What makes people play donorfests?

[Hutchy]

I thought it was a general question O_o OP just used examples.

[Raiko09]

If you're asking why,

It's the feeling / excitement over the game knowing you reign supreme and the you are invincible.

And no one calls you Noobs, except real players who choose Skill over Godly Equipment.
So basically, the Noobs stop calling you noobs.

[Skotlex]

What brings people into servers where donations are required to be able to do well in WoE? I remember old AnimaRO having 2k players despite their insane donation scheme: lord kahos and custom donor mvp cards in a 5/5/3 low rate server!

Lastly, whats wrong with centering a server around donation items? The GMs on the server make sure that balance is maintained or as close to it as possible, and the revenue from the donations allows the server to stay alive, as aegis requires alot of expensive resources to run.

Uh... there is no balance if your idea of it is "make sure everyone has this set of donator items in order to stand a chance at victory". Furthermore, you are practically saying "what's wrong with making a server with the implicit purpose of earning money?" To which, the answer is: even though private servers are sort of a grey area regarding legality, making a private server with profit purposes is clearly the kind of thing that will get Gravity lawyers on your tail (as soon as you become a large enough target).

On a different note, saying you are free when you clearly want to force people to pay to get anywhere is... deceitful, to say the least.