Hello , nice post you made here. Personally my opinion on this as owner of the server is simple , no donation- no server. The advertisment to have mid rate server with population of 1k players will cost you +- 1keuro a motnth , server development + hosting+anti ddos+ ant bot ,another 300-400 euros am onth , so is there a point of making server ourt of your pocvket anyhow? besides your investment is alays a riisk on start , there is no guarantee you will make your money back , so this is bussines at the end of the day you like it or not , and if you like playing , but dont have time and money is not so important to you , donation is to fasten up progres , not to become stronger then others , if you could buy somethiung what is out of reach for f2p players , that creates imbalance ,but besides this is like this, lets say on server start one guy goes with paladin other with destroyer , ofc destroyer will farm xp adenas andf gear 10 x faster ,but at the end of the day paladin ill do it slowly , but will catch up and overcome it in long run.