A lot of good points coming up for both sides.
Having a third server would certainly add to the workload we already have. I'm not even sure that Tcho would have the time or be interested in doing it anyways. It's only an option to understand how the community feels.
I would disagree with people who say MD would just die out. Based on the poll results close to half of the server would prefer to play without the patch until the bugs are worked out.
You're right, I did say there are no game-breaking bugs. This means the server will boot up, and we should be able to do everything the same, but we don't know this for sure until we have tested the files. Any number of customs may not work with the new client or the new graphics engine, or whatever. We haven't had the opportunity to try them out on the new client. Same thing with a lot of other things pservers have done. any number of things may have changed with the file setup that may mean some of our scripts and our site features, and even things like voting for jaden or elysium, any of these things may not work. I'm not saying they won't. I'm just saying we don't know if they work until we get the files and test them.
Cost is another major factor, as it stands right now we can not obtain the files without spending thousands of dollars. The server does not bring in enough money to buy the files, and I personally don't have the money to buy them to make money back off them over time or anything like that.
Even if we obtained the files for free we would have to recustomize everything, and you have no clue how much work that really is. Now I don't have a problem with doing the work, not at all, but in the very near future official is going to release another new patch that will include ascension for those 2 new chars. So even if we got the files today, it would take me at least a week to update the files, and that's if I worked my ass off 24/7 really, AND the newer files would need all of the exact same work when they get released next month.
So it honestly seems really unlikely we will obtain the files before ascension releases, simply because the only places you can obtain them from want thousands of dollars for them. We expected this, because of the new engine and all the updates. It will likely take a while for the cost to come down.
We just want a clear idea of what the community wants when we do happen to finally get our hands on the files. You never know, they might suddenly appear tomorrow, we might not get them for a month. You just never know... It's like torrenting a movie.. you usually have no idea when a movie is going to land on the torrent sites... aside from the day of a dvd releasing.