Fixing the creator power trips

hey i have been a user of gaus macro for a long time and i do sub to his patreon as ido with other creators and never have i been asked to pay for a macro by anyone, and if anything i can say that gau has gone above and beyond to help me and other people , so really dont get where all this is coming from , but in all fairness why would you repost someone elses hard work ?? meh beats me , love peace to all and crack on i say :slight_smile:

i mean he didnt repost it as his own work it had gaupandas macro all over it

and like i have said 100 times over gau is a brilliant macro creator and he has helped many people in the past only now has he started to paygate his macros on the promise of posting it here later and we know thats not his goal what he has done is built a following to then take members from WLM into his own private discord with a paygate for macros now and in the future it goes against why this website and addon was made in the first place

and dont worry voodoo we and there are far more then are commenting here are very active in gaupandas discord we know whats being said we know he is spamming both in general and in private to get members to come here and rinse repeat the exact same message i have never been forced blah blah

see the thing is we dont care about him having patron etc etc but what he has done and how he has gone about it and then the threats of violence and openly asking moderators for peopls ip adress is a shocking abuse of power

again the macro was posted by someone who purchased it and it had gaupandas macro all over it it is not illegal to do that its like you sell me a house but because you say im not allowed to live in it and expecting people to be fine with that the only reason he went on such a rampage was because his intention was never to post here again and keep things behind a paygate

I had no problem with him. I downloaded a Macro that was posted to try out. 13 hours later I see his rant, so I posted that I had indeed downloaded it and that it was a great macro and he proceeded to call me a Rat and things.

So thatā€™s where that went. no i donā€™t think its right to take members from this place to his private discord but thatā€™s between Him and the owners here. if they fail to see the problem then oh well.

sorry totally disagree with your comments about taking people from here lol , like i said i sub to other creators and get access to there creations early before posted here does that make them all paygate creators ?? and tbh no one is twisting anyones arm to pay , on the note of being told what to say im a adult and no one tells me what to say , i say what i want and how i see things tbh.

bro legit he gau himself posted a screenshot in the WLM website of him asking a moderator to track peoples ip adress chucking threats of violence when he does find them and then asked another mod to do the same thing and nothing has been done apart from apperently they suspended the guy who shared the macro lol

Do you not understand what a paywall is?
Gua said join his discord to get access to his macros. so i did, then i found after looking around i had to subscribe to get the macros. I asked if he was going to post them here at some point and he said yes. Ok then until he posts them here they are behind a pay wall. Now he has posted some here since someone leaked them. but until that happened they WERE behind a paywall. Now if that is how he wants too distribute his macros that is up to him. I dont think it was right to leak them but i also see the other players point of view. I dont use Guaā€™s macro because at the time i wasnt willing to pay for it. hell im disabled unable to work and can barely afford wow, disability where i am is way under poverty level and rent is friggin expensive. but i dont begrudge Gua for wanted to earn a couple bucks for his work.
Maybe everyone should take a step back and have a coffee and chill out a little.

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thank you someone who actually makes sense of the situation

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wow - simply wow - heh

As a long long time user of GSE and WLM i find this troubling . I do not think macros should be behind a mandatory paywall to gain access or the like,optional support sure!. when i started using macros years ago they were a help to my gameplay but as iā€™ve gotten older and my advanced in my disability they have become damn near essential in order to play WoW above a casual or slow pace. I am on a fixed income and do not have the extra funds to pay for mandatory access, I know the rebuttal is its only a few dollars monthly and yes that is true just dont have the extra. there are alot of ppl on here i would love to help support but canā€™t and my concern is that it all will switch a mandatory pay model.

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Please note: I am writing from myself and not on behalf of WLM in any capacity.

This topic crops up every year or so and there are two sides to this issue. A lot has been said on the users side. This post isnā€™t to condone anyoneā€™s behaviour as both sides in this have been IMHO appalling but some balance is needed.

This site exists because of Lutechi. He finances this site and looks after its maintenance and operation. He does this for the love of the game and is worthy of support. He has a no bullshit and toughen up princess view so will let natural selection sort out some of the mess. This doesnā€™t mean he doesnā€™t care it just means heā€™s not here to fling mud or take sides.

In my case I am not connected to WLM but I simply make a mod that a number of WLMā€™s members use. Itā€™s not the only mod in this space itā€™s just a mod in this space. I maintain that mod as some very kind and generous people fund its maintenance and development. The demands to keep it running have taken it from hobby space to being a part time occupation. It does take a lot of time to support this for the official server variations.

Then there is the actual macro creators. In side of all the hobby responses, it takes a very long time to create a GSE Template. A good template which gets you around 60%-70% of your simmed dps will take around 400+ hours to create. Yes thatā€™s the equivalent of 10 weeks full time. It takes a LOT of time. What I see each patch and expansion is 1 week into the patch ā€œWTF why hasnā€™t anyone released new stuff yetā€ and the equivalents. Over the years the attitudes towards creators seems to be more demanding. Yes Templates have gotten more complicated and template creation is becoming more specialised. This leaves a gap. It takes a crap ton of time to create something especially for classes that you donā€™t play.

What I see filling this gap isnā€™t pay-per-view discords but streaming communities that use particular macros and build relationship between the creators and the viewers but thatā€™s a whole other discussion for another day.

There needs to be a middle ground here that respects the time that people put into create things. In GsE there are two settings put into that Creators can use to protect the time they have put into things. One is read only macros which canā€™t be edited. The other is non readable macros that the guys of canā€™t be viewed. These arenā€™t the best tools but short of a million paywalls they were the best compromises I could think of. Iā€™m happy to hear other ideas over at GSEā€™s GitHub.

I really hope this place finds is equilibrium again.

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yeah but timothy there is middle ground the majority of us do respect the creators we know just how much work goes in to it and time

  1. the read only option so we carnt edit it ( wont work due to it creating more stress for the creator and more people popping in everyday say fix this fix that why this why that= more demanding )

  2. non readable takes away from the creator and the consumer if we carnt read to find errors mistakes etc or to fine tune then it stops people asking creator fix this fix that but at the same time it sends them to other creators looking for better

  3. both sides have been appalling ?? please explain how ?? do you see me or anyone else on the forums trying to get admins to hunt ip address in turn there home address name bank details etc or calling people rats with threats etc no you dont what you see is someone a group of people actually who are so sick to death with creators abusing there powers talking to members like there stupid or vermin and over all the mismanagement of the rules and why this website was created by leadership

  4. what you say is correct it takes imense hours to get a optimal macro and as i said to the person himself we are extremly gratefull and we really are but in the end it is a hobby you choose to make macros and post them here regardless of hours used etc it is what you choose to do in your free time i could post a macro tommorow right anyone can thats how the website works

now as i said before if anyone atall deserves funding paying etc its lutechi and you because without you guys none of this is possible actually and @Siodar because they seem to be the only admin i have seen in a very long time busting there arse trying to sort things

our side the community have not been appalling we are just fead up with creators and admins in the past going on power trips or treating people like there below them

as for lutechi no bullshit toughen up aproach thats clearly not working is it so either employ more admins moderators etc (for free) people who would do it simply out of respect for lutechi and what he created or be more involved himself inforce the rules or redo them to stop this issue you said it yourself popping up every year i wonder why that is ā€¦

anyways mad respect to you for what you do with gse have a great day

is there a up-to-date talent for this macro?

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yes its on Noxxic. LOL :grinning:

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Fist of all great to see some form of punishment being dealt out regardless of the severity of it.

To prevent the sort of malicious behavior in future the only adequate way to actually handle this is to add to the TOS that youā€™re not to direct traffic away from the site to private non-WLM discords nor advertise premium profiles, Iā€™d also argue that posting profiles that arenā€™t publicly available falls under fair use provided itā€™s not already being distributed on the site elsewhere.

Props should given still to macro creators & thereā€™s not value in multiple people posting the same macro after all.

With these aforementioned changes I donā€™t think there would be much or any issue with lifting restriction with regards to editing other peopleā€™s profiles EVERYONE wantā€™s the best performing macro for the respective specialization and restricting access both stifles future profile creators and prevents collaboration.

To come full circle, private discords promoting premium profiles only drives traffic away, stifles creation, promotes the sort of toxic behavior exhibited by Gaupanda and if I am 100% honest the profiles that were provided werenā€™t worth any sort of premium anyway.

Seems to me like if you donā€™t pay the creators, you give them less information to hunt you down and doxx you. Let them dig their own graves.

As far as these threats go to hunt down and hurt people, These need to NOT happen, websites have been shut down for less.

ALSO according to 18 U.S. Code Ā§ 2261A - Stalking | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
and cases I looked up, depending on the severity (death threats) you can be charged with a felony and/or imprisonment. (Feds will subpoena the web site host for this information)

Donā€™t ruin your life because someone asked for money for something they worked on. Donā€™t post other peoples work or their work in progress. If its that important to you, make your own, post them for the community.

Except they canā€™t tell people what they can and canā€™t do in terms of macro writing just because some people are up in arms over someone charging for their work. Especially when the developer of GS:E does the same exact thing with premium profiles on his own Patreon.

If you donā€™t want to ā€œsupportā€ the people who do put in time to write these, thatā€™s fine. You donā€™t have to use the marco they made. What GAU did was totally wrong, but letā€™s not act like you are innocent or didnā€™t cause issues in all this either.

If a creator is providing a quality product and supports that product, I donā€™t think that itā€™s unreasonable to charge a reasonable fee; that said I do believe that it should be firmly structured as such on the site.

Expectations are all over the place, and there really is no need for egos or threats over a video gameā€¦ thatā€™s wrong and just bad behavior. We should all be helping each other, which in turn makes the site better, and creates enthusiasm to make macros better.

One idea is to further segregate the forum for casual macro creators doing it for fun or to be helpful (plenty of those here), and an area for creators that invest a lot of time to create something thatā€™s as optimal as possible for a class/spec, close to sim, and they stand behind it. Considering the current state of things here, this would be a natural evolution.

Just a few thoughts after hanging around a few years, weā€™re all friends here, please donā€™t shoot the messenger. :wink:

I honestly am okay with him being paid; I happily paid him for quality content created by someone who put a lot of time and effort into an excellent macro. When he started asking us to link accounts and share account names that have nothing to do with his discord, I had to part ways.

He can run his Discord as he wishes, place conditions on how he will interact with you, and provide those macros. However, I am not interested in participating in a witch hunt or having my activity monitored by some random guy on the internet who happens to make solid macros. I understand he was agitated by the leak, and I disagree with leaking it in the first place, but the reaction and demands have just turned strange, and itā€™s time to disengage.

It saddens me, as I enjoy paying talented people for their labor, especially in the gaming community. I have a disability that makes the game very hard to play, and the creators on this site are a large part of why I can play. Seeing them financially rewarded for the time they put in is not unreasonable; asking for account linking, account names on other platforms, and the like is beyond what I am willing to comply with.

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Very well said and to the point.

Iā€™m definitely innocent.