I think that raising the rates is illegal, if yobuy the licence. And the licence itself is VERY expensive.

Yeah, it can be done that way.
Expensive would be >100,000$ (don't know if per year or what). That's what I read on EPvpers.
However, I don't really think that hosting a SRO sserver would be profitable.

What's Flagship?

Not only would a license be incredibly expensive, they would only license you for a certain country or region, it would be virtually impossible to get a global license, as you would directly compete with iSRO (their main source of money). About raising the rates, that would all depend on the contract you make with them. You don't even need coders for it, as joymax will never give you the source, they will just send you the compiled and patched modules, you will only need people to actually run the hardware and the game, in the end the license would cost so much, that it's just more practical to run a pserver of it, if your team is good enough you don't even need joymax help in patching the files (though I haven't seen one server who managed to patch the exploits, or even come close to it, except venture )

Surely, you could go for a scandinavian or even a european version of sro, I do not know if joymax will ask you to block certain regions or not, it does not seem to be the case for all silkroad versions, but some have done it (also, rSRO administration didn't seem to like non-russian players, I do not know if that's coming from joymax or if they just hate westerners).

Whether it would be profitable or not, I guess the only way you could find out is to actually contact joymax/wemade and try to get more information, I'm sure they'd actually reply if it's business related.

About the coders, all the released modules we have seen (twsro, vsro, isro, csro) all look exactly the same, so I take an educated guess and think joymax just delivers the patched modules (with the region specific changes) and the licensee just needs to run them. We got proof from the vsro servers to back this: they were running cracked mssql and people found 'update packages' (packages with updated modules, turnkey). So I'm guessing it's not that hard to actually start your own servers, whether it will be profitable in the long run (as you will probably not be allowed to have rates higher than csro, and that it is basically impossible to block bots) I could not tell; Though it's a very interesting idea and I'd certainly like to see more information about the economical viability and if the general SRO player would actually appreciate it

So you guys think that the license itself will be very expensive?

Consider a bot-free low-rate (higher than isro) server that was official.
I can assure you that that would gather together more people than any private server can.

The day has come, another foreign official server of Silkroad Online closes it's gates. First was Thailand SRO, then Russian SRO, and now its Chinese Silkroad Online, also known as CSRO. Less than a year ago they upgraded their game to Silkroad-R version and few months ago they got the 125 cap update. CSRO is, together with VSRO (Vietnamese Silkroad Online), the most played foreign versions of Silkroad. It's a sad notice seeing it closing, being the first foreign pserver opening, back in 2005. According to the translation of the notice on their website, seems the publishing contract with Joymax finished and Joymax didn't want to renew it.

While I was searching for more info regarding the closing of CSRO mentioned on the early post, I found some info related to a new version for the Chinese players for replace the old CSRO version, called "New Silkroad". I don't think its SRO-R since CSRO already applied that update months ago, so probably it is just another chinese publisher taking care of the chinese version. It's very confusing, even more when you are reading from a translator, I will bring some more info about it once I figure out exactly what is going on.
Anyway, while I was searching for that info I found some more cool artworks of Baghdad and the new job suits and D14 items. As you can also see on the pictures, they already show the new logo.

looks cool, it would be nice if they followed the new business model of micro transactions (league of Legends style) instead of raising the cap every 6 months until it takes 50,001 years to cap.

The could sell different looking transports, theif, hunter, and trading suits, regular avatars and skins, those giant behemoths for trading, and diffrent skins of those. . .(Imagine trading on some giant land-dragon snake thing, that would be rediculously awesome.) Peopel WILL buy stuff like that, and really all you need to do is hire the artists, to pump out new cosmetic content every two weeks, and you have yourself a business. . .if I were rich, I would do that, just make a copy of it (that has enough changes to be "legally different") and just do that. it would be amazing

they'd never have to raise the level cap again. the only grind would be getting enouh money to by those cosmetic items which people would sell for money. they could just take out pots entirely, and have grinding be only done on a team basis ala guild wars style. they could sell all KINDS of stuff. . .they could have it so that if you get the last level weapon set (which isn't that much powerful that the next to last set, but takes a bit of grind to get) you can customize how that looks too(from buying silk etc)

they obviously have the fan base (and they know this) they have the potential to make something really really amazing.


. . . .but then this is Joymax we're talking about here. . .

While it is true that some franchises will cost millions, I highly doubt the Silkroad franchise will cost that much. Especially when you consider that I would only be allowed to buy it for a specific region.
How can I be so sure that it won't cost millions?
Well, I can't know for sure, but by looking at Joymax's revenue from Silkroad it seems very unlikely that a license will cost that much.


I have contacted Joymax already, but I haven't received any replies yet by the way!

So you guys think that the license itself will be very expensive?
I thought that they might actually give the license away very cheaply in return of a share of the revenue.
I might be wrong, though?

I do have a company already. Not a gaming-development company, though.


Personally, I believe that most people are actually quite alright with the content that Silkroad offers. They just hate Joymax, or the server management of whatever private server they're playing on.
Consider a bot-free low-rate (higher than isro) server that was official.
I can assure you that that would gather together more people than any private server can.

Now, if you can keep people there is an entirely different story.
That part comes down to the managing of the server, though.


More ideas / thoughts please!

Well, the fact that I haven't received any reply from them yet might be a sign that they're not willing to license Silkroad 1 anymore.

Good thing Silkroad 2 is coming soon

I agree on the part that it would bring more people rather than private server, I never wanted to try private server, never wanted to invest my time or money in something unstable.
I know bunch of people who would still play silkroad if there was no Joymax behind it, bunch of old school people who were happy with 80-90lvl cap.


Soon? Any reliable info when might beta start?