"For those that complain about premium, consider that start up and dev cost in excess of $15,000 so far..."

It's the 7th comment; here's the link: http://playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2790

Does anyone know how much it cost to develop and maintain this site? Even if Kestas "paid" himself a decent hourly wage, I can't believe it would be anywhere near this.

Nope, it's a money making machine, and of course they pinched all of Kestas' work with no credit until he complained. They are, frankly, shysters, and to pay to play, when we have a great website and community here is ludicrous.

Personally, I think Kestas has done a great job on here, and I won't be moving.

I agree completely--phpDiplomacy is, by far, the best diplomacy site out there.

I'm just shocked that they would either claim, or truly spend that much on their site, especially considering how lacking it is in some areas.

That site costs that much? and it's not even that nice! I shudder to think of worldleaders.

"Become a Premium Member now for only 1 EURO per month!*



* Pay 12 EURO (or approx. 15.50 USD) for 12 months of Premium Membership"

Quoted from their site.
-sniffy

My bad, I just realized what i posted wasn't what you were talking about. I'm sorry please ignore that.

World leaders is free...

I know that, but my point is that worldleaders is a nicer site, with just as many options, but doesn't charge a cent. What's Play diplomacy's problem?

Their "problem" is that they think there are suckers out there who will pay. And they may be right.

I suspect if Kestas had paid himself an hourly wage this site would have been pretty expensive. He has been working on it for years.
If playdiplomacy wants to charge people for premium accounts, that is their prerogative. No one is forced to play there, and no one is forced to pay. These sites do cost money to maintain.
I have donated money to phpdiplomacy before (and I shall again very soon). In a sense a premium account is like making a donation.

15,000 and they couldn't even upgrade their weaponry. They're still using canons and Sailboats in their version of 20th century Europe.

I would donate (aka upgrade) for simple account features like, to view detailed stats on my profile, change map background settings, and other useless options.

It's like a friendly reminder to donate. If there was a sticky msg at the top of the forums, more people would donate. It's just that If it's out of sight it's out of mind.

I think if you can afford to donate and you don't mind using paypal, that phpdiplomacy is a worthy cause even without extra benefits (personally I prefer that we don't have "premium" accounts").

typo... *then phpdiplomacy is a worth cause.

"that" also works as you started with I think. It could have been "I think, if you..., that phpdiplomacy..." because the qualifying if can be removed and still have a valid sentence.

With the comma, it seems to be a valid sentence.

A premium account gives you the ability to play in variants. A variant that they have is...the ability to finalize.

If you play for free, all turns take the maximum time. I'm in 2 games over there, and they are the only two games I'll be playing. They have a surrender option, and people use it the moment that they are attacked.

I've registered and played at playdip and world leaders and neither of them compare to this site. I didn't even finish any of my games at either site because the interface was so clunky.

I won't be leaving here.

haha, pay to play

again one of those sites that is only full of lazy idiots.

like porn paysites
there is SO much porn on the internet, it's like paying for leaves in a forest

Thanks Draugnar. It made sense to me the first time but then I read it again. But you are right.

To try and answer the original question about relative worth, obviously I'm biased but I'll give it my best shot

I think phpDip would take about 3-4 months of full-time work to develop (developing as a job not a hobby, so a slower but more sustainable pace), and that the phpDip 0.75->playdip conversion would take about 1 month (by no means a "best case" estimate). If I was quoting someone on a price to clone playdip or rewrite phpDip (and it wasn't a hobby) I think I'd work from those estimates

So I do think 15k probably includes some overestimates, or accounts for missed work perhaps, who knows

I don't know. 15K for 4 months. My salary is bigger than that. When I used to consult independently, I billed $120 an hour ($4500-$5000 a week depending on if I had to do the work at their office or at home). So one month full time was upwards of $20K. Even now, I take home over $5K a month after taxes and I get full benefits, etc, etc.

The owner of playdiplomacy.com claimed he paid a team of developers about 15K to enhance kestas's free code to end up with what's there now.

Then he got taken...

Not really. 15k is reasonable for the amount of work.

The QUALITY of that work is debatable, that's for damn sure.

But most importantly, the quality of the community.

That's what I meant by he got taken, JB. The quality looks like something an H1B Visa worker would write.

The map is simply awful. =/

They have a surrender feature? Yikes. I know that's been proposed here before, but it's a bad idea. As soon as people get attacked they just surrender. Back when the point system wasn't in place we had this problem, with people joining upwards of 50 games at a time, stabbing their neighbours and only continuing to play in the games where they had marginal initial success.