And The Winner Is...Follow

I don't get it.. What does this mean?

Why is Yantis and IGE buying up all these sights? Why are all the sights selling, and what can be done about it? We still need the info, don't we? What's our alternative?

Geeze I realized I should follow that up. Yes we received an offer from Yantis. First he wanted to buy the site for a pretty large sum of money. When we turned him down, he offered to pay just as much to just run an ad on the site. We turned that down too. I'm not asking for a pat on the back. Nor do I compare our situation with any of the other sites. Like I said, our premium members are absolutely wonderful and we are happy with where we are right now financially. I just didn't want anyone thinking that was a prelude to us taking Yantis or IGE money. It won't happen.

Aside from my guilds websites, Allakhazam's and Magecompendium are the only two I really visit.

The magecompendium has a very nice support base mainly because of the people that post there. Although the admins are very adamant about what gets posted there (outwarz kind of crap gets edited nearly immediately and ip's are banned asap) I have to give most of the credit on that site to the posters/contributors. Although the admins will display opinions and will disagree with people on the boards threads aren't deleted/edited due to disagreements (Smasharoo care to comment about the Safehouse from a couple years ago about something along these lines?).

Allakhazam's imo is the pinacle of EQ information. Although most of the information on this site is player submitted the backbone is Allakhazam, Illia, Danalog and the rest of the people running things. Although the message boards are informative and enjoyable (yes, I even enjoy the weirdo's out on left base ) I still have to give the biggest kudo's to the crew running things.

Granted a business is a business regardless of what you try and call it. I'm just happy to be able to do my part in keeping this a IGE/Yantis free site for as long as Alla and crew are willing to keep it running.

I can't ******* belive that Sunmoon sold out the Rangers glade to the devil. Of all the class communities out there, I thought that one would be the last to go before the safehouse. And they got castersrealm too. Geez. This is a sad, sad day indeed. As a longtime anti-Yantis and anti-IGE activist, I feel betrayed that most of those community leaders sold out. Now MY IP, e-mail, and contact information is in the hands of at very least IGE. A situation I find most disturbing.

Allakhazam, have you ever considered starting dedicated class sub-pages? For instance maybe eqranger.allakhazam.com ? Same general layout as the main site, but with the quest, item, and zone information taylored for the ranger class, and class guides and skill trees more prominently displayed? With Illia's forum system, other than bandwidth I don't think setting up forums would be a problem, and there are definitly enough displaced old guard players of the bought out classes to provide content and or moderation. With the old class boards in existance, I don't thing the idea would have flown well in the past, but now I think it would not only go over well, it would be welcomed for at least a few of the classes with no clear alternative except ezboards.

I dunno, what do you think?

Just to give some feedback to Kaolin's suggestion. I was thinking yesterday as I was reading the Shaman's Crucible boards that it would be nice if such a thing existed here. Now, I'm not exactly sure how the crucible became such a good site. I suppose it's just the dedicated people posting very good info... I would hope that it would work here if you did it.

Just my 2 coppers

I am just finding out about this and am alittle upset because I used C realm quite often. I don't intend to visit it anymore but; I am now in search of a reliable site for class spell information (which spells are availible at certain levels and where to purchase them). I thank you in advance for any help and I will continue my own little boycott against them.

Reminds me of the furor over Lum "selling out" to Mythic. While I can't recall the exact wording, his response essentially was "When you start paying for my health insurance, you can dictate what I do"

Honestly I am neutral on people like Yantis. While selling plat may or may not be good for the game overall, I can see SOE allowing it unofficially if for no other reason than less headaches for them. People have been buying and selling gold and items for RL cash since UO (Hell, even before that), and having one "reputable" seller instead of a multitude of shady Ebayers means less customer service nightmares of "I paid him for XXX and he didn't give it to me!!". Not the best solution, but they aren't going to stop it either. Rock and hardplace and whatnot.

Websites are a ton of work and heartache, the possibility of getting compensated (REALLY compensated, not just pocket change) is not something to look down on. They created something of value, that they are willing to sell it is not something I would fault anyone for.

I still have not signed up for premium yet, but I will be doing so next payday (still recovering from Christmas, hehe). This is the best fan site out there, and if the paying customers can make it even better, then I want to be in on it.

Also, I want an avatar.

:)

As a beastlord, I would just like to add that the Beastlord Community itself has /not/ been purchased by Yantis. Only our old domain name. The community is /not/ the domain. We moved very quickly indeed, and are now up and running at http://www.beastlords.org. The main pillars of the community have all joined us, and over 600 people had already joined the forms, last I looked. It's probably much higher now. All beastlords please spread the word.

Allakhazam has already visitted us, and word is that Sony has been communicating with our forum admins as well, and that they consider our new domain the 'official' community site for Beastlords.

Just passing on the word.

Thanks!

I agree with Reinman, being in business myself it would be hard to pass up an offer to run a banner and I would totally understand. I am not sure how the premium memberships even cover all the execellent information that can not be found anywhere else.

Alla thank you for not selling out. the 2 eq sites i visit the most are here and EQDiva and kocha isnt selling out either. she posted on there forums that yantis offered her an undisclosed astronomical figure and she still said no.

Just wanted to say thank you to Alla, though I haven't got premium, I'll look into it now. Been here for 4 years and have never had a complaint (except changing the forums;P).
Way to go Allakhazam, you da man!


(Ps, everyone else too that is involved in the site/boards, I just knew that I wouldn't be able to remember all the names.)