Samy

So what are the costs of a suitable Internet connection? Are they in the same league, or are connection costs much smaller?

That's less than a year's rent though. Would start paying itself back in month 11. Unless we're expecting this to last shorter than that.

Wrong. They are a *moral* gray area. Legally, they are *very* clearly illegal. I would like to make an X-Men comic, but it doesn't get any less illegal if I fund it with "donations" instead of charging straight out.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to outright buy rather than rent?

This seems to be misread; as the messages condoned to this matter are explicitly clear. Let me clarify; The data we own today for CoH to run as it has is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Sorry, but no. Only launchers are "owned" and licensed under CC -- all other data, including the CoH art and audio assets which are absolutely mandatory to run the game are held by NCSoft and not licensed under any sort of CC license. Because the launcher illegally makes use of those proprietary files, you paint a big fat target on your back for doing so in the first place, and increase it by orders of magnitude as soon as you start making money with it.

I don't know how many times it needs to be said. As soon as they start accepting donations, NCSoft will be a LOT more likely to intervene.