Editing Digital Championship Wrestling Federation (DCWF) (section)

=== The DCWF ===
During this time, Linden Labs was contacting a number of of organisations inside SL using the terms "SL", "Second Life" in their name. SLCW was targeted and forced to change their trading name near the end of February. After a long discussion with other wrestlers and staff members and then further consultation behind the scenes, the name the Digital Championship Wrestling Federation was decided on. The SLCW name was used for the last time at "Retaliation". The next week DCWF became in use. This was also the same time when things started to become strained behind the scenes. Since Alpin and Eric began working together in mid 2008, their relationship had been a very strong one, which in turn became a successful thing for the DCWF. Although, in late March, going into April, things started to change between them. Arguments were becoming a more common thing, and disagreements happened between them more often too. This threatened to kill the DCWF, and nearly did. Alpin, feeling that not enough money was being made in the DCWF, decided that after over a year of development exclusive to the DCWF, the AC Pro Wrestling System should go public. It went on sale in April and was met by a mixed reaction in and out of the DCWF. It gave new promotions the opportunity to start up, but eventually ended in the near death of the DCWF.

[''Alpin's Comment'': Changing the name to DCWF wasn't really that upsetting. What was upsetting was the fact that Linden Labs only periodically enforces its trademark. We had been going strong for over a year when we were told to change our name. A lot of other Second Life (tm) organizations also had to change their names. While in the end, its not really that big of a deal, it still felt like a slap in the face to be told we need to change our name, or logo, our groups and our website. Groups like ours made Second Life (tm) a better place to be, so there wasn't much sense penalizing us to enforce a weak trademark to begin with.

As for not making enough money, I don't think our goal was ever to make money. I don't remember charging anyone to wrestle with us, or even to come to our shows. As for making the ACPWS public, the only reason I even put a price on it at the time was because I wanted to favor the SLCW guys, who were always going to get it free anyways. In fact, the only objection I got from Eric was that I was going to sell it too cheap. One of the biggest motivations for the public move was the sheer number of people we were turning away (Eric was rejecting at least 30 applications a week). With Seth Cameron having almost launched his own system, Sugar and I agreed that going public was a preemptive strike to make sure that we didn't have to worry about that kind of competition. Besides, in the end, I didn't like having made something that discriminated. Who was I to say who should or should not get an opportunity to wrestle in Second Life(tm)? Who had a right to make that decision? None of us did.

And in all fairness, the exact thing that nearly killed the DCWF was exactly what we feared. A public system versus a private one. If it was the ACPWS that stayed exclusive to DCWF, and then some other system, like Seth's came into existence, then we would have gotten the same result. Private system loses.

And that's why I was really upset at Eric's decision not to continue using the ACPWS. I NEVER withdrew the ACPWS from the DCWF. I was ALWAYS planning on letting DCWF wrestlers use it. The only people Sugar and I were going to charge was the general public, and our primary reason was to keep the DCWF at the top of the mountain. Eric basically told me to take a long walk of a short cliff, and in no uncertain terms declared that he would build a system that would trump mine. I told him that's fine, but that the ACPWS wasn't going to be a safety net. I wasn't interested in having Eric thumb his nose at me, not finish a system, and then turn around and ask for DCWF to get preferential treatment back. The reality was, I still gave many DCWF wrestlers free movesets. They were using them with alts so they could wrestle during that pointless hiatus while Eric tried to reinvent the wheel.

But ultimately, what Sugar and I predicted would be the near end of the DCWF was exactly what happened. The DCWF ended up trying to hold onto it's own private wrestling system and compete against a cheap public system. It didn't matter if it was the ACPWS being private versus Seth's Cameron's system. It didn't matter if it was the ACPWS public or Eric's system. It wouldn't matter if it was Eric's system public and the ACPWS private. The fact of the matter was, hundreds of people were going to want to wrestle. When we rejected a majority of them, we created th perfect conditions for other systems to spring to life. People would wrestle once they new it was possible. That was inevitable. If we didn't give them a way, then they would make their own way. That's the nature of Second Life (tm).]