ESOCommunity

#conspiracy

EAGLEMUT wrote:

Dolan wrote:Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself.

Can you go into more detail on how is this different from the current state? ESOC is currently entirely organized by whoever of the community wants to help, with 100% of all donations and revenue going back into the community. By not having a "business team", are you suggesting a publicly shared paypal password instead of business guy n0eL managing it, or how is that supposed to work?

I think he means that it shouldn't just be a small amount of people who decided.
For instance, the EP, the "community patch", is under Zoi's control, and the ESOC team (a small group of people) decides the tourney formats.

ahaha the propaganda against zoi patch is real, every chance is good

Garja wrote:ahaha the propaganda against zio patch is real, every chance is good

That's a fair point though. ESOC, its tourneys and its patch don't belong to the community, they belong to a small group of people. Of course it would be a mess if everybody was involved, still the management is far from perfect.

I do not uderstand the argument about having an abstract name not connected to AoE3. Once ESO goes down, ESOC will be just some random letters.
The absence of Patreon is indeed a bit passé. Why reject statistical certainity that some money will start trickling from a new source? Many, I can imagine, are not comfortable with the Twitch donations system.

P.S. And what is even this anarch-commie idea of seizing the means of production?

[Armag] diarouga wrote:

EAGLEMUT wrote:

Dolan wrote:Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself.

Can you go into more detail on how is this different from the current state? ESOC is currently entirely organized by whoever of the community wants to help, with 100% of all donations and revenue going back into the community. By not having a "business team", are you suggesting a publicly shared paypal password instead of business guy n0eL managing it, or how is that supposed to work?

I think he means that it shouldn't just be a small amount of people who decided.
For instance, the EP, the "community patch", is under Zoi's control, and the ESOC team (a small group of people) decides the tourney formats.

The patch has absolutely nothing to do with the business team, I don't think that's what he means.

In any case I agree with EAGLE that things are already pretty community run and structuring things in a way to make it more community run isn't really possible. Many people on "staff" have always pushed to make things more community run but there's only so much you can do. Ultimately decisions have to be made somewhere, and people on the "outside" assume they're all made in one place by a supreme dictator and that couldn't be further from the truth. 99% of decisions made internally are ESOC are because someone decided they wanted to work on something -- whoever puts the work in to make something happen is what ends up happening.

Usually when a community member has been pursued creating their own things, they are invited to staff and those events get incorporated into ESOC -- treaty tournaments, savorybeef with weekend tournaments, the Site guy and his stuff (although that eventually fell apart), etc, and other tournaments have gotten assistance from ESOC but weren't really "official" (starvation, etc.).

There's little real distinction between "staff" and not. It's really just a label that people who are big community contributors end up getting if they want it and their ideas/goals align with that of current staff.

I always thought the name, and especially the hyphen (not included in logos) was odd choice. Tough road to see going forward.

Should seek opinions on the moves from:

aotsanctuary.com --> agesanctuary.com--> rts-sanctuary.com

I can tell you from aots to agesanc helped for aoe3 but agesanc to rtssanc didn't seem to do too much for sc2, but I didn't play sc2 so I'm not sure.

we defo need "aoe3" in there

Garja wrote:we defo need "aoe3" in there

Not sure about the "3" or "III" tbh.

Go, go AoE3Zone!

oh, tilanus is here, let's talk about ESOC banner and how absolutely awful it is! of course community should decide how many dead skirms should be included in such a picture!!!

Dolan wrote:You said the same when I proposed to create an ESOC-TV Twitch channel a few years ago (I think it was 2015 or 2016). You and Mitoe said "why would we need a separate Twitch channel, when we already have access to Microsoft's channel and no major AOE3 player would want to stream on it and lose their own audience". And then, a few months later you proceeded to create the Twitch account and claimed it was your idea.

Oh well, yeah, we don't really need a Patreon account, it was just a suggestion. Lots of big streamers have Patreon accounts too, if you insist. For example imaqtpie or Nightblue3. Why? Possibly because they can generate revenue from multiple sources and they don't need to be forced to stream to keep getting money. They don't depend on the stream or youtube only, they can get money even when there's no new content or no stream. That could be one reason why they keep a Patreon account too.

Inb4 you make a Patreon account too then claim it was your idea again.

For the record, I was still against creating a separate Twitch channel at the time Part of me still believes our viewership would be significantly better had we used the official channel a bit more, but not having any control over the channel would have been a big problem, and this is definitely better long-term. So props to you for your foresight, but just because no one acted on your initial suggestion doesn't mean that when someone acted on it later they were trying to steal credit for the idea; they simply came to agree with you.

If we were to make a Patreon, I think we'd have to credit Interjection. He has been suggesting the same thing to the team for over a year at this point, and it's something we certainly could consider but there have been a lot of big projects / staff changes in the last year that have made it less of a priority.

Anyway, I really struggle to see how ESOC is all that different from what you describe as a site "created by the community itself for the community itself." As Eaglemut and Musketeer have already pointed out, this is pretty much how it functions already.


As for the real point of this topic--yeah ESO-Community is not the most elegant name. It was more of an accident than anything else, really. Amhaye (or Stanley_Winston, as he goes by nowadays), was hosting a tournament, and created a website for it that wasn't supposed to last very long. For some inexplicable reason he bought the domain "eso-community.net" for this single-tournament website, and it happened to be a reasonable name for a new community site at the time, so myself, H2O, GoodSpeed, Kami_Ryu, and several others (yes, including you @Dolan :) ) just rolled with it and decided to create something out it.

We could rebrand, of course, but to be perfectly honest I feel like if the intention is to follow AoE4 in the future, a new website with a completely different name and unrelated to AoE3 would be best. It could be a sister website or something of that nature, to be sure, but I feel like having such a strong tie to AoE3 would only make AoE4 players seek a more-concentrated community site over this one.

That being said, it's probably true that we should consider rebranding ESOC in lieu of the release of AoE3:DE, if we can think up a reasonable name.

A Basement rebranding in which cheadar and I join the admin team actually seems like a great idea.

fightinfrenchman wrote:A Basement rebranding in which cheadar and I join the admin team actually seems like a great idea.

I don't think an admin team with 2 nazi sympathizers is a good idea :S

I think esoc needs a connection with microsoft. Something like forgetten empires in aoe2.

On a more serious matter I'd recommend to wait how Age3DE and AoE4 turn out to see how beneficial a rebranding would be. Somewhat separate from that you could try dual-branding ESOC with the name you consider more appropriate. For instance, if you guys wanna go 1337 and call yourself 'Ag3C' you'd just start using both names from now on in all videos, graphics, texts, etc. and transition after half a year by using ESOC less and less until everyone's heard of Ag3C.

Admins should call it, "heatitup's playground," because that's what this is. We are all pawns!

Dolan wrote:

zoom wrote:The trademark argument is ignorant and presumptuous, though. Unless you want to pick an even dumber name, you're always going to name the site after AoE3 – which so happens to be a trademark owned by Microsoft. Disregarding that, entirely, this constitutes no legal problem, in the first place.

Not really. For example there are plenty of popular sites that provide services for the LoL community that don't even mention LoL. Eg, op.gg. But there are plenty more. You just need enough imagination and you need to get out of your small world a bit.

First, your argument is irrelevant to what I said. I never even implied that such sites do not exist—or that they cannot be successful. I implied that a name referencing a trademark is always going to be superior for purposes of recognition and as such traffic, and that it should be pursued, legal threats notwithstanding. Arguably, this is especially important for small games (like AoE3). Second, disregarding your logical fallacy, the site you link to operates sites for at least three different games. Another fallacy – how ironic.

Still, yours is good advice. I'll do my best to adhere by it. Here's my advice for you: Try to drop your anti-ESOC agenda and pretentiousness a bit.

zoom wrote:First, your argument is irrelevant to what I said. I never even implied that such sites do not exist—or that they cannot be successful. I implied that a name referencing a trademark is always going to be superior for purposes of recognition and as such traffic, and that it should be pursued, legal threats notwithstanding. Arguably, this is especially important for small games (like AoE3). Second, disregarding your logical fallacy,

You know, it's just like, it's your opinion, man. My opinion vs your opinion. Got any poll data to support this statement that referencing a trademark is going to attract more traffic? Regardless of any other factors, such as the talent of the team to make themselves known?
I can see plenty of disadvantages to opting to do that, though. Like, if you ever plan on having merchandise, you can forgedaboutit, because it's legally actionable.

Which fallacy might that be exactly?

the site you link to operates sites for at least three different games. Another fallacy – how ironic.

Another case of pretentious use of words without backing it up with anything. How ironic. And op.gg is the go-to site for everyone who ever played LoL, that's how they even got so popular in the first place. The fact that they are now expanding to include more games shows how popular the site has become, without even linking its name to any particular tradema®k. A much more flexible strategy than just limiting yourself to brand imitation.

Still, yours is good advice. I'll do my best to adhere by it. Here's my advice for you: Try to drop your anti-ESOC agenda and pretentiousness a bit.

Typical zoi post: mix a bit of poison with a bit of sugar -- now shut up bitch, you know I love you.

Pot. Meet Kettle.

Dolan wrote:

zoom wrote:First, your argument is irrelevant to what I said. I never even implied that such sites do not exist—or that they cannot be successful. I implied that a name referencing a trademark is always going to be superior for purposes of recognition and as such traffic, and that it should be pursued, legal threats notwithstanding. Arguably, this is especially important for small games (like AoE3). Second, disregarding your logical fallacy,

You know, it's just like, it's your opinion, man. My opinion vs your opinion. Got any poll data to support this statement that referencing a trademark is going to attract more traffic? Regardless of any other factors, such as the talent of the team to make themselves known?
I can see plenty of disadvantages to opting to do that, though. Like, if you ever plan on having merchandise, you can forgedaboutit, because it's legally actionable.

Which fallacy might that be exactly?

the site you link to operates sites for at least three different games. Another fallacy – how ironic.

Another case of pretentious use of words without backing it up with anything. How ironic. And op.gg is the go-to site for everyone who ever played LoL, that's how they even got so popular in the first place. The fact that they are now expanding to include more games shows how popular the site has become, without even linking its name to any particular tradema®k. A much more flexible strategy than just limiting yourself to brand imitation.

Still, yours is good advice. I'll do my best to adhere by it. Here's my advice for you: Try to drop your anti-ESOC agenda and pretentiousness a bit.

Typical zoi post: mix a bit of poison with a bit of sugar -- now shut up bitch, you know I love you.

Right. The difference being, I don't commit logical fallacies left, right, and center – partly because I'm less biased.The desperation is shining through, even in the cases where i'm not explaining it to you. It isn't pretentiousness if what you're saying holds water, and what you said, simply does not.

Like I said in my previous post, you're telling yourself that you countered my argument when actually you failed to counter an argument I had never made in the first place. It's just embarrassing. Come to think of it, it's actually a lot like arguing with ewwmeeww. Yikes! Thank Garja I'm not doing that anymore.

Well, yeah, as long as you're not selling anything, nobody is going to sue you for naming a forum "This is Microsoft Windows 10 Registered Trademark, We are Selling your Shit here, Bill, stay mad son".

But if at any point you start considering selling branded merchandise (like t-shirts) to fund your events, then expect to receive some takedown notes from Microsoft's lawyers if those items include specifically "age of empires". If you want to get down to pedantic details, AOE-based acronyms aren't even registered trademarks, so what you said wasn't even an argument.

The argument I made earlier on was that it's not even necessary to use or mention the name of the franchise around which you're building a community in order to be successful. You can do that with an original name unrelated to the registered trademark and it's both a smarter and more secure decision for the future of your enterprise.

Here we go

Let me point to you @zoom which part of your argument is incorrect:

Unless you want to pick an even dumber name, you're always going to name the site after AoE3 – which so happens to be a trademark owned by Microsoft. Disregarding that, entirely, this constitutes no legal problem, in the first place.

1. You said "you're always going to name the site after AOE3". To which I replied -- you don't have to, there are plenty of community sites that have become successful without branding themselves based on another trademark. Please take note of the formulation "based on", which means you would not completely copy a trademark, but you might create an acronym based on that registered trademark.

2. You said " which so happens to be a trademark owned by Microsoft". This is actually incorrect, Microsoft does not own acronyms related to the registered trademark "Age of Empires". So technically, it would be possible to continue to use them even in your branding without legal consequences, though you don't really have to. When I said it would be smarter not to use a brand that was created based on Microsoft's property, I specifically used the expression "based on" to convey the idea that that proprietary trademark wasn't being re-used or cloned, which would have had, indeed, real legal consequences. Here's the quote:

The branding shouldn't have been made based on Microsoft's trademark that is easy to mistake for other brands too.

You brought the legal consequences idea in the debate, zoi, not me. Talk about fallacies and logical inconsistencies...

Cheers, m8.

rekt