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by Zach Yonzon 
Apr 16th 2009 at 2:00PM
Initially, the site planned to charge for their service but eventually moved to a free model after some mysterious downtime of their own. It was such a novel idea that WoW Insider even interviewed the site's founders, George Tung and Milos Golubovic. It seems that this bizarre saga has at last come to an end, and questions of whether the site was for real or not (did anyone ever get compensation?) will never be answered.
[UPDATE: Several readers chimed in to answer that question -- apparently YPOWP sent its members 30-day game cards as compensation for lost play time. This indicates that the service, even after going to the free model, was for real. It also isn't against the TOS. That service was frowned upon by Blizzard legal, though, and YPOWP was taken down because of intellectual property rights issues instead.]
Filed under: Fan stuff, Realm Status, Odds and ends, News items, Weird But True, Opinions, New In Pop Culture
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Hoggersbud Apr 16th 2009 6:08PM
Indeed, the average insurance company isn't just sitting on the money coming in, but actively seeking to find ways to make profits on it, so when things go bad, they can pay for it.
Of course, when their investments fail, or when they have to pay more than they expected, well, they have problems.
Matazuma Apr 16th 2009 6:06PM
Everyone saw that lawsuit form miles away
Saya Apr 17th 2009 2:08PM
I find it very interesting how many comments have been posted about a website that I'm sure 90% of the people saying they were stealing, a fraud, or scared of not being able to pay people anything hadn't even been on before it was closed down.
Here's a rundown....
1. You DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT have to pay anything to sign up to get what they called reimbursement. (Free game cards or other merchandise)
2. Before the month started they announced how many compensation spots would be open for that month. (Meaning the funding was already there.) If you had actually signed up at the website you would also see that during the month they also gave you a percentage of compensation earned based on funding. What that meant was that 3.1 was extended downtime that, for example purposes, gave me $4.64 in comp. Well if they had the funding for all the allotted slots then everyone would have earned 100% of that $4.64. If they did not have enough then everyone might expect to get 90% or whatever. So the argument that they got scared because they didn't have the money is way out in left field.
3. Similar to various survey websites the "reimbursement" or compensations were more like points then money, or (LOL) stolen game time. You could use your points at the end of the month for a 30-day game card, or other things like a WoW calendar. All of which HAD TO BE PURCHASED from Blizzard. The people who did receive a game card were lucky enough to get it. More like a contest then insurance.
4. If you did managed to get something the way they went about verifying your account was for you to send them an email with a screenshot of that character on the server you stated it was on. Whew! It was hard let me tell you.
So yeah... that simple. A website that gave people free stuff that got the money to pay for that free stuff from ads.
Some guys got together and had an idea for something different. Yes, their first go-round wasn't successful but their second was. Such a shame to drag these guys through dirt when they were trying to give something back to the WoW community.
Shame on them for having ads on their website that granted them some revenue. Cause all WoW related websites with ads are scams right?
Do I see why Blizz did it? Yup, most people do.
But the thing is... Some game manufactures (i.e. Maxis/EA and the Sims) actually thrive from the rich community that do, in fact, charge for their services/items that are used in the game. Hasn't hurt The Sims 2 for being the powerhouse it is. People make money directly off of their product every day and you don't see EA sending their big bad lawyers to shut down these sites.
So ya, we can continue to argue but there's no point. Blizz exercised it power and a website was shut down. Nothing can change that decision.
But please, don't make false accusations about a website that you haven't ever heard of before this story was first posted.