2015 update – This has gathered a lot of attention, it has been one of the most popular subjects in my blog, but remember that this likely doesn’t solve any connection problems (or other problems) that you might be having on schtserv, also take the opportunity to read other topics on this blog, you might find skins and certain tools a lot more useful to improve your PSO experience.

Well, ever wanted to know how much money schtserv was making via donations, do you want to know if you need to donate to keep the server going, do you want to know what ways are the admins making money, well, stay tuned as a bomb just landed on the community.

Let’s begin with the fact that when a change occurs on the server, the admins specify that they can sustain the current situation with donations, so they appeal to the good behavior of ppl to obtain the money, keep in mind donation is voluntary but ppl only donate because they actually believe the donation money is going to be used on the server.

There was one time that shortly after a server change another server change happened and the admins again requested more money to fund the new server, around 100$ a month, some curious members made topics asking as to where the previous donations money went, topics were deleted and the case was censored, making me believe that in one way or the other each moderator must have received orders to delete these kind of topics, if only the admin was to do this the topics would stay visible a while longer, in any case no statements have been done.

Donation values at this point are unknown.

Now comes the good part, it’s divided into 2 segments, the 1st one we can start by saying that as a rule on the server you cannot buy equips from the GMs/admins using real life money, the rule was made but it seems the administration decided to do the transactions under the table, meaning that contacting the main admin (crono) could enable you to buy the items, obviously nothing can be said on the forum or in the game, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the administration filled their pockets with money.

The transactions made available (starting on december 3rd 2011) had a total of +5000$, considering the server costs 100$ a month it doesn’t take much effort to find out how many months it takes until the server runs out of money, on top of this we have the actual donations, something they keep asking over and over and is made available on the forum, do you really think donations are necessary when the admin made 5000$ in a few months?

Obviously this amount of money is never actually used on the server itself and numerous situations have appeared where high amounts of money are used, if they come from hard work or from server donations then no one knows i guess, (except the corrupt/hypocrite admin)

And yes, they are violating the rules they imposed in the 1st place, remember that if you try to sell items you will be banned, but if the moderation does it then it’s okay.

You may think this is over, but on top of donations and selling items, another thing came up recently, it seems a duo team from the staff (crono and zero xd) decided to use yet another way to extort money from users.

The strategy was simple, they would go to elitepvp forum (to find vulnerable players that wanted items), they would disguise themselves as someone else and then they would sell items to players, after the transactions they would ban the player giving “buying hacked items from hackers” as a reason to the ban. So not only they would keep the money, the users would be unable to defend themselves and in the end they would think they had been framed by someone else.

This practice went on for ages and eventually someone inside the staff found out, crono asked zero xd to act as cannon fodder and the dumb GM accepted it, so he took the full blame and crono walked away with it, not only that but the 50/50 split agreement wasn’t even delivered, zero xd not only took all the damage but he also managed to receive only a small part of the transactions.

These transactions + the items sold under the table did a total of +8000$ (since 3rd december 2011) and most of it went directly to crono.

The reason this came out was because someone got the actual transactions and even made the names of the ppl that bought them available, once done, zeroxd provided the extra information, including the paypal transactions, some amounts that he gained and how the entire strategy worked.

Needless to say he is now banned from the forum, yes, he was dumb, he did something morally incorrect, but has my respect for having the balls necessary to actually make it public.

As for crono, he is indeed the biggest corrupted member in the server, he hardly appears in the server, can’t seem to keep track of the donations/mr cat team members (complains about members not being integrated in the team is common), acts like a hipocrite, has no balls and in the end he has a good reputation, the kudos to crono topic is a farce and is the proof that ppl with his kind of mentality can get away unharmed, even if it takes staff members to cover it up or take the blame.

You can read the topic here (includes zero xd story on page 2)

http://diadu.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=53

You can read the deleted topic at schthack forums here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgCCzJ4HLq8

Why am i saying it’s going down?

– We can start by the increase in moderation hypocrisy.

– The fact that huge amounts of hacked items are being inserted into the game economy (from cheaters and from the staff),

– The fact that in order to stop cheaters from obtaining quest items the server removed all quest prizes, making the server itself one of the worst to play the game as many items are unobtainable.

The solution to this was to make the items available as regular drops, but it’s a monumental job trying to fit all the prizes with all the other drops and making them balanced for all ids, this will make ppl frustrated and players will eventually leave the server. Also ppl are already on the move to other servers like eden, where they will be able to play peacefully without these problems.

– The fact that to stop players from using certain tools the administration decided to include a file that closes PSO and all applications if it finds specific strings, to overcome this problem the players that make and use trainers/cheats decided to change the strings in the programs they use, making the attempt of the administration a complete fail, not only this but the game itself now blocks all kinds of applications, including skype, Photoshop, web browsers, if it finds the strings in an application you have running then they will close alongside with PSO.

The game is no longer safe to use, at least not the schtserv version.

– The fact that some of the staff is already feeling betrayed and thinking of leaving, but there are lot’s of hypocrites and many ppl that benefit from the positions, who knows, maybe the donations money will be used to pay the rest of the staff so they can stay.

All Staff members that stay after this will be most likely corrupt and hypocrites, so use my advice and trust no one in the server, you may even get scammed by a staff member trying to pass as someone you trust.

On my part, i have already deleted all comments on my youtube videos that advertise in one way or the other the server or the forum, i also took the liberty to warn all my contacts in youtube not to post the server name and i am also thinking of closing the support to the server in ragol.co.uk, no longer i will be redirecting users to that scam website, no longer i will mention the server when recommending servers to play, no longer i will mention the server when i need to compare servers, schtserv is a website that practices scams and nothing else.

No change in moderation or attitude is going to change this.

I recommend users to change server as soon as possible and ceasing all kinds of donations, don’t be dumb like zero xd.

If you want to play on schthack, play at your own risk.

Yes I’m posting this on april the 1st and you might think this is just a joke and can’t possibly be true because you know your money is being used in a good way, if you think that then i ask you to try to advertise the server in my comments at youtube, then you shall see if i am joking or not.

(keep in mind insisting in trying to post the server name in the comments will lead to an instant block)

EDIT: Support at ragol.co.uk has now ended, users will no longer be redirected to schthack from that website, links or mentions to the server and forum were removed.

Here’s a picture containing a PM and some results from a quick search on the forum

