I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. ~ Isoroku Yamamoto

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Besides being a proud American and an enterprising entrepreneur, I am also a member of the Roman Catholic Church (tithing ftl). This being said, I have always felt that getting to heaven was the number one goal to hold for myself. I apologize if you are atheist or of a different religion and that offends you, but I have no problem with you expressing your own beliefs anytime you want on my forums or blog. Although Gevlon's attacks against me were a planned (notice he waited 6 days to make his post on a Tuesday?), unprovoked, brutal and brilliant surgical strike against myself and my blog, to retaliate would in no way bring me closer to my number one goal. So therefore I am not going to retaliate, however I will do my best to provide a thorough explanation regarding what happened for you, my readers.

Gevlon's Intent

What Gevlon did was attempt to assassinate my character, because, for whatever reason and I won't pretend to understand his thinking on this, he actually views my blog as a threat to him. Why I am not sure, but the facts all point to this irrationality:

1. Gevlon deleted perhaps a hundred comments from his blog (75 that I know of for sure). Every single deleted post disagreed with him or called him out for his actions. Seems like someone wants it to look like 90% of the commenters agree with the greedy goblin.
2. Gevlon brought Tobold into the mess with the hopes of spreading the news deeper across the interwebs. Tobold accepted and in one of his comments made the accusation that I was performing tax evasion. This of course was based on 0 facts and made him look rather biased.
3. Gevlon posted my personal email. This was not a big deal because I did send it to him. However, when commenters started posting much more dangerous personal information about myself Gevlon left the comments as they were. Judging by how actively he deleted comments he obviously wanted those to remain visible and that speaks volumes to his intent with the tabloid post.
4. Gevlon misinterpreted what I was asking him to do and exploded like he always does. However, in the past the greedy goblin has linked to me talking about how JMTC is the place to go to learn about making gold in wow and this sudden outburst just didn't make sense to anyone who had read those previous posts. In my email I tried to explain (although I was pretty angry in the second) that I wanted him to honestly and truthfully compare my guide to other ones. Coming from him this would of created huge buzz and generated lots of sales, and this would be a wise business decision unless of course your goal is to destroy JMTC.
5. Gevlon used the words lie, scheme, and marketing tricks throughout his tabloid article. First off I never lied in either of those two emails. You can accuse me of stretching the truth on my numbers, however they were based off of projections of readership vs past conversion rates on other blogs/sites. Second, there's no scheme here and the fact that my sales have gone through the roof since Gevlon's post and yet only one person has asked for a refund speaks volumes on the content of my guide NOT being a scheme. Marketing tricks? Since when does the greedy goblin know ANYTHING about marketing? There were no 'tricks' in my sales pitch. You can doubt what I said but that doesn't mean it's false.
6. Gevlon waited 6 days to post his response to my emails and perform his attack. Somehow I feel that if his actions were genuine and if he truly believed that I had wronged him that he would of reacted a lot sooner. The way he wrote it sounds like I had infuriated him into immediate action, but he actually took the time to carefully plan and arrange his assassination attempt.

The Fallout

There were no apparent winners in this Pearl Harbor style attack. The wow blogosphere showed how shallow it really is, with many sites following the greedy goblin and feeding off his every word without thought to the possibility that he could be lying. I have never had the support of the vast majority of wow related sites, but luckily for this blog that has not made a difference on readership growth. Every week hits go up, subscriptions go up, and the forums grow ten people per day on average. This is without the support of wow.com, mmochampion.com and now the wow blogosphere. The real thing I lost in this was my pride, and that's something I am grateful to be rid of as it's one of the hardest things to shake off in your lifetime. I did learn some value life lessons from this, and I am prepared to move on as a better person.

Greedy Gevlon didn't win either. You see he lives off his subscription numbers like an IV to a dying child. This incident only made him cling to them more. Here is a true marketing tip for you Gevlon: hits are king in this business, not subscribers. Evenmore than subscription numbers Gevlon craves attention. This is why he will lie about anything that seems to put him in a negative light. Remember when he said that he was messing up on purpose in the raiding guild that he purchased a spot in? Yeah right, if he was good enough to raid with that quality of players then he wouldn't of needed to buy a spot in the first place. Throughout this dramatic story Gevlon proved himself to be the self indulged, greedy, and just flat out evil person I've guessed he might be all along. This whole incident smacks of him attempting to assassinate the character of someone he deems to be a threat and he's shot himself in the perverbial foot with this tabloid mess. What businessman will ever approach him now? What blogger in their right mind will trust him? In the end Gevlon has shown himself to be the very scum he accused me of being. I forgive him for it, and I pity him.

The True Winners

But someone must have won in this matter right? It's the clash of the titans! Do or die, someone must come up victorious, right?! Well I can tell you that there was one clear winner in this whole mess:

YOU. The readers of this blog.

I received 186 emails the day Gevlon posted. One email was from a 16 year old boy asking for help finding a job. Another email basically said I'm never coming back bai! 184 emails were sent by concerned fans and supportive members of this community. I was overwhelmed by this. Every time I opened an email that said "per the greedy goblin incident" I was expecting hate but got kind words instead. You are the reason I removed many of my comments on other blogs and took down my shameful post which attacked the greedy goblin back. You are the primary reason I managed to get my cool back after angrily reacting, and who wouldn't react angrily to what had happened? Who wouldn't want to lash out at the idea of those close to you being made vulnerable by a lunatic's actions?

I thank my loved ones for their support and the members of this great community for their overwhelming enthusiasm. This is the best gift I could of asked for regarding the one year anniversary. In fact I will go so far as to say that what Gevlon gave me for the blog's birthday was more than anyone could have: Determination.

Here's to another year, and thank you! I promise no more drama posts regarding this matter, I'd like to move on and get back to the gold tips. /cheer