Just in case you didn’t see my comment on the earlier post:

Brian is having the server delivered to his father’s office in NY. So the odds are that someone will be there when UPS arrives (unless UPS shows up at an odd hour). Given that the delivery is within the NYC area, it would be surprising if it took more then a day or two to arrive.

Once he has the server, he has to unpack it, hook it up, find something called free time, and figure out what the heck went wrong. So don’t expect an immediate answer a few hours after it arrives…but hopefully we will have some news coming your way by the end of the weekend.

- Chris G.

Hello everyone,

Realmwalker wrote a comment on the last thread that was a nice summary of the latest, so I thought I would do a new post to highlight his points, with some minor updates/changes. Good work Realmwalker!

• Brian is in contact with at least one potential sponsor that will help with the game’s finances.
• Brian has contacted Verizon about the FiOS internet upgrade and I believe the upgrade has been ordered.
• D Man through the company he works for has come up with some really nice credit card rates for the CSFBL, which we are certain to take advantage of. We would like to thank D Man for all of his help (he also got at least one potential sponsor in contact with Brian), he really has gone above the call of duty.
• Last I knew, we are still working on picking up the server. Since only Brian among us lives in New York City where the server is, and since he works lots of hours with a good 2-3 hour commute each day, plus a family, it has proven difficult to arrange the pickup of the server from what will soon be our former ISP. Unfortunately this ISP is not in the easiest location to get to, else Brian would have already picked up the server. He is working on the arrangements though, be rest assured!
• Speaking of tonight, the community managers and developers are having a conference call tonight to get the latest updates on the situation, along with hashing out ideas for the credit system, and more.
• Finally, we are moving forward with the idea that the primary game itself is free, with a credit system that allows you to “purchase” add-ons for your franchise.

We will have more information for you either late tonight or first thing tomorrow morning, after we have our conference call tonight.

- Chris G.

A couple quick things from the latest e-mail by Brian:

• What he is waiting for now: Brian is checking with Verizon to see how much it would cost to upgrade his FiOS internet so he can have a web server on it. Then he could just host the server at home, hopefully saving a little money in the process plus being able to check on it easier. This way also, he can in theory get the server back up relatively quickly once he gets it in his hands (assuming it isn’t a hardware issue).
• After that is solved: we will be going through the options to figure out what works best for the CSFBL and CSBB.

He also mentioned that D Man has offered a credit card processing package through his company at a much better rate then using PayPal.

Finally, it seems like Brian is a huge fan of the credits approach (example: $10 = 100 credits to spend as you like). Much easier to manage and easy for all of us users to understand as well

Of course, nothing is final and anything can change. But we are working on it.

- Chris G.

Well two developers (babarfloyd and harborpirate) and I had a very nice chat where we think we hashed out the basic outline of what could be charged for in the CSFBL.

While I will not release the details until Brian has sat down and gone over it, I can say a few quick things:

• We all agree that there has to be a basic game that gets people “hooked” and would make them pay for extra features.
• We all agree that the basic game will function pretty much as today’s game, with some minor changes (example: sim rate, # of teams you own).
• We all agree that there will absolutely be no way we grant special features that would give a paying owner a anything close competitive edge over a non-paying owner. So no salary cap increases, draft perks, etc.
• We agree that we have to be realistic with how the prices work.
• We think we chose a bunch of additional features/perks that won’t require much extra coding, so in theory we could roll them out fairly quickly.

I know, I didn’t really say much but in a way, I did say a lot. I hope that eases a lot of fears and excites all of you.

Last I heard from Brian today, he was looking into whether it was feasible (price wise) to host the server at his home again. For those of you who haven’t been here for long, the CSFBL’s server in its early years ran right from Brian’s home.

Anyways, that is all I have at the moment. Not sure if we will have another update tonight, that will depend on if Brian has anything new to share.

Keep submitting ideas, I have closed the other posts to comments since they were overflowing. Hopefully that will make it a little easier for everyone to keep track of the discussion.

Quick Update: Note that we do reserve the right to change any of this at any time…but I think it will be unlikely or at most will have very minor changes. The core ideas hopefully will remain the same.

- Chris G.