hosting servers?

If you only want to play with your friends, it's sufficient to start a singleplayer game and let your buddys connect through IP (either play through LAN/hamachi, or internet [in this case you need to forward your ports]).
Alternatively you can download the dedicated server from our homepage https://www.rising-world.net

If you want to host a game, there aren't any paid services yet, so you will have to do a bit of setup yourself. I use nfoservers.com. They have excellent and very affordable virtual dedicated servers. I host on Windows 2008 Server R2 (2012 is NOT recommended). It have a pretty beefed up server, so it costs me about $79 per month, however, they offer servers as low as around $35 per month.

If you host at home, then you need to port forward through your router. If you host with nfoservers.com or another vendor, you don't have to worry about router setup. Here is the basic setup:

1. Decide which port you will host on. The default is 4255. The port range that you need to forward for port 4255 is 4254 through 4259 (both TCP and UDP).
2. If you are hosting from your home, then forward those ports in your router port forwarding setup as per your router vendor's instruction.
3. Open that very same port range (both UDP and TCP) in your Windows firewall or whatever software firewall you are using. You only need to create INBOUND port rules as that is the communication coming IN from the players to your server.
4. Copy that server software for the game as per red51's suggestion. I think you have to be logged into the rising-world.com site to see the dedicated server download link (it's big and red). Extract that to wherever you want.
5. Modify the server.properties file within your dedicated server installation folder.
6. Start the server via the win_startup.bat script.

That's it! You are now available to your players. They need to connect through the multiplayer->connect to IP button in the game.

If you don't want to keep giving the IP address (because it changes) and you host from home, you can setup a dynamic DNS service using something like no-ip (http://www.noip.com/). You can set up a subdomain from them and point it to your IP. Download their dyndns software and keep it running and it will always keep your noip records up to date and all you have to do is give our your sub-domain that noip gave you. Then players connect via yoursub.noip.com:4255 or something like that.

If you already own a domain name, then just create a DNS "A" record. Give it a subdomain name (mine is "win"), and then point it to your server's IP. You have to keep this updated manually if you host from your livingroom.

We currently have only one hosting service as a official one.
http://zap-hosting.com/rising-world-server-mieten.html
Their website is only in german avialable at the moment, but they will translate it soon, until then you might want to use google translator. If you might know a hosting service, which you would like to see our dedicated servers on please drop us a message at hostingservices@rising-world.net