From a given point back in time tho they started to restrict more and more the access to the tournaments , to the recorded games even and this is wrong. It was wrong when I was part of the team and it is wrong now as they keep adding the so called guidelines.
The streaming team tho is different story. Taff keep saying that Voobly = AoC community , wrong , we are all AoC community no matter how good or bad you think someone (or more) or a group is/are. Another thing is when you point out people are wrong just because they don’t agree with you , share your views and thoughts , you sound like ONLY you hold the absolute truth , you’re NEVER wrong , you ALWAYS know more than all the others and you NEVER point out that YOU might do something wrong , damn did I just describe GOD ? Shame on me !
We all are talking and behaving based on personal tastes , preferences and so on , nobody holds the absolute truth and thus everything is just relative to each of us. If something is good for you doesn’t mean is good for me or others as well and vice-versa. Please stop thinking that EVERYTHING you say is ALWAYS right and everybody should take it accordingly , yes it is right for you and your followers not for ALL community.
If you're going to argue your case here, then those kind of digs at individuals doesn't help at all. Taff is one of the most reasonable guys I've ever met. He has strong opinions, sure, but he is always ready to be proven wrong, and that's exactly how it should be.
If Voobly really want to help community grow they should listen to it and sometimes even try their suggestions and see how it goes, As an exercise for this for example , let free access to the rest of 1vs1 Invitational and see how it goes. I am pretty sure that Voobly’s 300 viewers plus ZE’s 500+ viewers plus Memb’s 500+ viewers plus other streamer’s channels that can bring more and more viewers will help the community grow , not forcing ALL the community to watch the live events only in 1 channel either they like it or not ; start to build walls and you’ll constantly have to build more and more and by doing so , instead of blending in the community along with all the others , no matter that you share or not their oppinions you will sepparate from it and the gap will increase more and more.
If Voobly wants to keep helping the community grow, then they have to keep doing what they have been doing so far: keep improving and managing the gaming client, hosting and running tournaments, arrange things so that individuals such as swissboyy and poisn can run their tournaments as well, and so on.
Regarding the streaming aspect of their tournaments, I agree with their justification and reasoning for wanting to stream it on VooblyOfficial within their team. It is fine that people disagree, but just because X amount members are vocal about it, doesn't mean that the majority of the community agrees with it. It doesn't mean that they disagree either. But take away their right to follow their vision from the Voobly team, and suddenly they lose a huge part of their motivation to do all the groundwork to begin with, and suddenly we've taken 10 steps back.
Another bad example for Voobly trying to own and restrict acces to tournaments was few days ago when T90 chose to stream live Viper vs Lojza first Bo7 instead of streaming live Voobly’s tournament games when ONLY Voobly members had acces and could do it for the community even tho Nelson was also there , it’s np he chose to stream that live in his private channel , it was his preference , but like I said , he was available to do the Arabia live for Voobly and he didn’t , only that after Voobly to say they will stream the recs for that event ? Really ? MoA3 was already with 4-5 streamers while none for Voobly’s! Why you guys didn’t do the exact reverse sequence , stream live Voobly’s event and please the viewers and after , stream the recs which were already covered live by more than 1 channel , if you care so much for the community. Point is , if that was free access I am sure that someone could stream those games live as well and please everybody because most of people can watch more than 1 channel at the same time (multitwitch for example) instead of just licking the cherry on top of the cake. So big coincidence to see so many streamers interested in MoA3 later stages but during it , in the first stages only 1 man streaming and covering 100%.
T90 had already streamed a lot of the matches that lead up to this, so it's only natural that he wants to stream the final itself as well, which was his right, just as any other streamer that streamed it according to the tournament rules, regardless if they had streamed 1 or 100 games before the final. Voobly had streams running for hours before the final of arena, and they communicated with me and Lojza as well if we could move our match one hour back so we didn't clash and everyone could enjoy the different matches without multiple games being streamed at the same time. This is nothing but good when a Grand Final of a successful tournament is taking place.
Some of you in the Voobly team keep saying it’s an “army” that is working to ensure good organization of the events to cover all the aspects , in that case maybe you should contact swissboyy , who mostly by himslef manage to take care of this MoA3 tournament that ran flawlesly , huge success and he didn’t need an “army” to do so. I’m not saying that is something very easy to do or is a piece of cake but look in his topic to see his work , recs posted , links to VOD’s , interviews , prediction , schedule , everything , only 1 MAN !
Of course swissboyy made a massive effort and did the huge majority of the work for his tournament(which was amazingly ran btw), but if you were to ask him to compile a list of everyone that contributed to the tournament outside of playing it, there would be plenty names on that list.
Taff , stop thinking you’re superior and step down from the pedestal yourself climbed on. Facts speak for themselves , a good work or a good deed replaces 1 million endless words , more facts and less words is always better. You found out about the problem I had with my PC from Memb , what have you done ? Asking me if I need something ,but doing nothing , in these situations you either do cause you feel so or don’t ; who doesn’t need help ? What’s the point in asking somebody if he needs help when he has problems , obviously he does ! Who doesn’t need money ? It’s not a shame, I’m not begging and not stealing. Now I’m not saying you should’ve done something only pointing out what you felt to do and is fine , sometimes overthinking and doing nothing is not the best way , a helping hand is always appreciated and the one to send me something back then to help without asking was Memb.
What's even the point of this part? Is it another dig at Taff? A praise of Memb? I don't see what this has to do with the case you're arguing, just unnecessary.
Taff say Voobly is community stream , but we the others are what ? Mercenaries , pirates , robbers , rebels ? We all do this for the community and everybody can start it if they feel so. You don’t say it in words but you make it sound and feel like the private channels are so bad , why ? Cause of donations ?
Does that makes me a bad person or automatically exclude me from the AoC community cause you suggest so ?
Again, I think you're interpreting things your own way. Taff has zero problems with personal channels, as long as they don't interfere with their rules for Vooblys own tournaments.
You also have that in your channel , everything is free and none has to pay a dime to open the stream and watch it , the donations are just more support showed from some viewers that can afford it , it’s nothing like a demand or so .
In Voobly you have the premium memberships which is somehow like donations , people that appreciate the high quality and want some extra and can afford , buy those premiums , they are not mandatory , so please stop suggesting that private channels are bad just because of that.
As a big player in the community tho , Voobly should try to find ways to bring and work together with as many people that can do something to help the community grow , like they did last night bringing ZE to Voobly’s channel as co caster and finally after long time they felt the sweet 1000+ viewers again , not to sepparate from them like they actually do in reality and the hard part to understand is why Voobly is so angry and restrictive over a game , over something that they say is free completely , makes no sense. This level of frustration and angry usually is when women or money are involved.
Well, they're right. Everything is free, and that's part of their vision. I've rarely seen anger as you put it regarding personal channels or money, it's just two sides with different ways of doing things. The anger or frustration would be there if people go behind their backs or completely ignores the rules for one of their tournaments.
When me and Memb were in the team , not once was mentioned about him not allowed to upload games in his YT channel , even more before the big mess Memb asked Taff it it’s ok to upload those in his YT channel and Taff said it’s ok , mostly the ones he was either streaming or co casting so he was working for them and let’s not forget that he uploads to YT since 2014 , so his followers there knows that he does it everytime he streams , they find new content on a daily basis and of course is highly appreciated; now you want to stop it all of a sudden cause it doesn’t suit you anymore , you shoud’ve stopped Memb to upload Voobly content right from the first not after 2 years (it is similar to the story of husband telling wife is she doesn’t cook him dinner he will throw the cat out of the window and wife replies , you should have done this 10 years ago).
So it wasn’t a problem untill his channel became successfull and big enough to see him as a competiton for Voobly, not by him but by Voobly .
Again is sad for me to see this mentality from Voobly as whoever is not with them, not agrees with them , is against them.
So Taff started to say that that is Voobly content , it belongs only to Voobly YT channel yada yada yada , when in fact Memb was/is doing a favor not only to Voobly as a platform because he mention and link to it but also to AoC offering more exposure to the game via his YT channel.
This is also the case with ZE’s channels with even bigger audience than both Voobly’s and Memb’s . So what’s wrong with with it ? The fact that ZE and Memb has videos from games played in tournaments under Voobly logo stops Voobly to have the content in 1 place ? Voobly already has it there but what’s wrong with the content being exposed in 1 , 2 or more channels ? The more the better for AOC as a whole . What’s wrong with ZE’s or Memb’s channel being more popular than Voobly’s ?
It doesn’t hurt for AoC , it only hurts probably some ego’s.
When you and Memb were part of the team, you were both vocal against ZeroEmpires personal channel streaming Voobly tournaments. Now you're both in a similar positon to his, and suddenly your opinion has changed. I'm not saying you're wrong in what you want, as I completely understood ZeroEmpires' point of view and his position back then as well, but it's very hypocritical to me.
Regarding Youtube, maybe in Voobly's case it was just a realization that VooblyOfficial content should be on VooblyOfficial's youtube, just like Membs content should be on his youtube, and ZeroEmpires on his, as it just makes sense. ZeroEmpires had the same offer when they were discussing him streaming voobly tournaments, he could stream on VooblyOfficial but move the videos he streamed to his Youtube channel. Maybe that wouldn't be an option anymore if it is as you say, that VooblyOfficials content should be on Voobly's YT now. Both ways make sense regardless, it's just down to preference or whatever decision the ones in charge make on the case. It also makes sense to keep tournaments streamed at the same channel, so that everyone knows where to find the content for that tournament that they are following.
The biggest problem here is that you view it as if Voobly's mentality is that if you're not with them, you're against them. I think the actual mentality issue is on the other end, where you think that if Voobly disagrees with you, they're against you. This is not how it is. They have nothing against personal channels, they just want the personal channels to abide their rules with their tournaments. I'm sure they have no problems with Zak, Memb or anyones personal channel growing or becoming bigger than them, as long as they follow their rules when it comes to streaming their tournaments.
Another thing that made me stop going back to stream for Voobly , the new guidelines. In the past I remember before Memb got his fiber optic connection and he wanted to stream some important games Taff and Gennette ALWAYS were saying that they prefer me to stream it cause stable connection , no worries and they were thinking about offering this to viewers instead of some possible surprise drops , so they were thinking about the viewers to have a minimum quality stream (by this I don’t mean I was above others cause it’s not the case , I am a terrible caster with less knowledge than others but could offer stability and some entertainment in the stream appreciated by some and disliked by some others).
But after we left Taff changed that with the new guidelines and suggesting that whoever wants to stream something , go for it cause we’re all the same. We’re not the same and again I am not saying in the way that I am superior to others (one more time , I am a terrible caster) but is a fact that I streamed for Voobly for more than 2 years arranging my whole life around AoC and Voobly, also Memb with family married and with 1 little girl , was doing big efforts , sometimes skipping something he has to do with family just to be with me either streaming or cocasting , to arrange his life as well and make all the streams we did, and we didn´t ask for it , was Taff mostly who wanted us to do it, which was fine, but then after the mess with Maldives , what we got was that he said straight to us , ok you and Memb now are the same as the new comers and that I think is somewhat disrespectfull for all the work we did for Voobly to provide the shows for the community (this one the community can judge , facts should speak more than words).
I don’t need any medal or reward for it , I did it cause I love the game , I had the tools and time for it ; but don’t tell me we are all the same cause we all have different level of game knowledge , entertainment , video/audio quality, the ability to follow the important things happening in the game , so how can you let a total newcomer take an important event , you gotta have some criteria that you assign streamers according to how important an event is. Do you see in football any rookie shooting the penalty in an important game ? Never! Only those with experience. Same here , again no disrespect to anyone but you can’t have a random guy stream the grand final for 1vs1 Invitational , if you do that it means you don’t care about your viewers to offer the best and affordable quality possible (again by quality I mean all included mentioned before , video/audio , knowledge , entertainment etc).
No one is better than other one in absolute terms , we offer different levels of show based on quality, it’s viewers preference and none of us will ever have a 100% audience to love it , that’s why try to offer them options to choose ; the 10/30/50% of the viewers that might not enjoy to watch the stream in 1 channel can go to others that they like more ; force them in 1 place is the wrong way to do things , as it was/is also wrong to think that if you please 60/70% of the audience is fine ; if you care enough you find ways to offer the rest of 30/40% chance to enjoy it also by giving them more options and obviously increasing the total number of viewers enjoying the show.
http://prntscr.com/a6dzps
Check it and see how it is , if it was only in 1 channel would’ve enjoyed 800-900 viewers on average , give or take , but being open like this , close to 2000 viewers enjoyed the show in their prefered channel. Who won ? Definitely AoC and the community !
At the end of the day Voobly will do whetever they think is good for them , not ALL community , but I hope they will change their mind , even like I said earlier , for a test to see how it goes, try it once.
Again, as mentioned before, this is their vision. If people within their team were given special treatment, like when ZeroEmpires wanted to join in on the Voobly Tournaments, if he was allowed to stream on his own channel, then he would have been put above you, which goes against everything they've worked for so far. You and Memb would have been on the same line as the newcomers, but of course all the work you've put in in the past isn't suddenly forgotten. You would still have gotten more of the bigger events because of who you were, even though on paper you are on the same line with the same rights. Remember, you and Memb started from scratch as well and had a lot of criticism when you first begun, but Taff and the team was there from the start to support you and help you out in any way, just as they're doing with the new team now.
Obviously I expect some furious replies from some people to twist the context, the facts , to make them look different , to make me look completely wrong , etc.
I am not a native english speaker so I can’t ever compete with one , if others would have to speak my language , would be so easy for me to give 10 different meanings to some words and facts. But it’s np , it is expected since will be hard to digest for some. Who am I ? Just a random guy from the AoC community that loves this game.
In the end I wanna say excuse my poor english and the eventual grammar mistakes. I will keep streaming in my channel , whoever likes it will be there , the ones that don’t they have other options , no hard feelings towards anyone , freedom of choice is awesome. Again this is my own point of view , the way I see things from my perspective.
Thanks to all that appreciate and likes my style and also thanks to those that dislike it cause without them we wouldn’t have diversity. Have fun everybody and in the end remember that we all love this game and share the passion for it in our own ways that sometimes are different one from another but serve the same purpose, AoC.
I have immense respect for the amount of time and work you've put into this game, and I'm glad to see you continue streaming on your own channel, and I hope you view my response the way it is meant to be.