Greetings all. I'm sure that almost all of you have heard of Infinity Ward Nation even if you haven't heard of me personally; I am the founder. I am going to repost something that I posted at the IWN forums, and then elaborate more afterwards to reveal the truth as to what exactly, from my point of view, happened with IWN.
Quote:
Originally posted by From IWN
Greetings, all.
It is my sincere hope that this post and thread is not defaced in any way, be it from flaming, moderator action, or other.
First off let me introduce myself to those of you who do not already know me.
My name is Dave Diller, more commonly known around here as Morphious or Morph. I, along with several others (Skwerl, Patton, Maniac, and Cold-Phoenix), started IW Nation in September 2003 with the intention of simply becoming a leading Call of Duty fansite at the time. We chose the name IW Nation in order to expand to any future projects that Infinity Ward may choose to undertake. We were hosted by a generous friend who gave us all the space and bandwidth we required for virtually no cost. Unfortunately, the cost of providing for us caught up with him, as we were consuming hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth each month. At that time, I had to make a choice as to what to do. I found another host, again who was more than happy to provide us with what we needed for free, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
We were able to be hosted on his servers for a few months, where I increased relations with Infinity Ward further and even got the chance to visit their studio in Los Angeles. I was having regular telephone conversations with IW CEO and President Grant Collier, and he truly seemed concerned with the wellbeing of Infinity Ward Nation and its community that had grown at that time, which was one of the largest Call of Duty communities on the 'net. He coined us the 'Official IW Forums' and put links on IW's web site to IWN and the forums here. Overall it seemed like a great relationship was being built and at that time, even Infinity Ward employees and Activision employees kept on registering and posting, getting feedback from the community and putting their two cents in as well.
The deal we had with this host soon turned sour and it was up to us again to find a new host. After more than a month of down time and, in addition, little funds available from the founding members of IW Nation, we turned to Infinity Ward for help. Although they legally couldn't assist us - Activision wouldn't allow it - they helped us find a new host; FK Mod. At first, the entire staff here at IWN was skeptical about transfering over to FK Mod. We didn't really know any of them and the telephone conference calls we had with FKMod members and IW employees always seemed sketchy, full of accusations and seemingly empty promises. After a while, one thing led to another and, long story short, FK Mod got control of the web site and domain name. I was, to state it bluntly, furious at the situation. Grant helped me deal with the issues by reassuring me that FK Mod was full of great, talented people who could do some real good for IWN and its community. Soon after the debacle, Infinity Ward offered me three tickets to the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May. I met up with some more of the developers and employees of Infinity Ward and got some footage - some of you may remember the XBox 360 'shaky-cam' footage; all of that was done by a friend of mine and myself, as they were prohibiting any photography - especially filming - at the 360 booths. After we got back from E3, we gave the footage and a writeup to Infinity Ward Nation and soon after, Grant Collier asked me to step down from IW Nation. When I refused at first, my admin privelages were stripped from me.
That was nearly a year ago. Relations between Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty (2) community have since, obviously, deteriorated.
It is my intention to repair those broken links between IW and IWN, or at least get their opinion on the whole situation. Obviously Infinity Ward either doesn't feel it is appropriate to comment on the situation or they fear the repercussions of saying the wrong thing. I say that saying the wrong thing is much better than saying nothing at all in a situation like this.
I am intending on starting up a web site soon and hope that those who enjoyed IWN before relations soured support my future endeavors.
I have left out many details regarding the transfer of the site to FK Mod and some reasons behind Grant asking me to leave (including, probably most seriously, a potential 'threat' to Infinity Ward by the starting up of a site known as FPS Nation, which I had stated numerous times would never get off the ground if Grant did not want it) and the like. If you have any questions about the situation at all please do not hesitate to contact me via PM or email (dmdiller [at] gmail [dot] com)
If you would like to help out with a new web site (obviously game-related), please contact me by one of the methods above. If you wish, you can also contact me via AIM (The Morphing One) or MSN (morphious@fpsnation.com)
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Now, to get to the dirty stuff that I didn't get into at IWN.
Firstly, just so that you guys can be assured that I'm giving as much of the two sides of the story as one person can do, I recognize my stubbornness, my ****ty attitude, my immaturity, in the whole situation with FKMod. Perhaps if I had calmed down, things would have been different, but they weren't.
Now, let me address the domain name.
There were several telephone conversations that involved myself, Meatshield, FK, Blackcat, Freeman, and Grant Collier, that took place in the week(s) prior to the 'transfer' of IWN to FK. These telephone conversations were peppered with frustration and doubts, and several times nothing was concluded and Meatshield and myself (the two representing Infinity Ward Nation) needed to talk the situation over again in a seperate telephone call after a conference call with the others.
At first, Meat took my stance on the issue. Although we appreciated their technical finness, we didn't see as if these guys were fit to run a community of thousands. FKMod was a fairly small operation, and these guys wanted complete control basically. They promised us that we'd retain our positions as admins and still have all the access we once had.
One of the conditions of the transfer to FK Mod's servers was that the domain name (iwnation.com) would be transferred over to FK Mod's account, where they apparently have all of their domain names. I didn't see the purpose of this; they claimed it was for 'technical issues' in case the DNS needed to be changed. Anybody who knows anything about owning a domain name knows that changing the DNS takes about two seconds to do and it would really make no difference if they owned it or if I did, for the sake of that...but it was my way out. I wanted to keep control of the domain because it was the way to leave FK Mod in the event that the relationship turned sour.
Of course, Grant wouldn't allow it; he sided with the FK guys and when I still refused to give up the domain, I brought it up to the rest of the staff. Everybody on IWN staff hated the idea of us giving up the domain. It was our pride and joy and we felt like somebody was stealing our baby, so to speak. None of us liked it.
A few more phone conferences took place and eventually Meatshield for some reason had a change of heart. I felt outnumbered but wouldn't give in. Grant at that time also said that if I didn't go with FKMod, that he'd take away the 'Official' tag that he had given us a few months earlier. I felt like keeping the Official tag was more important than my 'selfishness' to keep the site in my own hands, so I gave in.
A few days later, I accepted the transfer of IWN over to the FK Mod servers, but still refused to give up the domain name. At that time, somebody - I can only assume it was somebody from FKMod -
hacked into my GoDaddy account, transfered the domain name without my consent, and changed my GoDaddy password. (I don't even know HOW to transfer the domain, which is proof (if you take my word) that I didn't do it).
This fact is overlooked by everybody, including IW who, I assume, condoned the action, as they said nothing in opposition to it. I was on the phone with GoDaddy Tech Support for a good half an hour before I got access into my account again, and even when I did there was nothing they could do to get the domain name back, as whoever transfered it was logged in as me when they did transfer it.
So, of course, I got FURIOUS at this point. Wanting the domain name is one thing. Hacking into my personal account and STEALING it from me is another. I blew up at the FK Mod guys for stealing it and at Grant Collier for not doing anything about it, not even slapping them on the wrists so to speak. At that time, Grant asked me to step down at IWN and I didn't at first, but when my FTP access and Admin privelages at the forum were stripped from me I pretty much had no choice.
A few other side notes.
Firstly, one of the conditions of the transfer was that the FKMod guys would invest some of their time that they spend browsing the site also into logging onto some instant messenging service, be it AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo...anything, really. That NEVER happened and still to this day has not, from what I hear from the members of IWN staff that still are around and active.
Secondly, in no way am I saying that I'm not to blame. There were many things I could have done to prevent the situation, like being wiser when choosing a host for IW Nation.
I think that covers most of what I can't say on IW Nation. To those of you who think that IW Nation is still a great place, I beg you to consider the state of it since FK Mod has taken over as opposed to before that happened. Granted I may not have been organized, may not have been as responsible when it comes to hosting as I should have, but at least I know how to run a site of that magnitude and also have a good attitude about that.
And oh yeah, I'm not a thief.
Any questions, please post them here in this topic and I will be more than happy to address anything regarding the situation. Also feel free to bash me as much as you wish for my mistakes in the whole situation as long as the bashing is justified.
MODERATORS: I hope that you do not delete this thread. As far as I see it, I am doing no harm in exposing the truth behind the situation.
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