[Bobby]

Can you give us a brief introduction about who you are, your community, and your position there?

I am Jony, the owner of MMOCCForum.com. MMOCCForum, as most of you already know, is about Mass Multiplayer Online Chatting Communities. Hence, MMOCC. The community strives to be a fun, safe, and educational environment for both developers and users of MMOCC's.

Favorite foods? Drinks? Movies? TV shows? Songs?

Favorite foods: Spicy. I like Mexican food and Cinnabon (yuuuuuum).
Drinks: Jones green apple soda (SOOOOOOO good ^^) and coke. (The original only... no knockoff brands)
Movies: Narnia, Matrix 1, LOTR, Pianest, and The Island.
TV: Family guy, Futurama, Simpsons, Dirty Jobs, Myth Busters
Songs: The four seasons by Vivaldi, United Live, Hillsongs.

What inspired you to start a community like MOCCForum?
When you started what type of forum did you have? Was it a Vb forum or something like phpbb?

I am actually the second owner of MMOCCForum. Dan (Homerun) was the first owner. A while back a friend of his, Chris, had asked me if I would sponsor an upcoming mmocc. This mmocc was called Viberville. I gave them free hosting for about a year. Then Viberville quickly turned into a forum. Eventually this forum developed after multiple domain changes. I then logged on to the site one day to see a message that Dan was going to be closing the forum down. I quickly messaged him and asked him If we could make some sort of deal. And that's how I became the owner of MMOCCForum. :)

At that time I believe we have just a few hundred members with around 17-20 members per day being a good day ^^

I believe Dan purchased a VB license from the start of the forum. I upgraded the license after the year had expired. :)

How many people knew that you were starting this new forum? Who were they?

I believe that mostly Dan's friends joined and knew about the forum. Most of them are not around the forums much now.

What would you say are the greatest accomplishments of your community?

I believe the greatest accomplishment would be the vibe the community gives off. It's a safe and fun place for people to just come and chat about games they love. I also believe having such an amazing crew of staff! Without them, I wouldn't have enough time to run mmoccforum.


Has your community gone through any hardships?

Some. After the announcement that the forum would be closed down (made by Dan) the forum did have a slow start with posts. It was, at best, boring to come to at times.

Another hard time was when Zendo stole a big part of our marketing budget. I set aside a certain amount of money each month for marketing. I had paid for 2 months in advance for jabbatown advertising. Then jabbatown shortly after died and was sold. Hence the reason why I don't advertise on most mmocc's - that was a big portion of the marketing budget. I never got a refund or even a message from Zendo. (No respect for people like that)


What's your opinion on the MMOCCForum Staff as a whole?

This community is really driven by the Staff - not me. I cant even take credit for 95% of the things that have gone on in the background. The best part is, they continually come up with new ideas and creations. Currently we have many creative ideas that will take us well into 2007 to implement. :)

What is your favorite MMOCC?

I try not to have a favorite. I see good and bad in every MMOCC on this forum.

Tell us something we don't know about you.

I am 19 years old. My current job is investing. I invest into websites and turn them around to try and make a profit. I have over 25 websites now and plan on continuing to make more websites. I have been programming since I was 11 years old. First in C, then in C++ (took a college class - got an A ^^), then I moved into DirectX programming in C++. After trying my hand at game programming (way hard) I decided to try other languages. I eventually took up PHP. I then took an Oracle database class at a local college which made learning MYSQL very very easy. Now I professionally develop PHP applications for use on my sites.

Where do you see your community in 10 years?

10 years... 100,000+ members, multiple servers, a fully developed website (beyond a forum), a fully developed book on creation of online games. Just to list a few. ^^

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Hopefully the same place I am in currently, although with about 10 times the amount of websites I have now. Oh and most importantly, married to my beautiful girlfriend Maria. :) (view avatar ^^)

If you could start from the very beginning what would you do differently? What would you change?

If I could start from the beginning I would not spend as much as I did on advertising via mmocc's. I did lose quite a bit of money and never really got much in return from it. I also would have hired a marketing team sooner, they are really a HUGE driving force in the vision of this forum. <3