Declaration of Independence (or somesuch) -- Posted by Elly
Recently another WoW site has sold to IGE (the gold selling organisation) and this has fueled much discussion, a lot of it angry. As you'd expect it's not always openly advertised that a site has been purchased by such an outfit so it's not apparent if the money you are generating for a site (via ad banners or subscription services) is funding a company such as IGE as is the case with wowinterface, thotbot, the ogaming network, and most recently alakhazam. I'm sure there are plenty more but they don't come to mind just now.
Looking over some of the mails received over the weekend so far I felt it pertinent to clarify absolutely that worldofwar.net is not owned or affiliated with IGE. I will be up front and say that we have been approached in the past and although they clearly have substantial funds to wave about it's not somewhere we wish to take worldofwar.net. The Unofficial Sites and LoadedInc Network have always been about serving the community and working together with game developers.
This is also the reason we do not promote gold selling services offered through advertising and it's hoped sites such as wowwiki, goblinworkshop, warcraftmovies follow suit and disassociate themselves from services that violate a game's EULA/ToS. I hope this will answer questions and lay to rest any concerns
If you haven't been there and used their resources before, head on over and give them some support for not giving into the lure of money over being ethical. Kudos to them!