I could have sworn you were still the leader of ATS and therefore the Northern Empire, but alrighty.
So..we've had 2 NA servers not owned by the now Northern Empire, and they've both gone under? Seems a little suspicious if you ask me.
Not quite. The first NA server was the one started by Garguro, who paid out of his own pocket. He deliberately did not join a clan to stay impartial, despite several people attempting to get him to play with them. He did eventually join ATS, because he knew and trusted Ecko. ATS took over the server not through that, however, but by being the only people who donated in significant amounts and in the long term when Garguro could no longer pay for the entire server himself. They were responsible for expanding the server from one 64 man box to the full 3 servers we have today in NA. Hospitaller took over one of those servers when their donations picked up the gap in costs. That is the situation today.
The TFO server disappeared, as far as I can tell, because ScotTFO stopped playing. He was also unaffiliated. While his server was up, however, it was generally considered the place for trolls to play and shunned by the rest of the community, despite in many ways being preferable to ATS servers (at least, I had half my ping their and I highly enjoyed the statistics).
In order to get a server linked to the database, you need the trust of chadz. That is all. The reason there are not a number of new servers is a lack of trusted people with money, and a desire among the trusted people who do have money to not spread out the community more (personally, I prefer small servers, but I understand the sentiment.)
