Alright, so a couple of things have happened lately, and then I'm not talking about this guy's blog (right -_-) but I'm talking, of course, about the way Yannis gave a definition to MOBAFire I did not hear before. Sure it might me being incredibly naive but there's something more serious going on in my opinion. Also, don't get me wrong, I'm just trying to understand what is happening to this community I'm part of just in the same way as mankind is trying to unveil the mysteries of the universe. I'm not hating in any way, okay maybe a little but still that shouldn't supress the actual message that much. If it does, apologies are made for the fact that you can't let anything go.

So pretty much what I'm trying to do here is starting a quest, and not one to retrieve the holy grail or to take an all-powerful ring to a volcano but merely a quest to discover what happened. What exactly do I mean? Well How did we go from this:
jhoijhoi wrote:

When someone joins MobaFire, they should receive a PM/email with links to the Support Forum, Frequently Asked Questions , Guide Basics and BBCode Guide (or my Making a Guide Guide?). (this could also extend to promoting eSports Central/MobaFire TV etc)

It can be in the form of a letter or somesuch, "... and if you need help with guide writing XXXX" and "please check our FAQ xxxxx" and "if you require assistance check out our Support Forum xxxxx".

Just some sort of general email that introduces them to MobaFire and gives them the links to all the "important" aspects so they are exposed to everything.

It wouldn't hurt to send this PM/Email to all members to give them an idea of what can be done on MobaFire. Many websites automatically send a PM to the user introducing them to the site and I've always wondered why MobaFire didn't.

The only email I got when I signed up was, "Thank you for joining MOBAFire! Before you can log in, you must verify your email address by visiting the following link. You may either click it or copy it and paste it into the address bar of your web browser."

It had no pictures and didn't even say anything like, "Thanks from the MobaFire team!" or anything. This came off as impersonal... I know all "welcome" emails are automatic, but MobaFire's is the most generic/unlively/unenthusiastic I've ever seen.

tldr; look at the picture to the right to see an example of a great "welcome" email/PM that I think MobaFire could really benefit from. It's eye-catching, informative and links me to all the important stuff that I need to know.

I'll whip up an example in a second, but you could pretty much just steal Seek's template.

Thoughts?





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 To this? (see below) I'm just trying to uncover what the hell is going on here in MOBAFire and it'd actually be nice if people would just answer me. As I pointed out before, I might actually be a little naive here to think that MOBAFire was never a "for fun project" to begin with but in that case I'm wondering: "Is this really a goldmine?" "Is an idea like this as brilliant as facebook?". Hence I'll just assume that MOBAFire started off as a nice idea that slowly grew into a moneymaking machine. Then you might, just as myself, ask the question: How did that happen? And more importantly: when? Anyway, in order to get to the bottom of this thing we need to look at the past. I can't really look further back than the day I joined so let's just do that then. No this isn't gonna be some nostalgic story about 'the good old days' but I do want to share some of my experiences back then. That is, if you actually got this far into the story to actually read it.

Once upon a time... oh **** that **** we know what's going on. I'm not gonna look up the exact date I joined because it requires me finding my first account on here which dates from a while back. Though I made a jungle Lee Sin guide and the first to ever comment on that, after quite some work, was a veteran named jhoijhoi. Now this isn't gonna be some love story with hidden lesbian feelings but I do want to mark the importance of this. She was a veteran, one of the people that represent this community, or at least, are supposed to, already and gave me tips on how to improve it. This little interaction showed me two things MOBAFire was about: the community was all about LoL and veterans are respected members of the community who are here to help newcomers. Back then, it actually was about that as veterans were hand-picked by Matt and FlashJ, or not sure if Flash was actually involved, I don't know much about the guy.

Now I'm not saying that this is better or worse than what's going on now but it does imply that those two were actually involved in the community's daily business instead of being the faceless beings who they are now. Now I get that as things become bigger and more complex you need more people to handle it. Back then not even the database was up to date and the site was filled with bugs but Matt was actually answering people on a daily basis in the support section and I was actually supporting the guy and supported all the decisions he made.
So what's changed? Did Matt somehow change into an evil corporate manager with dollar signs in his eyes or did I grow more skeptical? Not really, the problem lies deeper. I remember Wayne3100, who back then was still a member, addressing those million issues wrong with the database, like literally checking every champion, every skill, every number, every scaling and every item to see what was wrong. He found a bazillion mistakes and listed all of them because he couldn't actually edit them himself. He said that he'd do it if he actually could. Point is, some regular member who actually had no business with the database, because we already had the wiki, somehow found the strength to spend hours of his time to find what was wrong and to make sure the database would be restored to its former glory.

After this endeavour, Wayne was told that he'd be getting some type of power to actually manage the database. The truth was a little different: The rank Editor was created and a bunch of people with the proper amount of rep could just edit the database. Now, even though this seemed like sort of a **** move towards Wayne, it was actually a decent plan to make sure the database stays up-to-date; even though that didn't really happen for a while. Though, nowadays the Editors who are actually spending some of their time to fix the database and updating it ASAP after every patch are doing a great job so I guess that was a good move.

If my point, I was trying to illustrate with this anecdote, wasn't exactly clear; I'll spell it out: A member who basically just joined already developed such feel for this community that he'd spent literally hours to make things better even though he knew that no one really cared for the database to begin with. That's just something you don't see anymore. Now I do want to point out that it's easier to play or become a hero in a broken society or environment but I think my point is still valid.
yannis wrote:

Let me make things easier for you.

He is one of the top Youtubers worldwide.

We are a new channel going up against people with an "unfair" advantage like Potatomonster for example. 3+ years of huge sub base on me. I started this channel for MF in Oct-Nov-Dec.

If we do not partner up with influential in traffic or skill people we will find it hard to achieve a wide reach fast.

What about Phantoml0rd? There are many controversial figures and yes I have to approach this from a business perspective.

I wish there was a ton of 100k + subs youtubers I could freely partner up with, but they don't grow on trees.

You could argue that we are mobafire TV should do it all on our own etc, but how when the game is massively flawed in features for content, no replay system that really works, low to no content sent to us "spoonfeed" style like on potatomonster when he has more than 1k plays sent to him some days.

Just doing all we can to achieve some exposure, not every partner will be everyone's favorite I guess but he is famous partially for being controversial. I think that goes in many other sports etc.

Also, consulting the community for business decisions is a huge no no in any business.




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Shortly after the rank of veteran became virtually meaningless as it was bound to a certain amount of rep. I think this was invented to make life easier for Matt (and FlashJ?) because now they didn't actually have to pick vets anymore but I can't be sure as I have no intel and no one will ever answer these questions anyway. Now I'm not here to blame people or setting up a cool conspiracy theory you will find soon on www.mobafireconspiracy.org but it was a huge change in the community and it was never announced. Thus it shouldn't be a surprise that this change was met with heavy skepticism overall. At that particular point I didn't actually care about ever becoming a veteran since it required kissing just enough *** to get there. I don't know, it just didn't feel like an achievement anymore.
The veterans have been degraded to something similar as the Jedi council in the Star Wars prequels;
they are generally respected but no one really listens to them and think they're fools. Remnants of the past.
Maybe it's sort of true, I don't really know it anymore. The admins are no longer listening to the ideas of veterans and veterans are the ones who just have to answer stuff in the support forum hoping for a moderator who probably doesn't know what's going on either. Nowadays, no one really seems to know anything at all and the admins are actually no where to be found. An exception to this, you might add, is Mowen. However, as sad as it actually may sound, Mowen doesn't have all the powers Matt and FlashJ have. Though don't expect a huge rant about Mowen and how that dog of us isn't doing a good job because frankly she is. Mowen is community manager and she does that perfectly and more so I can't really say anything bad about how her job is done because it just runs smoothly.
Problem is that there are actually issues Mowen can't fix despite her being given the supreme rank of Administrator. By the way, I was coming up with this whole story while taking a shower but I completely forgot what I wanted to address and write down but don't worry it'll come back to me. ... ... Ah yes, right here. Wait what was I saying? Oh right. Point is, that from that moment I realised MOBAFire was making some changes; it went from a friendly, not very professional and small community to some kind of larger society that had to function with utmost efficiency. Now sometimes things just need to change but this was something radical and no one was really prepared for it. We were given zero insight in the decisions that were made back then. And that last part seems be recurring nightmare because it happened twice in very short time. Both of course referencing to the partnerships regarding MOBAFire TV but I'll get there later. The issue, as said, has all to do with MOBAFire's current policy.
I mean RIOT Games doesn't really care about our opinion as well but at least they announced their patch notes with videos and put them on their site before they patch. Hell they even created the PBE to give us insight in their way of developing this game. This is just perfect example of how to make your clients part of the process without actually letting them do anything. By just letting them slowly get used to the changes you're most likely gonna see more people embracing the change rather than hating it.

Now I can come up with more examples but I guess the idea is clear; the main issue is that MOBAFire is going through some drastic changes and makes some major decisions which are either great or awful but that actually becomes irrelevant if no one is prepared for them and will just dislike them because they are sudden changes. It's the very way of how humans work and I guess the people who are in charge of all this either fail to see that very obvious fact or just simply don't care. Either way, it's a legitimate reason to be alarmed, or so I think because nothing seems to make sense anymore. People's opinions are simply disregarded as being useless while you're managing a community.
 Now let us continue our journey to the wonder that is MOBAFire TV. Actually, I like the core idea of it and the way it started off was messy, chaotic and completely unprofessional; it was brilliant!

Honestly, no sarcasm here. It really felt like a new project and an experiment and no one really knew what was going to happen but everyone was actually excited. The first videos were really a disaster and at the same time incredibly awesome. Remember one of the very first "Top 5 Plays" videos? I did and the plays were awful, like they weren't top or big or anything really. In fact, most of them weren't plays but the absence of plays of the enemy players. Does this matter? No! Because you actually recognised the people in the videos and were like "hey they don't just suck, they can actually do good things.", well that might be just me but you get the point.
The thing is, MFTV reminded me of the days I just joined MOBAFire; everything was amateuristic and had a more cozy feel to me. Nowadays it's all cold, efficient and no one seems to really care for anything except for the numbers. No one really had the need for it anyway, we are trying to compete with protatomonster and others for no real reason. The only reason I actually liked MFTV is because you could see videos of people you knew. Watching GMD screw up with a hilarious TF level 1 Gold Card Flash (don't say you never saw it) is way more fun than watching some player we've never heard of making a decent Lee Sin play. MFTV really gave me the idea that was by the community and for the community but it was just another thing to get more ratings and to beat others we could never beat in the first place. And then the thing happened that actually caused me to write this blog: Athene went in partnership with MFTV! Sure, we should be cheering if this wasn't such a radical decision.
I mean, any other major youtube phenomenon would've been fine, no wait, great actuallly but yannis and his crew failed to keep in mind that Athene is actually a pretty controversial character in the League of Legends scene. Now hold your horses already, because I'm not saying that this is a terrible decision; it all depends on the point of view that you take. However, I do disapprove of the way it was done. There were no announcements beforehand or anything for that matter. It is important that you introduce these kind of major partnerships, regardless of who the parter is, because otherwise it will mostly be met with heavy skepticism rather than rejoice. Why? People dislike change, especially change out of their control.

Then, when the big moment is there and people are opposing the idea rather than embracing it, as was to be expected; Yannis and his associates or him alone, I didn't read every single comment start to act businessmen. The main message seems to be that this is a decision made on corporate level and that we as consumers, which is a wrong interpretation of them since we are actually the product but hey, don't understand any of it and that we never will. Though there are some people who are simply insulting Athene or other people from MFTV, questions are also asked about why this decision was made. Now here's where the problem starts; instead of explaining the actual decision, excuses are made and several, contradicting, arguments are made:
yannis wrote:

I don't understand, at the end of the day, I am responsible for this partnership and this decision. Do you think I would partner up with someone I haven't checked at all?

I know what his reputation is, I was in the WOW scene before he started in Nihilum. We had our fair share of watching him etc, and now in lol too.

He may not be the best mechanics player, he may not be worth his elo he may not be even gold level. That is not my concern or the reason I wanted to partner up with him.

Regardless of what internet trolls, overly biased comments and generic flaming the guy's charity is legit. His earnings are only YT and the information is public and can be checked.

I 10000% disregard and do not care for his skillcap/mechanics or actual ELO worth etc.

I care that he has a huge following of loyal friends on YT and Twitch, he cultivates and entertains that following.

Yes it may be with ridiculous dances and trollish uncommon gameplay but if you wanted to see Hyper-Challenger mechanics you would watch xPeke or something not Athene.

Whats the big deal about?

Also the guy that made the analogy of irl Rape vs trolling in a video game.... My mind was blown.

When someone plays bad in a video game, you do not make an analogy with an IRL sexual assault and rape crime which is nothing compared to "I TROLLED YOUR GAME". Trolling games is not a crime that will send you to jail, he is free to play the game any way he sees fit.

If he played the system, he may be banned or will drop in ELO to what he is actually worth eventually. Do we really mind that much about the ELO/mechanics worth of X or Y person?

I just wanted to co-operate with other popular individuals in the scene who have a good cause are reliable and would help us grow positively.

I didn't even really consider skill a factor when it came to athene. Thats not why he is in the Twitch community I think etc.

Just my humble opinion.
Here Yannis explains he doesn't care what Athene's reputation is and actually completely disregards anything negative regarding Athene. Now when your product or consumer already decided that they dislike your choice, it isn't exactly smart to say that you actually don't give a **** about their opinion. I mean, he even mocks them with his little comparison to rape.

I guess you could stick with this statement and go in the records as some greedy, insensitive and careless jerk but at least you have a statement. However, now we get this:
yannis wrote:

I like it how most people are so passionate about hating Athene, even though they never faced him, got trolled by him or are anywhere close to diamond to be affected by his EU West trolling. In essence hating :)
I don't think anyone can express how stupid this comment is. Regardless of the fact that it doesn't even make sense to begin with, you're now attacking everyone who disagrees with you directly by calling their anger unjustified and saying that they have no reason nor right to be angry. Not only is this missing the point entirely, but it is also completely dumb to actually do that, even if you're a corporate manager.

Now I don't actually really like throatslasher but this comment, as a response to Yannis is just spot-on:
throatslasher wrote:

Wow yannis. I literally cannot believe you just said that.

You just dismissed all of our legitimate complaints with some grade-A ********. You are pathetic.

I didn't make an analogy. Address my post instead of arguing terminology you coward.

NOBODY WANTS ATHENE HERE. All you are doing is legitimizing him and deligitimizing mobafire.
This post captures the anger and disrespect people feel when this happens. I mean, throatslasher can got a bit far with his posts but he has some fire and passion and you got to give him that. The problem is that no one is shown any respect at all, not even generally respected members such as myself. I know I am not the nicest person around but at least people respect me. There's a reason Heazle herself personally asked me to be a part of MFTV.

Then we get the comment mentioned earlier, it does state that we don't actually know what we are talking about and that MOBAFire is a business. Okay... I never really got the impression that MOBAFire was like a big business but I guess things change. I may not like it but if that's the truth then so be it. Anyway, the next post by Yannis is not only completely out of line, it's also just disrespectful:
yannis wrote:

Ok, lets do it that way. How about you guys freely spot youtubers you think would contribute or individuals and I get my team on it to make it happen. I will use your initiative instead.
Okay, so now he wants us to do his job because we think we can do it better? Not only is that not even an argument, it's just being immature. Also remember that it is even worse because he's actually getting paid for this.

Now my final quote and probably strangest of all:
yannis wrote:

1K subs or around that should be fine, serious deals around 50K + would be better. We help smaller youtubers too, there are some great content makers out there.
Note that this was a response to what was actually the requirement of a partnership like this. Suddenly we help the youtubers instead of them helping us! Suddenly we became the big boss around here. I mean, we needed them right? You know, to make sure MFTV didn't fall apart? That it actually started to get us high ratings and money and.. I dunno other stuff I guess.

I think this just addresses the core issue that MOBAFire now has. People like Yannis just show no respect whatsoever for anyone in the community and when they have to explain something they just come up with a bazillion contradicting arguments that hold no ground. There's change, there's confusion, there's anger and we got some guy in charge who has no idea how to solve or handle this. If Yannis actually just made one statment where he stated that he didn't care about Athene's business because RIOT's system let it happen and didn't punish him. And that Athene was actually gonna be great for MOBAFire because of his charity and huge amount of subscribers. Well then you actually made a single statement that answered all questions. Sure people can still disagree with it but at least you've answered their questions, took away the chaos and showed people some respect. Instead he treated them, myself included, as morons who have no idea what's going on in the business world.

Now I don't actually wanna call him on his business strategies or experience to work with complex corporate systems but all conversations I actually had with him never showed that he's truly the businessman he pretends to be. The only thing I can just make up out of all this is that just has no people skills.

Though I should give him some credit that he actually is making MFTV a thing right now but at what cost exactly? I mean, I don't think that there are many members out here who still respect him. I know I don't. Also I don't know what his job description is so maybe he isn't really a manager at all but then again, if you don't know anything about computers, you aren't gonna make yourself a manager of a computer store. If you don't have any people skills, don't get yourself involved in a major community. And I actually made this analogy because the community is the product rather than the consumer.

Anyway, I just wrote this blog to actually share my thoughts without the thread being locked before I can actually get any answers. Also, I'd like to know how you guy stand on this, and please don't start again about Athene and how soulless Yannis acted on this because I just discussed that. As said before it's not about details, it's about the issue underneath it.

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts,