Considering that several people on this forum have posted what amounts to little more than libel, I don't feel like that reaction was over the top. These people have no backing for many of the claims that they are making that they're willing to show, and likely just have no backing at all. I have a founder account on Kaya.gs, and it's by far one of the smoothest running, most reliable Alphas I've ever seen. Whether that translates into success later remain to be seen, but to insinuate that the Gabriel et al. treat us like 'slaves' and are scamming us out of our money... Anyone that has ACTUALLY spent any time really looking at the Alpha can tell you exactly how false that is. Yet we continue to see the baseless accusations about this being a scam. I actually registered this account because of how much this is pissing me off. For whatever reason, there seem to be people on this board with a strong desire to see Kaya.gs fail, and it looks to me like they wont let the truth get in the way of their crusade. If there are legit complaints, that's one thing. But to make baseless accusations about Gabriel et al. like have been made... well, like I said, at this point it's nothing more than libel.

I totally concur with Fizyx, Kaya seems to be on it's way to become a great server. I know Gabriel personally from studying with him together in Korea so for me there is no concern about trustworthyness at all.
That the developers treat founders like slaves seems laughable as usually you can discuss anything with the developers and they will listen and also give their own arguments in that discussion. Just like it was with the recent escaper discussion on kaya.

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Human beings cannot stop doing what they really desire to do. ; Amamiya-sensei
Updated revised and continued Blog with Pro games commented and info about studying abroad: http://beginningpath.blogspot.com/

I'm a founder as well and the only times the developers say that you should post something into the feedback section instead of just telling them is when they don't have the time at this moment or there are just to much things they have to think about. And I don't see any bad in this. I believe it is just proffessional to do this instead of forgeting something which might not look as important at the moment.
All in all I never found a reason to lose the trust into the developers. In my opinion they gave us much more informations than they would have to.

I think some of the comments here have been overly negative, but I do agree that it is a little strange that you are still offering founder accounts now that there is a working alpha version and we (well, most of us ) are convinced you're not going to run off with the money/screw everything up and seems a little unfair.

But the server looks awesome, you guys seems to be putting a lot of effort into it so I strongly disagree with some of the other claims.

Today along with the release the first automated founder was successfully added to the server. If the technical solution withstands the weekend, i will make an announcement to switch founder accounts for supporter ones, as i have previously posted on the blog.

Regards.

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Founder of Kaya.gs

i think giving out free accounts to strong players will help success of your server.
i like to play in new server but if i have to pay i wouldn't because there are plenty of servers that i can play on.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

@Magicwand: I think the public release will be free. Currently the server is in alpha.

It also seems odd to me how cynical some people here are concerning Kaya. So much so that, like Fizyx, I decided to register an L19x19 account just to make a post about it. I've been reading this board for a while, and in general it's surprising how many people just want to pick fights. I know it's the Internet and all, but seriously, this is Go we're talking about.

I don't plan to get a founder account with Kaya, mostly because I can't afford it. But I look forward to the public release, and wish the developers the best of luck.

That's go players: always expecting the world to hand us hamete.

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1k KGS

I have also registered for the purposes of replying to this thread, as I am perplexed by the negativity some people seem so keen on expressing.

Yesterday I bought a Supporter account and was up and running on the server within minutes. I played a game with someone who paitently waited whilst I accustomed myself to the UI and dealt with some browser issues. The game itself was responsive and enjoyable from a user-experience point of view. I was impressed that the core functionality is so immediate and polished at this alpha stage.

Everyone in the main chat has been helpful and polite, and each game I've played has been very enjoyable. Kaya.gs delivers as a server and I truly feel that if people get on board with it and support it, it will be the best English-language server. There is no way the amount of effort and passion that has gone into this project could ever be a scam- as someone who works in web development, I can tell you now that a Go server like this is the product of months and months of hard work.

Where the money goes is absolutely no-one's concern. If you have your doubts about it, then simply don't donate. The kaya.gs team are accepting donations for anyone who thinks the project is worthwhile. You can tell immediately that all the people who have donated for early access have nothing but high praises for this project, and yet the best nay-sayers can produce is unfounded conjecture and hear-say.

You can be the judge of the project when it becomes open and free, but until then I would reccommend you reserve that judgement until you've actually tried it yourself.

I love kaya.gs already now, just by looking at the things which they have in-build, I don't own a supporter account yet, so I don't even know all features! But I wanted just to say one thing to the founders and supporters, because it seems they love kaya.gs also because it offers such a nice atmosphere, and I hope really that it also after the public release will stay so, but in fact I don't think, because it is always so in a beta or alpha, that there are few people but all a really nice etc blabla. But as soon it is released and open for everyone -> More people -> Not such a nice atmosphere anymore in the open chats I think, more trolls, more sandbaggers and other types of Humans And then the "old" ones are disappearing and sad or complaining that it was all better in the old times in the beginning :O just wanna warn you. But maybe I am also mistaking, and it will stay also in the public chats a nice atmosphere and not such a pseudo-intellectual talk like on KGS.

Just out of curiosity: Isn't it technically a beta-test and not an alpha-test?

Technically its a private beta, but we decided to go out as Alpha. We had planned to make a much shorter Alpha, but we got carried away with features so its pretty packed right now .

As soon as we open up it will be called Beta.

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Founder of Kaya.gs

I always thought alphatest meant an internal test with people that are involved with the project. Betatest is the one with people from outside of the project. What you described sounds like a closed betatest.

Offer still stands that if you get in financial trouble with a hoster let me know and I'll help.

Thanks ZeroKun, but we are very well covered.

However, i released a Ruby gem this week to run bots in kaya. You think we can use those servers to run some bots?

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Founder of Kaya.gs

Yeah that wouldn't be a problem.

I did not want to open a new topic for that, and I don't know much about teaching on other Go Servers or in general about Go, but what about the idea to be able to drawing things on the go Board in Teaching lessons, not only the defined forms but also freestyle?

Please dont let dp read this message, ill have to spend a week convincing him not to do it .

Thats a good idea to put on UserVoice.

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Founder of Kaya.gs

I really like that idea, it seems to be missing and wanting on every other server. Sorry Gabriel!