Laptop
From TribalWar
Contents |
The Donation Drive
During the development of Tribes: Vengeance, TribalWar was poised to be the official community site of the Tribes series. They were being backed by Sierra and Vivendi and a marketing plan was being set into motion. In order to sustain the traffic of the flood of new visitors expected and in order to handle the new projects being developed for the site, TribalWar required additional server capacity.
As the plan and backing of VUG was not official and the fact that the site made no real money through advertisements, a donation drive[1] was set into motion to get a single, more powerful server to act as the database server while the web traffic would be split between the current servers already in place.
The donation drive went very well and more money ($4000) was gathered than was required for the server. The server was purchased and the rest of the money was added to the TW bank for other purchases that might come up.
The Laptop
Soon after the donation drive, the community radio group WOFN was formed to provide shoutcasting of matches, community news, etc.
The group was invited to San Francisco to broadcast live the first showing of Tribes: Vengeance to the public and the press. In order to do this broadcast, equipment needed to be brought down on a plane and setup in an auditorium for the broadcast.
It was decided by the current staff that a laptop would be purchased as the broadcast machine and a video camera would be purchased for video coverage. The leftover money from the donation drive (about $500) was used to help subsidize the cost of the laptop (which cost $1300) and the video camera was paid for by Colosus out of his own pocket.
Some of the laptop money was paid for by Excal, Dwarfvader and Bodyshot from WOFN[2] as this was a piece of equipment that would be used by the station for road trips in the future as well. Plane tickets for Colosus and PixieDee to go to the event were also purchased by Colosus out of pocket.
The Drama
A notable poster by the name of fraggle was leaked information from a disgruntled WOFN staffer that money was "stolen" from the TribalWar funds. Fraggle posted this information[3] in a thread on the forums in order to generate some drama around the donation drive.
He made the claim that not only was money "stolen" from the TribalWar funds for a laptop, but was also used to fly PixieDee to the event in San Francisco.
Colosus denied ever stealing any money from TribalWar. Money from the funds were used to purchase the laptop, which at the time was a needed device for TribalWar, thus fit under the purview of the TribalWar funds. Colosus did in fact buy a ticket for PixieDee to attend the San Francisco event on behalf of WOFN, but this purchase was made from his own pocket[4].
There are still people who feel slighted by the purchase of the laptop. Due to that fact, Colosus donated every dollar that was used from the funds to purchase the laptop back to TribalWar[5]. Still some people refuse to donate to TribalWar due to this fiasco.
The Finale
The laptop was also used at Tribal-Wars: West for WOFN broadcasting as well as casts performed by Colosus from his home. Soon after T:V failed, the laptop was given to Yogi so that he could perform TribalWar development. Later, it died and was discarded never to be seen again.
References
- ↑ http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261134
- ↑ http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5914387#post5914387
- ↑ http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278466
- ↑ http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5908668#post5908668
- ↑ http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11218270#post11218270
