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MU Online as an income source

Initiate Mage
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Hello everyone!


I wanted to make an truthful open discussion about MU online “today” in general. Is there anyone with existing/past recent project experience who can share their success/failures about creating/managing a MU Online project?


Is MU Online still as popular as it used to be? Is it worth to create a project if you want to make profit out of it considering the high cost of hosting/server files/protection etc. or you rather make it for fun, because there is no way to make money out of MU online? In your opinion season that attracts the most amount of players, exp, etc.


Existing/past project owners can share their experience, for example highest loss or highest income per calendar month made. Or any other story managing a project, your highest players per 24h, highest registered accounts, I would love to hear every opinion.


I would like to hear some opinions guys, because MU Online was one of my top favourite games back in the day and I am curious how it has changed through the past years.


Appreciate you sharing your opinions/thoughts,
stay safe everyone.
 
Skilled Illusionist
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I see that this is your first post.
Everyone have different opinions.
MU is still fun as long as you have the right staff and is listening to your players.
You can still make money off the game.

And I’m on the same boat. I used to run my own server years ago and now I’m debating on creating another one just because it was a good game to run to when I’m bored. And to connect to players. Making friends etc.
 
Initiate Mage
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I see that this is your first post.
Everyone have different opinions.
MU is still fun as long as you have the right staff and is listening to your players.
You can still make money off the game.

And I’m on the same boat. I used to run my own server years ago and now I’m debating on creating another one just because it was a good game to run to when I’m bored. And to connect to players. Making friends etc.

Thanks for your reply,

actually I’ve been registered here since 2012, but couldn’t find my old account details as I was inactive for quite a while. I used to have my own project 7 years ago, it was 97d+99i with 100+ online, it feels unreal if we’re looking back now, but I wanted to understand how everything has changed.
 
Skilled Illusionist
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Thanks for your reply,

actually I’ve been registered here since 2012, but couldn’t find my old account details as I was inactive for quite a while. I used to have my own project 7 years ago, it was 97d+99i with 100+ online, it feels unreal if we’re looking back now, but I wanted to understand how everything has changed.

I'm on the same boat, Maybe we should work together on getting a server setup. I was looking at Season 13
 
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in my opinion,

A) the more you invest into promoting your server = the more you will probably earn (dont forget the rest fundamentals for example having a good team,strong server,active social media etc)

B) After a while, the more you keep investing and 'EVOLVING' not doing the same thing over and over, the more you will keep making income.

some ppl pay 50$ per month low seasons, some 100$ same, some the opposite with higher seasons etc, depends on what you will do and if you will decide to do the right thing so you dont have to fix all these mistakes that has been answered and resolved over the years, means to be fully prepared with a unique server idea and having all the tools and powers to bring the attention out to the mu community to notice it and try it with the right marketing/promoting strategy, the more u invest the better always, unless you have your own hostings and so on.

nowdays most new ppl are interested on thew new Seasons and latest,cus thats how they find the game (most of them) but if you evolve with the game you will understand more why is this and that, if you want to make a specific server for specific community which will have a static amount of players that works too, depends always what u want? money? fun? depends always.
 
Initiate Mage
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Great discussion!


As most of people on here, we all have had at least one project during the long life span of MuOnline it's a good idea to do a community survey before even starting, good man!

I have a team of two, me and one another great and very capable friend, we have been running servers since.... 2007 with fair interval breaks in between then and now I could say we had maybe 5 projects, so you can see that 5 projects in 13 years isn't a lot.

Out of those 5 only the current one I can consider as a ''the serious one'', purely based on how many hours, love and work has gone into it.

There is this Mu private server paradox going around.

People want newest season everything for free, easy and fast, however once they progress and achieve that maximum they will get bored become toxic to you and your community and quit your server eventually, so for you as a project owner these kind of people are high maintenance with 0 returns. After ''dominating'' and getting tired of your setup these players then move to something more stable and older, usually low XP setup s3-s6 servers, they would spend more time on these, but then again at some point it gets too hard and they will start demanding you to tailor your game to their needs and quit soon after if you say no to them. Unfortunately that is your common Muonline player and it has evolved to this stage only because of poor private server management culture during all these years.

This reason above is why you see 90% of private servers who run servers without even changing configs inside serverfiles, they just download the files, set it up, hype it up and hope that people will stick...very rarely they do.

So ask yourself, do you want to pay for latest premium serverfiles, cover all other expenses, invest time into testing, customising, advertising, managing, communicating and everything else that comes with it, just to be dealing with people who don't care and will move on in 2 weeks. Of course! if you have come up with something fresh(saying new/unique is a little bit ignorant so please never use ''unique'' as long term players have probably seen it before).

You can always go down that older season route, but you will be overshadowed by latest seasons initially to beat that you would need to do a lot of work and invest heavily into advertising-like a lot.

Does it make money? As any game that has micro transactions for in game goodies and boosts- I will say it does, however you will need to find a balance between ''I DON'T LIKE PAY TO WIN SERVERS" army- which is your common MuOnline player. Sadly without your common player your online count will be low and that will damage your rep.

Not so easy isn't it?

I can say one, I hold MuOnline quite dear to me, nostalgia is one of the reasons. On top of that I love to work with configs, make map reskins,come up with fun gameplays and even fixing bugs- I enjoy it, my player base knows that and I still have x amount of good,supporting(even financially) returning players every time I launch a project. I don't focus on making money, but I do have ingame purchases and VIP options. Currently my server is online, but we decided to go on a little break and without ads you don't get any traffic.
But before you go super heavy on advertising better have it all top notch as your common Muonline player will take an extra step to find even smallest things to take a bite out of you....:D Be prepared xD
 
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Good initiative bro !, to be completely honest. the truth is that (at the beginning) I was not a programmer, nor was I a developer for MU, I was simply 1 other person trying to obtain much of the knowledge that I have today. How is this ? well, I remember when I started with MU Online, back in the years: 2004 ~ 2007. I was a simple gamer. I loved the idea of building my own private server of MU. so I got together with 1 friend (from that time), an old acquaintance rather than 1 friend. Called: Germán, and with the help of another one of our high school classmates (Called: Luciano) who had more experience building servers of MU of many versions, we started lifting the old school files (today) version: 0.97.04 chs from the client.At the time, we only made the server: "Playable" for people connected by Local Network in a Cyber ​​Cafe that was around the corner from the school we went to (Only when we did not miss class to continue developing our private server MU 0.97d haha ​​xD).What I liked until that moment of my life, was only simply being able to be 1 Game Master in the Game and have the whole set full options and edited :DBut it was not easy to raise the server, I had to convince the Owner of the Cyber-Cafe (Sicomoro) called: "Daniel", to allow us to remove Deep Freeze from 1 of his computers (because when restarting the PC, all our work was deleted ).We reached a small agreement with him, and this person: "Daniel" allowed us to set up MU's private server, only on the condition that we use the name of the Cyber-Cafe for the name of the private server, that is... "Mu Sicomoro 0.97d".Well up to there everything seemed to be going well, but then we realized that the server of MU was consuming a lot of RAM on the computer, and that it was not at all free of viruses and other infections such as Malware which at that time were terribly deadly for computer operating systems of that era: Windows XP.So we did not last practically anything, later back in the years when I was already an active user of RaGEZONE Forum, I raised my first Season 4.6 based on the RMST Storm Files and then also based on their files: "Tornado". and by the time RMST developed AI Julia, I was already an excellent programmer for MU. At the same time: Years: 2012 ~ 2013, another of my friends from school, called: "Bruno", He told me that his cousin wanted to raise 1 private server of MU. And so it was that in a short time thanks to the file of: "AI ​​Julia" and my enormous experience in re-programming clients in general, it was born: "Eras MU" Season 4.6 with MU Japan main 1.03K.Even today it is possible to see some videos of our: Test, in those years I was the only person (or at least one of the few people) in all of Latin America that could program effects on items by BoneId.

Some Videos from: "Eras MU Online" Private Server R.I.P.

First BETA Internal Test Video:



Second BETA Main Test Video:



Third FINAL Release Test Video:



Nice memories !, Thanks for help me to record this. :D
 
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Initiate Mage
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Ive been not following whats going on priv server scene for a while, so I give you some numbers from premium files business.

At a time (April 2016) when I came out with the igcn files for just 20usd/month, the hype was huge. I dont have data for 2016, however in two consecutive years 2017 and 2018, muemu was making 25k usd each year. Next 2019 year it was 15k. Current year will be at most 15k. Eventhough it was boosted by covid - In April, at a time of lockdown, muemu made income of about 5k(which is normally income of 4 months). I live in USA so 25k annual income is pretty low, but you can still make live of it. At a time I was still studying full time, and not working, and MuOnline filled my pocket fully, for spendings like hardware, alcohol, food, clothes, medical/car insurrance, etc.

//I forgot to mention period September 2015 - March 2016, when muemu appeared with xteam files for 10usd, at a time when there was none premium files available for free/or cheap price. That was revolution for priv servers, and real madness. Financially too hehe

So there is visible decrease of interest in making priv servers, or just decrease in interest in muemu, I dont know. And that is acutally not a problem for me, because my professional work overwhelm me completly during a week, and I dont have that much time for MuOnline anymore - and I dont feel good, when I cannot to respond fast enough, to people that asking for support. Right now I would not be able to manage huge flow of new customers, as it was in 2017, or current year at a time of lockdown.

Some statistics from period 04.2016 - 12.2020:

Registered users: 8007
Unique customers: 1057

This is what happened during lockdown:



Looking at this graph you can also come to conclusion, that decrease in muemu income is caused by overall decrease of interest in making MuOnline private servers. Because when people sat at home and had nothing to do, they started to deal with muemu as well.
 
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Initiate Mage
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It will not be possible to give an unambiguous answer, and everyone has different opinions. In general, MU is still attractive to many people, especially if you have players who listen to you and your players. in this case, you can still earn money in the game. If people are not interested in your server and cannot give the right advice to those who play with you, you are doomed. Simply put, it all depends on you. How you have built your policy depends directly on your income. As for me, I have found other opportunities , but sometimes I go to MU to play.
 
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Initiate Mage
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It will not be possible to give an unambiguous answer, and everyone has different opinions. In general, MU is still attractive to many people, especially if you have players who listen to you and your players.
 
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