You're right for the half things. But I have been running a server from my home PC and I had 100 players online. Yes with little lags but I had them on my HOME PC which my cousin was using for chatting in Skype >.< I told him million times to don't do it but he's an idiot. This doesn't matter.. There ARE good ISP's for low prices. I pay 15$ for my internet. And still I got 100 players. It was a high rate server so it was very good.. All the time there were PvP's. It was nice. But the other thing you said..
Guess how my server died? Exactly from a DDoS attack... =/ So I've learned from this that it's useless to start a server from your home PC. You'll always get attacked... And the worst part is that you can't do ANYTHING about it. Hosting costs much too.. You'll need a few hundred dollars extra to start a server. When you open a donation some of the money will come back. But it's really how you setup your server. You may get a value of 30$ per month or you can get over a 1000$ per month. Everything is based on luck and how you setup everything.
Well actually you CAN lie.. No one will stop you. But maybe 95% of the people won't believe you. (The other 5% are kiddos :D ).
I don't know if the17Heroes is set up at home or not but yes.. There is a little truth in your post. Yes, if you want to start a server for fun, of course you won't pay 200$ for a monthly hosting.. But you're just wasting the people's time. IF you make a very very very good server and you actually have good home PC and internet.. Some of the guys playing will maybe get a little memory from the server.. But it can't be a successful server for sure.
Damn! The post got really big! :D