Regarding the Sale of IGEFollow

I'm going to have to disagree with you. That was very eloquent. Reading it made me feel a little emo even. (in a good way because I agree with you )

Kao?

Barney has scarred most of us for life.

The **** are you doing here? Always thought you were with the FFXI crowd, Paskil.

Does this mean we'll finally see a Vanguard section?

There is no word yes or no at this point. We WILL let you know when we know.

My reasons for canceling premium still exist. I never canceled just because of IGE and the RMT connections, I canceled mainly because I felt that Alla no longer needed my financial backing.

When I first got here, the site was never the greatest in terms of features/appearance/etc.. but I liked it because of the community. Because of the community (good and bad posters alike) and the feel of the site I felt it was like an old garage magazine, it had a grassroots feel.

I could picture Alla in his home office checking code and updating things with a "team" of unpaid or barely paid admins around the country helping him out with keeping the site going. I felt that it was a site created/maintained by people that love/play the MMO genre. It wasn't some corporate entity sending money to keep the site floating.

So I happily paid my money thinking I was helping some guy and his friends maintain a fun site run by people that love the genre and for people that love the genre.

Then Alla got corporate support. I felt my money was no longer needed or wanted.

Instead of helping support and maintain the site, my money was going to some corporate fatcats pockets and instead of seeming to be a "thank you for your support" the premium features now seemed to be "pay and be cool" thing (kind of like how Hellgate's "elite" pay feature is being viewed).

I never really cared about any of the premium features beyond the journal. Avatar and smilies were nice but I've been doing just fine without them. So the features weren't an incentive for me to get premium, I viewed them as a "thank you" for my support.

I don't know who owns the other sites, don't really care. Those sites don't have the same "grassroots" feel that Alla has. Maybe it's because they are slicker looking, and seem to have better features/abilities/etc..

Alla has never been a flashy site. And to me that had been part of the grassroots feel. Any site with corporate or money backing would look alot better. I guess I expect more from a site backed by big money.

Missing the point. I know the people that work on the site are gamers/MMOers. The point is that prior to the buy-out it had the feel that these people were doing it with their own blood, sweat & tears.

Now, it's people that love games being paid to maintain a site.

Big difference.

Now if only I could get my karma back for defending allakhazam during the fiasco last year :P

I don't see why not! Althought some of the known issues might have changed by now. I'll bug Alla to say yes, but I liked those a lot.

Why didn't you mention that Brock Pierce was CEO at Affinity media?