The turtlewow scenario has presented something that I can't find an answer to-- quality and upkeep.
Me and a friend were discussing turtlewow and the official classic servers. He played on turtlewow, and I play on the official classic anniversary server. He's placed me in checkmate with something that I don't have a rebuttal to. We were debating monthly subs and I said that the reason for the subs is server upkeep, quality control, antivirus/anticheat, etc, and he said (I am paraphrasing a bit)
>"I want you to think about this. Turtlewow had more than 13000 active players with more than 200000 registered accounts. They managed to put out custom content that the players found enjoyable, keep the servers running, have staff that would respond to tickets in less than 5 minutes, and had a running radio station, all of which were completely funded by donations, which were optional. You'd get shop points as well, but all in all, you could experience the whole game without spending a cent.
"The official world of warcraft classic servers require a monthly payment to play, offer little-to-nothing new, the response times for tickets not only span more than 8 hours, but you are almost guaranteed a scripted response. In fact, classic has been released on official servers multiple times over.
"Ask yourself how and why a passion project that was strictly funded by donations with a team of less than 150 people could do more efficiently than Blizzard could with a mandatory monthly subscription.
He's placed me in checkmate here. I'm looking for a rebuttal, devil's advocate here, anything to explain where my money's going in the official servers. How was turtlewow able to do all of this with no subscription, but blizzard seems to be struggling with mandatory subscriptions?