After reading all the posts from the recent Article from 007 I am going to throw a few things out.
One: For those of you thinking we just kicked out the leaders without investigating the issue. We spent five straight nights from about 8 PM to 3-4 AM every night talking to people, talking to some of them, listening to them lie to our faces, and figuring out what we needed to do.
Two: Technically we never kicked them out. They sent messages out that they had been kicked out while we were talking to the first of three of them. No decision had been made. The fact is that when the message went out the one in the room with us stopped talking because he was shocked then left the room. Would they had been kicked - yes probably, but to do it this way they have tried to increase the drama and make themselves martyrs.
Three: Saying that they didn't poach and only people who wanted to come did. They are still pulling people in rooms and lying to them. We have had members come and tell us. Find some people who are still here, but were friends with them they will tell you. They even went as far as to lie about one of our community leaders going with them to try and convince people to leave.
Four: For the people who said XG used poaching to start our community. When the small group of us who dreamed up XG decided to leave KSI that is what we did. We gave the owner of KSI all of our clan information, left him the domain names that 007 paid for, and wished him luck. We did not post any articles, forum post, or any other kind of message saying we were leaving. Our members came and found us. Once again many of them are still in the community today. Go ask Black Knight if we poached him from KSI.
Five: For the people who think we copied KSI's rank structure or Honor Code / Rules. Go look at their structure it does not even look like ours. As far as the Honor Code and Rules. We are the ones that wrote it for them. When I was recruited by 007 in KSI he had about 50 members in his clan KSI had about 400 members total in three different areas. Nine month later KSI had about 4500 members and 4000 of them were from our part of the community. The rules were developed by us for our group. The funny thing was we decide to re-write them for XGC because we wanted a new start.
Six: And my favorite part that always comes up. 007 and myself are rich guys who have made all of our money off this site and you gamers. The truth is we are an incorporated company with 5 owners who each own 20%. We have incorporated the name to protect ourselves legally. We have to file taxes with the government every year, which is public record for those who don't know. As in our public records you will see that no owner has ever taken a kickback or salary. For those of you who don't know the cost of a website this size: About $200 a month for servers that won't lag and an average of $100 a month for the webmaster that monitors our site to keep it from getting hacked. $200 a year for licensing fees for the website. About $400 a year to our accountant who check that we are reinvest all monies made and tells us we are stupid every year for keeping open a business that does not make money. I will also go to tell you that last year was our most profitable year ever. We made $104 total. Let's see that $21 a piece if we pull and distribute the retained earnings to our five owners. Until this year the most we ever made was $7. This also does not include the approximately $5000 - $8000 invested by the five of us over the years (most of from 007 and Otto). I am going to attach a copy of our tax statement for this year. It is a Schedule K-1 (Form 1120S) from the IRS. For the people will then say I faked the document check with the IRS it is public record because we are incorporated.
I would like to close in saying this. It had taken a lot of time and money to build what we have. We give this to our great members for free. For those of you who do buy subscriptions to help pay for the site I do appreciate it. Though we do not make money at least we no longer have to spend our own personal funds to keep it up. Keep in mind for years we did just that. Most of our members appreciate the service we try to provide, but those of you who come on here and accuse us of stuff without having your facts straight really pisses me off. If you want to accuse us of something come to us and let's talk. Don't post BS you have no idea about on the site. For those of you who think we don't investigate issues and we jump to conclusions look at the amount of time we don't spend playing games. For those of you who say we don't have an open door policy. Go find one person who has directly asked to talk to myself or 007 and hasn't gotten in a room with one of us.
I would also like not announce the formation on Hades' Two Cents Monthly. If anyone wants to hear about anything about XG from how we started, what goes on in the meetings, to how many times 007 and I have yelled at each other. Just go to my forum and post your question in the Hade's two cents thread. I will pick a topic and write a article about it at least once a month.
One: For those of you thinking we just kicked out the leaders without investigating the issue. We spent five straight nights from about 8 PM to 3-4 AM every night talking to people, talking to some of them, listening to them lie to our faces, and figuring out what we needed to do.
Two: Technically we never kicked them out. They sent messages out that they had been kicked out while we were talking to the first of three of them. No decision had been made. The fact is that when the message went out the one in the room with us stopped talking because he was shocked then left the room. Would they had been kicked - yes probably, but to do it this way they have tried to increase the drama and make themselves martyrs.
Three: Saying that they didn't poach and only people who wanted to come did. They are still pulling people in rooms and lying to them. We have had members come and tell us. Find some people who are still here, but were friends with them they will tell you. They even went as far as to lie about one of our community leaders going with them to try and convince people to leave.
Four: For the people who said XG used poaching to start our community. When the small group of us who dreamed up XG decided to leave KSI that is what we did. We gave the owner of KSI all of our clan information, left him the domain names that 007 paid for, and wished him luck. We did not post any articles, forum post, or any other kind of message saying we were leaving. Our members came and found us. Once again many of them are still in the community today. Go ask Black Knight if we poached him from KSI.
Five: For the people who think we copied KSI's rank structure or Honor Code / Rules. Go look at their structure it does not even look like ours. As far as the Honor Code and Rules. We are the ones that wrote it for them. When I was recruited by 007 in KSI he had about 50 members in his clan KSI had about 400 members total in three different areas. Nine month later KSI had about 4500 members and 4000 of them were from our part of the community. The rules were developed by us for our group. The funny thing was we decide to re-write them for XGC because we wanted a new start.
Six: And my favorite part that always comes up. 007 and myself are rich guys who have made all of our money off this site and you gamers. The truth is we are an incorporated company with 5 owners who each own 20%. We have incorporated the name to protect ourselves legally. We have to file taxes with the government every year, which is public record for those who don't know. As in our public records you will see that no owner has ever taken a kickback or salary. For those of you who don't know the cost of a website this size: About $200 a month for servers that won't lag and an average of $100 a month for the webmaster that monitors our site to keep it from getting hacked. $200 a year for licensing fees for the website. About $400 a year to our accountant who check that we are reinvest all monies made and tells us we are stupid every year for keeping open a business that does not make money. I will also go to tell you that last year was our most profitable year ever. We made $104 total. Let's see that $21 a piece if we pull and distribute the retained earnings to our five owners. Until this year the most we ever made was $7. This also does not include the approximately $5000 - $8000 invested by the five of us over the years (most of from 007 and Otto). I am going to attach a copy of our tax statement for this year. It is a Schedule K-1 (Form 1120S) from the IRS. For the people will then say I faked the document check with the IRS it is public record because we are incorporated.
I would like to close in saying this. It had taken a lot of time and money to build what we have. We give this to our great members for free. For those of you who do buy subscriptions to help pay for the site I do appreciate it. Though we do not make money at least we no longer have to spend our own personal funds to keep it up. Keep in mind for years we did just that. Most of our members appreciate the service we try to provide, but those of you who come on here and accuse us of stuff without having your facts straight really pisses me off. If you want to accuse us of something come to us and let's talk. Don't post BS you have no idea about on the site. For those of you who think we don't investigate issues and we jump to conclusions look at the amount of time we don't spend playing games. For those of you who say we don't have an open door policy. Go find one person who has directly asked to talk to myself or 007 and hasn't gotten in a room with one of us.
I would also like not announce the formation on Hades' Two Cents Monthly. If anyone wants to hear about anything about XG from how we started, what goes on in the meetings, to how many times 007 and I have yelled at each other. Just go to my forum and post your question in the Hade's two cents thread. I will pick a topic and write a article about it at least once a month.