This is going to be a bit of a weird one, for anyone not deeply entrenched in the names and faces of Path of Exile content creators. Essentially what triggered this blog post is a simple message that I saw scroll across my timeline over on BlueSky. Ziggy D, a content creator in the Path of Exile community that I know almost exclusively as “the guy who does the Q&A discussions after a Path of Exile League announcement“, got snatched up by Maxroll. I’ve been a supporter of Maxroll for quite a while since Raxxanterax took a role with the site in the lead-up to the release of Diablo IV. They’ve seemingly pioneered this model of going into a community and signing up a bunch of creators who are already known for creating great content. However, this is not just something they are doing right now.
On November 20th Lolcohol, another Path of Exile Content Creator announced that he was taking the leap and going full-time content creator and at the same time announced his partnership with a site I had never heard of before. This of course caused me to do what I always do and furiously google it to glean some understanding. It seems like Mobalytics is a big player in the MOBA guide space, and is now casting out its fortunes with ARPGs. It turns out it was not just Lolcohol that they snatched up but also signed a bunch of other names that I actually care about. Here is the list of folks on the Content creator team that I immediately recognized:
There are a few other names listed but I have no clue who they are. If you have read any of my discussions about Path of Exile, you will probably recognize at a minimum SirGog and Jorgen, two creators that influence me pretty heavily. I am certain I will watch to see what sorts of content gets released on this site as we roll into POE2, and how heavily these creators end up promoting it.
I talked at the top of this post about Maxroll and their recent land grab for creators, and quite honestly they have a very impressive team as well. I think the big thing they are known for among creators is their profit-sharing agreements. This is something that ZiggyD went into at length in this thread on Bluesky. I know at least in their support of Path of Exile 1, their guide creation and the way they format the information has been presented has improved massively since their first few outings. That is the biggest thing I like about the site and why I have decided to become a supporter, is that they keep changing the site to service the content better. Anyways like I said they have a pretty stacked list of creators and these are the ones that I immediately recognized:
Like I have said before it was really the involvement of Raxxanterax that made me sit up and pay attention to Maxroll initially. More recently getting Zizaran to come on board in a major way was a huge boon to the site, because essentially he is synonymous with Path of Exile and New Player Guides. I also like that basically it is a single site that I feel entirely comfortable recommending to friends who are just getting started out. The initial round of POE guides were a bit bait, but they have improved drastically over time.
However, we can’t really talk about POE Guide sites without talking about POE Vault aka the site owned by a major player in the MMORPG space Icy Veins. Until the advent of Maxroll, Icy Veins was my go-to site for Diablo III guides and information, and for years it was probably the most recognizable single source of guides for Path of Exile. The thing is… it isn’t anywhere near as clear to determine who is actually being sponsored by IcyVeins to create guides for them. I know that GhazzyTV is, mostly because he has talked about it specifically and his role in helping to manage that site. For a lot of folks, it was just a convenient place to host the text version of their otherwise largely YouTube guides. Pohx for example hosts his guides there in spite of having an entirely custom wiki surrounding his infamous Righteous Fire content. So while it is uncertain what the relationship is with the site financially, there are still quite a few creators who seem to support the site:
There are other names associated with the site, but those are the main ones that I would personally care about. The danger of the site is there are also quite a few guides that feel like bait. Example… I would take anything maintained by TbXie with a massive grain of salt because the friends I know who have attempted to follow their guides have struggled considerably.
It certainly feels like most of the guide creation for Path of Exile and Path of Exile II, has been consumed by three websites at this point. It makes me wonder if this trend will accelerate as they attempt to effectively lock down the remaining talent. I question though… how much money is there really in creating guides for an ARPG? There will of course be plenty of guides unaffiliated with these sites. Reddit and the PathOfExile2Builds subreddit which is patterned off the already excellent PathOfExileBuilds will be a likely source. It is just really weird to watch this land grab happening for Content creators because I do not remember similar things happening in the MMORPG space necessarily. There was always the eternal war between Icy Veins and WoWHead but it seemed to be way less centered around “celebrities” from those communities.
My hat is in the ring with Maxroll, mostly because it is the site that personally seems to be the most valuable to me. I am however really interested to see what sorts of things SirGog and Jorgen end up creating on Mobalytics.
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