Donations or purchases are nedded if you want a good server, stable and do not close in two days.

The dedicated server costs money.
If the server wants a good web or they don't know how to develop it, costs money.
If the server is new and wants people, they need to buy ads.
If they don't have software developers, need developers (more money).
Anti bot system, geodata and pathnode and... etc.

Regards

I have to disagree. This is model of standard Lineage II server, but it absolutly ruins the model of free Lineage servers.

What is best method? Have own server, then start to think about have I capacity to start Lineage 2 server on it? If your answer is yes, take few friends of you and buy licence for server and antibot or pick up Java to keep costs and you have server with updates from 200 USD with good anti-bot protection.

Unfortunately most of admins see in their server only Gold mine and they make the donation to get something from it. So players pay them server, licences, internet and most of time pocket money as well.

For this reason I made own server, where is no donate, its stable and working. I chose the way of l2OFF server so all what I need si pay for updates 100 USD per year. Its nothing. Now I pay some advertising campaign, so yes, it will be more expensive. But why not. We stay now second year and starting third one, still without donate, still with working l2off extender. Only bad luck with small community, because we are not agresive and making ugly banner on each vote sites, but I am really proud that still we have some players and I can really offer them free Lineage II server.

So definitely you don't need donate on server, if you really want server for players. You need donate if you want server from players.