Originally posted by Mharr:

Aye, you're looking for some combination of cheap, close, responsive helpdesk and maybe turnkey support for the game so you can start learning with an already working server. The former points overshadow that last one in the long term though.

Sounds like people should just get better internet and host it at home to learn the ropes. I tried various 3rd party hosting services back in the day for Minecraft, but ultimately found them to all be somewhat limiting. I ended up using that opportunity to learn about hosting, setting up firewalls for servers, port forwards, getting into SVN, and further learn about RDP's.

By the way, I very randomly happened upon a few of your posts at the Cubeworld forum! I shouldn't have been surprised, but it was actually nice to read sanity amongst the insane. ^_^