The biggest download center -- Dragon's Hoard

[Baronius]

Dragon's Hoard Download Center

Comprehensive, fast, and reliable... do we need more?

The biggest download center of Infinity Engine game modifications is open! You can find various mods, fixpacks, tweaks, quest and NPC mods, engine conversions, partial and total conversions, mod re-makes etc. here.

You can browse the files manually as well as on a web page. All mods have short descriptions and related links, and a link to player comments regarding the mod, if there are any.

Have fun!

[Andyr]

What happened to the IEGMC at Black Wyrm?

[Baronius]

The biggest problem was that TheWizard didn't want to separate the two servers in finanical respect, and would have liked to receive all donations to one central account accessable only by him and then to split them. Black Wyrm Group didn't agree with this because the movement and amount of donations would have been uncontrollable this way. We suggested to separate the two mirrors financially, so the donations could have been done via different paypal buttons, one for each IEGMC server

[Azazello]

I'm confused, as I'm sure many other are. Could someone please break down the political correctness and just tell us the historical development of IEGMC / Black Wyrm / Dragon's Hoard / blah-blah? Specifically, I want to know who were the people behind each before this change, and who are the people in each group now. I made a sizeable donation recently and I want to know who it went to, and who it will go to in the future IF I donate again.

Could you post this info either in the "IEGMC Mirrors" http://forums.pocketplane.net/index.php?topic=16819.50 thread, or start a new one.

[Baronius]

You have donated to IEGMC Europe, which was hosted by Black Wyrm's Lair, and the 100% of its bandwidth and other server costs were payed by some very generous members of Black Wyrm Group. TheWiz maintained (file list, upload, download) it. The PayPal method you used unambigiously displayed that the donation goes to Black Wyrm's Lair, which provided the full financial and technical background for IEGMC Europe.

The history:
Long ago, TheWizard founded the mirror called IEGMC. As the Marketing Manager of Intermedia Network Services, he set it up on one of the corporation's servers. IEGMC Asia is located in Singapore. IEGMC Asia has been running there up to the present. All of its costs are payed by the ISP corporation itself (Intermedia Network Services).

Almost a year ago, Black Wyrm's Lair -- having its server in Europe -- offered to join the IEGMC by expanding its network with an European server; so those mod players in Europe could get a better connection and download speed. In March 2005, Black Wyrm's Lair (consequently IEGMC Europe as well) moved to a new server, which has been functioning up to now.
The costs of IEGMC Europe were payed by some members of Black Wyrm's Lair, who regularly donate bigger sums from their own pocket in order to keep the server up & running. The international connection and fast server costs a lot of money, that's why we have put a PayPal Donation button to our IEGMC Europe Downloads page -- and that's the button you clicked on. TheWizard also put a Donation button to his page at IEGMC Asia, it could be used to donate to TheWizard's paypal account. Although he doesn't pay a penny for the hosting because the Corporation gives the mirror for free, I don't question the correctness of this at all: TheWizard has spent a LOT of free time to update the mods files etc. so I am sure he deserves the money.
Which Black Wyrm didn't agree with was that TheWiz wanted to receive all donations to one account (accessable only by him) and then to send Black Wyrm's part. Black Wyrm's members didn't find this acceptable, because -- while they relied on TheWiz -- they thought it's not acceptable that the movement and amount of donations would have been uncontrollable. I agree because they sacrifice a nice part of their own wage to keep the server running and they would like to learn about donations at first hand.
All in all, the answer to your question, there are two 'groups':

1. TheWizard and his corporation which hosts IEGMC Asia. To my knowledge, IEGMC America and a NEW IEGMC Europe server is also running. Black Wyrm's Lair has nothing to do with these.
2. Black Wyrm's Lair: they provided hosting for the former IEGMC Europe, and now they are hosting Dragon's Hoard. (To sum up, Dragon's Hoard is running on the same server as IEGMC Europe did until last Monday.)

So if you are satisfied with Dragon's Hoard in the future and want to contribute, you can do it the same way as before, with the PayPal button here: http://dragonshoard.blackwyrmlair.net/download.php
I am sure that the IEGMC mirrors (now independent from Black Wyrm and Dragon's Hoard) also have such links, so those who would like to support TheWiz in his work can also do it in a secure and quick way (paypal).

[Ghreyfain]

I sort of got the impression that he was asking for names specifically.  To whom do the donations go to?  Surely not everyone at BW has access to the paypal account.

[Baronius]

*sigh*
To Black Wyrm Council: Aldeth, jastey, Rabain, Windwalker, Vlasak and myself; the money didn't spend too much time at us though, as it was used to pay for the server. To make it clear for everyone: it was 100 euro, which is much much less than the costs of the server and bandwidth, but each donation, no matter how small it is, is welcome and important.

I am also sad to notice that these financial things can cause so many misunderstandings, that's the nature of money probably. And hosting doesn't work without money, unfortunately. Back to TheWiz's 'cash cow' simile, I can assure everyone that this kind of web hosting is not something you can use to fill your pocket with cash. We knew this well when we started this, we knew that we could only count on our own financial resources, as the amount of possible donations will most likely never come near to whole sum of required costs. Someone could say: you would pay the same costs for your own BWL server anyway, so what's the difference? There is big difference. BWL has only a few mods yet and a web site, it would need only very humble technical resources, with an insignificant bandwidth usage.
So why do we spend our free time and money for this download center? We do this because we enjoy playing mods and find modding a useful activity, and would like to bring more and more good mods to players.