they may want to express, and it is less likely to be ignored then since I've no doubt this has been brought up in the past to no avail although I can not see why a more simple membership with benefits option that's fully digital and anonymous could be used as an alternative.

I'm not saying to remove the direct donate link, or the E.V. application for those interested in that, but adding a simpler approach to membership like is more common in games these days, where you support the game with a certain sum a year and in return gain benefits like the character slots and guild forum and what not, could increase support a lot from players who wish to be anonymous, are willing to donate but still want some kind of benefit in return for their support.
After all, the more support, the better equipment the game can get. I heard the current processor can not handle any more graphics being added to the game currently, so I know there are expenses. And hey, when we get steam release players from that source will definitely be used to more digital and anonymous ways of paying for benefits. That could be a huge loss of support from whatever player-base we gain from that kind of places.

So for joining the society we are bound by the German laws for society that basically state that we need the original signed version of the membership application (not a copy or a scan or what ever) or a fax of it. We are not allowed to accept anything else. So joining the society can't work any other way and there is no way for us to change this.

As for sending donations we got paypal and that makes it basically as simple as we can. The exposure of the ways how to donate to the game could be a little better on the homepage, that is totally right. But once you found it there is a way to donate.

Now regarding the additional stuff you get as society member. Those things are in place because we want to give the people a additional incentive to join the society instead of "just" donating. The reason for this is simply that society members are a steady source of income we can use in our calculations. Donations are not as they can just stop without any notice to us.
So a society membership has to have some small advantage over the people who are no society members.

Best regards,
Nitram

I'd like to add that Illarion is not supposed to become a "pay to win" or "premium account for 9.99 $" game. The donations are completely optional and it is very unlikely that we'll "sell" certain benefits for money.

Membership with Illarion e.V. is something else than a "premium account". You become part of the entity that runs and owns Illarion. Also, the society represents Illarion from a legal point of view. The funding of Illarion is secured by the membership fee, so the cost for server hosting etc. is paid by the members. Any additional donations are very welcome! But in order to be able to plan ahead, regular payments are of course much more reliable than one time donations. To be a member of this club comes with some benefits as without the society, there won't be an Illarion. These benefits are marginal, as they are no ingame benefit such as faster skilling or better weapons.

re: Guaranteed income

Have you tried setting up a patreon?

All the cool indies are doing it, in fact. I think the top patreon project is some porn game. Which rakes in like 30k a month

Patreon is a really good idea, I'd give the devs a few quid a month