Not many people want to reward their effort or actually care.
Because we as a community have allowed it to come to this. This point where people EXPECT income and aren't willing to do the work unless it will pay off financially. I have donated to servers that are more pay2win, I have donated to servers where I received no benefit. It's just an OT, whether I benefit or not, there's no reason to pay for it, apart from the fact that the developer put time in. Should I be donating for the actual amount of time? Well, no. Nor would I expect anyone to do if I released a server.
Make people pay 5$ a month straight? Wont work
If you provide a server worth $5 a month, it could work. Will you have 2400 players online? Probably not. Will you have a community that values the server and is there to play and experience the game rather than just bot and farm? Probably. Would this work in our current situation? Probably not. As I said, we have allowed it to come to this point. We've supported download and run servers and copies of other servers and cheap, filler content (like last man standing, zombie events) for so long that it's become the norm, and no one is willing to pay for that (not saying some of those events are not fun, but if people had actual, real, unique content, they wouldn't need such events to keep people active - example: there are many servers with these features that I've been on, and there's MANY people who literally just sit AFK in the depot until it's event time. Real maps, custom maps, mixed maps.). Not only that, but because of donations being offered, it's become a race to make the most money by doing the least work. So it's easier than ever to make a server (children are doing it) and it's easier than ever to make money off said server. If you choose to spend all your time on an OT instead of working a real job, and are thus unable to support yourself without the OT, then your priorities are a little mixed up. With that in mind, if you're running a server with either the primary goal or expectation being that you will have an income from it, you're part of the problem.
That being said, I have to agree with
@Synnical in that it should be a hobby. If you rely on open tibia to live your life, you will be very disappointed when for one reason or another you cannot continue it (legal issues with Cip, personal issues, diminished popularity of your server or open tibia/tibia as a whole). While it's nice to support a server on donations, you should be able to cover costs without them. Many VPS or dedi providers really aren't very expensive, and there are even some trustworthy members here that offer hosting and specialized support in open tibia, meaning you don't have to pay much AND you have the help you need when things go wrong. Apart from that, you aren't looking at many expenses unless your team demands cash (so many people would work for free on a great project, myself included, so probably shouldn't be necessary to spend much if anything on content).
Game development isn't that difficult if you take the time to learn what you're doing. Make your own game. Even if you offer it free and make money off advertising and extras like skins, or charge a small one-time sign-up or a subscription fee with a free demo period, you're able to make your own game, your own way. Find some interested people online, it's unlikely that you'd struggle to find people willing to work for free and split future revenue on a promising project. Again, I'm one of those people. There are free engines, free frameworks, free code, free art assets EVERYWHERE, have some fun with it.
