Admin Note: This post has been copied up from further in the thread to clarify things. You can find the original here.
Heya Folks,
For those of you whom do not know me, my name is Shelby Cardozo and arguably I'm the founder of Warhammer Alliance. I figured I'd pop out of the shadows and clear up some misinformation about the site, it's history, and my dealings with Games Workshop.
Lets rewind to 2004 and remember the old Warhammer Online that was canceled by Climax Entertainment. Well in late 2004, there was a Warhammer community that refused to die (
WarhammerOnlineForums.com). Unfortunately however, the site admin for the WOF was on hiatus and slowly the site was having problems and the community was on the rocks.
Enter 2005 and Mythic Entertainment. It was early 2005, soon after my Imperator fansite was sunk that I offered to help out the WOFs. Specifically, I'd relaunch the site as Warhammer Alliance. The site was relaunched around August 2005 and believe it or not, the site had ads on it back then. Specifically, I knew that the site was going to get big and I knew that in order to keep the servers running when the site got big, that ad revenue would be required. So, the site was launched (with ads) and we all looked forward to a new Warhammer Online.
Things went fantastic. The community, the developers, we were all so excited. The site was growing and the community was having a blast getting excited all over again. Fast forward to late 2005 and an interesting phone and email conversation I had with
Sanya Weathers of Mythic Entertainment and
Erik Mogensen, the Licensing Manager for Games Workshop.
The topic of discussion, we didn't have a proper disclaimer at the bottom of the site. So, I worked with Sanya and Erik to ensure we met standards that all parties would be happy with. We settled on the same footer you see today. "This web site is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited or Mythic Entertainment." And an added
a link to a longer disclaimer.
This footer and disclaimer was agreed to by Games Workshop, the Licensing Manager and Mythic Entertainment.
Things seemed to be going great. In fact Erik even registered here at the site and granted us a some interviews. Read that again. Games Workshop was helping promote the site by doing interviews with us back in 2006. Here is
a link to Eriks first interview.
Now, fast forward to today.
Games Workshop is suing Warhammer Alliance. Now, I'm not a Rocket Surgeon, but this lawsuit smells like Greenskin dung to me. In the suit they allege that they just became aware of the site. But they were promoting it in 2006, 4 years ago?
You see folks, Warhammer Alliance, even today is a news site. The staff here do Warhammer news reporting, original news and commentary. In the same way that AppleInsider.com covers apple products, WarhammerAlliance.com covers Warhammer Online. This lawsuit is really just a gross perversion of trademark law and I hope that Curse puts up a fight.
But hey, that's just me. You guys are free to form your own opinions.