This is a bit off discussion, but still a valid concern of mine. For what's it's worth:

What brought us together to begin was the Steam community thing. Until that point, I think very few of us - if any at all - actually shared xFire names with one another to see what each is playing. When I pointed out that you could make groups to Prime, one of the first things that came out of his mouth in the IRC channel was "and to think, we've been trying how long to a weekly gaming session going? NiGHTS you truly are the man, tons better than Thrax ever was" (or something to that effect).

The only reason we're able to play with each other so frequently is because of the Steam community friends list. Speaking in terms of long-term gaming, with that gone, I'd assume the gaming population would drop off a bit simply due to the fact that the ease of use factor is gone. We'd all have to download xFire and, depending on the game played, host a ventrilo/teamspeak server. Personally, I don't bother with TF2 unless I see an {IC} ingame already - the public is too frustrating to play with.

Now, should we buy a server and actually go through with all this, I'd assume a more serious {IC} gaming push would be made. However, with writing and news postings as sparse as they are (in terms of the community we have here, a small percentage actually do it) it would be very difficult to spread our talents even further. Harder, still, with the sudden influx of many key members suddenly having children or other real-life commitments.

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that buying a server carries with it the one-time monetary cost, as well as a much larger time commitment than we may not recognize.