Going Big. And Where Is Everyone?

I have something to say, and a simple question at the bottom:

I went through the whitelist today and counted how many people we've whitelisted in the past months. Want to guess what that number was?

118 People

...Damn. How many people did you think we had whitelisted? Now, some of these people are from the 2 previous times I attempted to have a server going, which crashed and burned. And a couple of those people are griefers. So we just eliminated 30-40 people. Guess what, we still got about 80-90 people that asked to be whitelisted in this server. It kind of upsets me that we had all these talented players whitelisted, yet they never came on? Why is that: Because the server was just a mess. Don't you agree? We had random buildings sprung up, and loads of unorganized mining, building, exploring and excessive lag. Now that we have everything organized, planned, and a set amount of people. I want to go big.

Here's what I mean: Buying a dedicated server, and testing it out. This idea means a lot to me. I didn't expect this server to boom... or bust (beta completely ruined everything). And now, the best thing we can do to ensure proper performance, 24/7 uptime and completely no mess, is to buy a dedicated server. The CHEAPEST and LOWEST priced server completely meant for MC's terribly bad CPU usage is as following:

Dual Single Core Xeon
1 x 400 GB SATA
3TB Bandwidth
2GB RAM
$85.00 a month

Now to me, it's a big step. The thing is, I want it to go in the right direction. Now, before ANY of this happens. We are going to wait for Notch to make the server code stable because it is a piece of shit. And then we're going to wait for the official release of Bukkit, so that hey0s mod (also a reason why some lag is caused) can be replaced.

NOW, where do you come in? Seriously, I'm not paying $85 a month. Do you ever see me build anything? Ever see me on as much as some of ya'll? I need ya'll to donate, to your extents as much as possible. If 15 people donated equally, $85/15 users, each of you roughly pay a little above $5. Is that what I want? Definitely not. Before you start going, "Oh hell to the no, you are kidding me. More than AoM?!", well hold your horses. This is for our very first month, our test month with a dedicated server. If we get this server, we can have more people apply, hence other donaters. And significantly reduce that amount of money.

All in all, I just want to take a shot at this, nothing more, for a no-lag server.

And the big question. Where has everyone been? Remember the constant 10-15 people that were always on? Did some of those people ditch the server? I seriously want to know what happened. I know the server was down for 2 days after beta, actually EVERY server was. So why is that WE lost ALL those people from the number I presented before? Where DID those 80-90 people go? Where did some of the most active people go? I know I'm in finals week right now for school, but I've still be chillin' and hangin' out in MC with ya'll. But the server doesn't seem like before, right?

Anyways, I just want all of your opinions on this. I don't care what happens, ya'll are choosing for yourselves. I'm just throwing stuff out there.

P.S. The server details listed above may not be the server we buy. There's hundreds of others. And Concept's friend also offered to hold the server. So we have many choices for ya'll who are worried about that single price. Prices will vary.

If you want I can advertise again since we know how well that went last time. And I'll be on and off for the next few days or weeks, I'm not really sure.

And if we do decide to get a dedicated server I might be able to donate like $10-$15 for the first month to see how well it runs. It just depends on how much I'll be working.