The Hidden Forest

I was just wondering how much a server like this costs to maintain?

if you want a simple eqemu server, it's quite cheap, if you want something quality and take it seriously, well thats another story.

- you buy a server (not a desktop pc)
- you buy an ups
- you buy a router
- you buy software licences (unless you run a linux server)
- you host it in a datacenter, or pay for a quality line at a private host and pay for the bills
- you keep upgrading all of this to match the actual playerbase
- you spend hundreds of hours/days developing and maitaining it

optionally
- buy a separate host/server for the portal/forums
- you buy hardware firewall to improve security
- you buy a test/dev server for content creation and testing (not to disturb the live server)
- and the list is basically endless, spending on redundancy and security has no limit.

hard to say whats the end of the bill, but I guess you get an idea. I let you make the math.