I also have been looking at hosting a Minecraft server recently. I have been hosting a personal server for my friends and I for a while now and wanted to take it public. I was planning on self hosting until the price of bandwidth came up. For a 20-person server, it would cost me $60 more per month than I pay right now. And that's the max I can ever do in my area.

I looked at a hosted solution. No limits on storage space or bandwidth, only limits on amount of memory used. $20 a month. 1/3rd the cost, and room to grow.

I'm sure you all remember the jokes about if Microsoft made cars (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw/microsoftjoke.htm). Yes this is Google, but they still have the computer mentality in them.

I'm currently a subscriber to this game, and am an officer with a guild that is aiming to tackle the end-game operations (read: raids). So I'm pretty much stuck with this flying turd unless / until my guild moves on which may be very likely to happen soon. The biggest problem we have? Bugs. Tons upon tons of them. Some of them minor, others hilarious, but there are a few downright game-breaking.

Best example I can think of is: There's an operation called "Eternity Vault". Beautiful place overall, Balanced fairly well and we were able to run through it so far on both Story (Easy) Mode and Hard Mode. This particular raid is practically the poster child for our guild when we talk game-breaking bugs. The final boss of this operation: Soa.

Lemme give you a run down of how this is supposed to happen. Go in, shoot him till he puts a shield up. Everyone runs to the outer ring of this circular arena and the floor falls away. You have to platform (Yes, this is an MMO, why do you ask? Mario? Who's that?) your way down to the next level. Everyone takes damage with each fall and the platforms fall away if you aren't fast enough. Healers need to be alert and ready the whole way down for the group to survive.

Reach the second platform; same as the first with a few changes. "Mind traps" will take one player out of action until it is destroyed. Multiple can build up. Lightning balls will damage the whole raid until the person it is targeting runs into it to make it explode. Occasionally Soa will take one person and send them flying in the air smashing against walls. This also takes one person out of the raid but is time-based more than anything. After a while, shields up, raid out, and we all put on our red plumber hats again.

Reach the bottom, same thing as the floor above, except the boss is invincible until the tank pulls him under a floating pillar and let's it smash his shield away making him temporarily vulnerable.

Sounds mostly fine right? Only problem is... This boss has been bugged to hell ever since release. You can only beat this operation by sheer luck.

Sometimes Soa doesn't come down to level 2 or 3. You have to wipe the raid and re-enter.
Sometimes the platforms don't appear correctly. The raid will be wiped for you by way of a platform falling out from beneath you and you will have to re-enter.
Sometimes the tank is mind-trapped. Guild says this is an admitted bug, or was... More on that after, but for now, not a huge deal just have the off tank take over. What? The off tank is trapped immediately after? Probable wipe as well. Re-enter.
This is how it has been SINCE RELEASE DAY.

My guild was discussing this and the admitted tank-trapping bug came up. Apparently now recently, Bioware is saying this is how they meant it to happen. In other words, don't expect bug fixes for this operation *ever*. Between bugs and everyone getting burnt out, the guild is discussing moving to Blade and Soul when it arrives.

I only wish the company I work for would wise up... They are a small company made even smaller by combo of piss poor management and the depression. Yet they still somehow manage to go through 3 big ol' boxes of paper a week... A week! They print out EVERYTHING! Invoices, orders incoming, orders outgoing, quotes, quote responses...

Email. They print out their email! They went with google for their email services to make things easy, have 8 or so GB of storage space PER PERSON, and they opt to print out each and every email and delete it. Not archive it, delete it.

They also want a hard copy of every web site they have in both the boss's office and his wife's desk. (they have several that pertains to their core business and tons more that don't, but thankfully they don't want hard copies of them...) Also, one of the salesmen likes to have a hard copy of the one website... but he maintains his with a pen instead of reprinting.

Here's a good one: How do they email a customer an order invoice?

1. They print it out
2. Scan it back in to OpenOffice
3. Save it as a PDF
4. Email it.

Forget the fact that we use Adobe software that comes with a direct PDF printer... Forget all the completely free stand alone PDF printer software that I have repeatedly emailed to them and told them about. It's gotta be routed through the printer before it can be emailed!

Maybe that's why they aren't using the PDF tools I sent them... I didn't print it out first.

And perhaps the WORST of all: They actively ENCOURAGE their customers to print out their web sites, warranty, and miscellaneous installation instructions!

All of this from a company that advertises themselves as an internet-based business.

Dammit, Slashdot... You finally made me register... I hope yer happy now!