General News

I never thought I would post this about myself

Some of you may be looking at the calendar and thinking this is merely a ruse. It's not. My time here at WarCry has come to an end. I heard that and no, I wasn't fired. At least not this time. I've been with Themis and WarCry for almost 5 years now and that's the longest I've ever worked for a company. I was hired on in 2003 and ended up being the Ad Sales Manager even though I had never done it before. I was such a noob the first deal I made was selling all available ad space on our Lineage 2 site to IGE. Yeah, I had no clue.

One thing about working here that I will miss is the fact that even though you may not be the right person for the job, the fact that you've been hired means that you're the right person for the company as a whole. A position will be found, or in my case, created to make use of your talents and skills. At the time the idea for Razorwire was born, mine just happened to be the ability to be cynical, pessimistic, and indignant, all while gleefully enjoying the misfortunes of others. The difference between comedy and tragedy is if the bus hits someone other than me, it's funny.

Schadenfreude be thy name.

Razorwire was supposed to be a blog that showcased not just the absurd and the asinine behavior and decisions made within the gaming industry but also the good and beneficial things that occurred. Not to further shake anyone's faith in the system, but there was a hell of a lot more negative stories to write about. Maybe part of that was because this is still a young industry and we're still making huge mistakes in order to gain wisdom. More likely it was because I'm a complete Richard who gazed too long into the abyss.

I know I stepped on a lot of toes and ruffled feathers on almost a daily basis. However, even though I sometimes got facts incorrect, I did my best to tell the truth. Truth being subjective, of course. I tried to find that truth and peel back layers of PR and Marketing candy-coating. I said the things that everyone was thinking. But where they were too polite to actually vocalize them, I felt almost obligated to point out that the Emperor was buck-naked.

It seemed that everyone was pulling me aside and telling me they loved what I was saying and agreed 100% with it, but yet, they would rarely say so in public. I was pretty underground, man. I was subversive. I was pretty much guaranteed to never really go mainstream or become a sensation. And I'm okay with that, since as soon as I did, I would probably end up writing about my own fallibility, since at my core, I'm a rager, not part of the machine.

With all of that in mind, if anyone I wrote about over the years feels truly wronged, I'm sorry. I can guarantee it won't happen again, heh. I had a great deal of fun here and I will miss it.

So what's next then? Well, I'm sure that some already know and for those that don't, you'll have to wait. I prefer to remain enigmatic for now, but suffice to say some blogger somewhere may get to rip me to shreds for a mis-step or poor choice of words.

Now for the actual goodbye part. It occurred to me that the absolute best farewell ever filmed might be more appropriate, but Rhett Butler doesn't actually spark a lot of recognition with kids today. Raise your hands if you know who Roy Batty was. Yeah, I thought so. Well, I know you guys like the videos so here is a final one for you.

This is footage of a German Air Force Colonel who was retiring and making the final flight of his military career. As such, he felt it necessary to take all those risks and do all the things that would have gotten his flight status immediately revoked. I mean, it was his final flight, revoke it all they want, right? That's exactly what happened. He landed, stepped out of his aircraft and in accordance with regulations they stripped his flight status.

If WarCry had an Air Force, that would be me. But since we don't have multi-million dollar fighter planes laying around, I'll have to settle for doing something I could have never done if it wasn't my final post.

This is a link to the most horrific thing I have ever seen on the internet. Click that at your own risk.

And if anyone was truly offended by that link, feel free to contact me directly at 1-248-434-5508.

Not everything is singing you know. The only important thing these days, is rhythm and melody.

Thanks for reading Razorwire. Good night.

-razor

Me and a thousand ranking cops from all over America. Why not?

The first thing I noticed as the car pulled up to the hotel was the 25-foot tall inflatable McGruff the Crime Dog. That was a bit unsettling. As I looked around to see if Woodsy Owl or Smokey the Bear had made the trip, I realized the parking lot contained around 50 police cruisers from various jurisdictions. Smokey had indeed come along.

Getting a bit of a flashback, I said to myself, "Self, this is probably how Hunter felt in Vegas." I walked through the hotel doors and the scene became even more surreal. Sixty-plus kids around 13-14 years old were milling about the lobby along with an almost equal number of cops. I felt like I just walked into a casting call for To Catch a Predator. Curious as to what the hell was going on, I sauntered over to the hotel's events calendar and saw the following:

"Annual Crime Prevention Association Annual Convention"

I felt much safer knowing that there is a group who meets once a year and are also dedicated to stopping crime once a year. Underneath that was this entry:

"Some Middle School field trip to DC"

I decided to lay low in the hotel lounge until it closed at 11pm, at which time I briefly entertained the thought of heading to a convenience store and grabbing a 12-pack and bringing back to the hotel. After deciding that might entail more effort than I was prepared to expend at the moment, I weaved my way to the elevators and up I went.

As I exited the elevator, I realized what a good decision I had made in nixing the beer. Staring directly at me like I had just shot her in back of the head with a spit wad sat a grizzled veteran of a thousand Labor Days. The middle school had posted chaperon sentries at both ends of the hallway. I know in my heart and liver if I came out of that elevator with a 12-pack of Amstel Light, that vigilant harpy would have screeched an alarm and within seconds I would be wearing 50 pairs of handcuffs.

With my luck they would all start admiring the shape of my skull. While holding police batons.

I hear she knows how to have fun in DC

I just got back from England last night and today I'm going to DC. I am the Road Warrior, some kind of anti-hero doomed to roam the wastelands forever.

I'm going to check out EA Mythic and see what they are up to. I'll be bringing up a couple of things that have been bothering me as well. The best part of all of this is my flight is 1 hour, I have 1 stop and it's St. Patty's Day so even if something goes terribly wrong, I can just get hammered and not be frowned upon when I start ranting about New Jersey.

Kiss me, I'm Irish. No, really. I'll be in Georgetown tonight wearing green and introducing myself as Seamus O'Giggity. It's an ironclad plan.

Who knew New Jersey had a battleship?

I may have gotten myself in some karmic hot water with my last post about how much Newark sucks. I flew into that hellish nightmare of death and destruction again on Sunday from England, arriving at 11:30 am. I didn't escape until 9:30pm because every flight leaving earlier was oversold and I had to go on Standby.

The Starbucks was out of white chocolate flavoring so no mochas for me. The McDonalds wasn't taking credit cards and all I had was British pounds.

I really, really hate New Jersey.

It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap. Truer words have never been spoken about New Jersey. My decent into Hell began when the plane taking me from Charlotte, NC to Newark was an hour late in arriving. No big deal, I would still have plenty of time to make my 7pm flight to England. Then the situation became dire when the plane pulled about 50 feet away from the gate and the captain announced that due to bad weather in Newark, we would be sitting on the ground for another hour and 45 minutes. Red flag.

I was still optimistic (Yes, this is me we're talking about) since I had a small chance of still making the 7pm flight. After landing at 6:30pm, I planned to make some kind of mad sprint through the airport and catch my plane. Unfortunately, someone set me up for failure when they built the Newark airport.

In order to get from Terminal A to Terminal C, I had to leave the Security Area. Even though I made it across the terminal in 5 minutes, I was blocked by a 55 person line to get through the scanners. My plane was not caught.

Thankfully, a nice lady set me up on a flight to Paris and from there I could still get to England. Sadly, my luggage did not get the memo to meet me there. As of this morning, it had finally made it.

I would just like to take a moment to thank Turbine, who literally gave me the shirt off their back so that I had a fresh one to wear to the event today.

You know why the Statue of Liberty faces New York? So New Jersey can kiss her ass. Right now, I'm facing New York.

Remember that Codemasters event where Jumpgate Evolution was going to be playable?

Turns out I'm going to that. There will be an announcement made concerning Lord of the Rings Online, and a chance for some interesting DDO news as well. At this point I have no idea where I'm staying, so I may end up on The Moors with Lon Chaney. That's my plan. Just wander around the countryside listening to Warren Zevon and asking everyone why they don't celebrate the 4th of July.

And never forget what Cousin Avi said:

This kid goes to 11

When I was playing Guitar Hero quite a bit I had posted some videos of an 8-yr-old who pretty much kicked my ass at the game. Well now that I have been playing Rock Band for a few months and getting good enough at the drums to play a good selection of songs on expert, I have again found a pre-teen who is a hell of a lot better than me at something:

I will be practicing out in the garage if you need me. And I know that song isn't in Rock Band, but this next one is, and I'd really like to see this kid giving the game a go:

My best on that one is 68% on Expert.

They really like her

With a surge of popularity in Europe, Lineage II is getting a new EU server named Luna:

Since its worldwide launch in late 2003, Lineage II has been an unparalleled success, reaching more than 17 million players worldwide and gaining a reputation as the gaming market's premier player-versus-player (PvP) MMOG. Following the December 2007 launch of Lineage II's latest expansion, The Kamael, which added a staggering gigabyte's worth of new content to the game, demand for European server access is running at an all time high as new players rush to join long-time fans. By launching a new server, called Luna, alongside the existing European servers Franz and Teon, NCsoft Europe has quickly moved to ensure continued, instant access and smooth online gameplay for new and current players of Lineage II.

I think I may have made a character on Teon by mistake before logging in and seeing my latency somewhere in the 4-digits. Full press release after the jump.

It's the name

Tabula Rasa Producer Starr Long has posted a State of the Game in which he states that the game hasn't grown as fast as they had hoped:

I would be remiss if I don't clarify the matter of rumored "massive layoffs" within NCsoft North America and the Tabula Rasa team. While the game has not taken off as quickly as we had hoped, we also launched in an insanely competitive time frame, with several well-known intellectual properties launching follow up products at the same time. However, the fact of the matter is that we are transitioning from a pre-launch crunch-mode development team to a live service team. This is standard in our industry-you ramp up to launch a game and then ramp down once it's live. This is what we are doing over the next several weeks, and it only affects the Tabula Rasa team.

Hurry up and get some meaningful PvP and PAU's in the game, plzkthx. Joystiq, the paragon of gaming journalism that it is, seems to be a bit gender confused when discussing Starr Long (emphasis mine):

The admission comes almost a month after reports of major financial trouble and layoffs for NCsoft caused by the game. That said, Long does have some good excuses, and she reaffirms that NCsoft is still devoted to seeing the game succeed.

Here's something to help remember Starr is a boy:

Cuba's about to get a new flag

According to Gamesindustry.biz, Three Rings has gotten a $3.5 million investment to continue developing Puzzle Pirates and a new game called Whirled:

The casual games outfit is currently working on a social networking game world, called Whirled, which is in its alpha testing phase, according to a report on Venturebeat.com.

The funding was secured last summer and comes from True Ventures and Chance Technologies, as well as existing investors.

That's a long time to wait to announce an investment like that. If someone handed me $3.5 million, I guarantee the world would be completely aware of that within minutes due to the OJ-style coverage of me racing a Lamborghini Gallardo at 175mph down I-95 with a "model" named Candi Kane in my lap. NWA's F*** tha Police would be blaring out of the speakers.

I'd hold my foot down until I hit the tip of Florida and then the car would turn into a submarine just like Bond, James Bond and it would be second star to the right, straight on until morning. I'd come ashore in Cuba and since Castro finally cashed in his chips, it would be time for some new strong leadership. Viva la Razor!

Take a letter, Miss Kane.

I give Ziff Davis a 3 out of 5

Surprise! A large print media dinosaur is filing for bankruptcy:

In order to implement the restructuring and permanently improve its capital structure, Ziff Davis and certain of its affiliates today elected to file Chapter 11 petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (the "Court"). The Company intends to implement the restructuring through a pre-arranged plan of reorganization that the Company shortly intends to file. The Company intends to seek Court approval of the pre-arranged plan as soon as possible. Ziff Davis expects operations to continue as usual during the reorganization process and expects to emerge from Chapter 11 this summer.

This summer. I won't be holding my breath. Just how screwed is the whole gaming print media business anyway?

"Operationally, we are also making great progress," continued Mr. Young. "As a result of our employees' hard work, we ended 2007 on a strong note. We matched audience growth with impressive digital revenue expansion. And while the print market continued to be challenging, we continue to be print category leaders in the markets we serve."

Challenging is an understatement. Ziff Davis is choking to death slowly and the fact they are the leaders of the gaming print industry does not bode well at all. I would expect ZD to go online only by summer, and Game Informer to continue to live on, as the only reason it exists is so that some retail monkey in GameStop can point to it and claim the game he is currently trying to sell you a used copy of got a 9.8!

After learning of the death of the man who was ultimately responsible for the existence of DDO, players from the Sarlona server came together and held an in-game memorial for Gary Gygax.

I had nothing to do with organization of the event, and I'm sure better images will be forthcoming. But I was there, and strangely, it helped. Yes it was a digital memorial, inside a video game, but still, it helped. Maybe seeing it will help you too.

There wasn't a lot of notice and there wasn't a lot of publicity but word still spread. The service began in the Temple of the Sovereign Host. Words were read from Gygax's bio and there was a (long) moment of silence.

Caution, there are some table-breaking images at that link.

I think it's really cool this took place. I'm sorry I missed it, but I think all of my characters are on Argonnessen or Thelanis. Several players I know turned the DM Voice back on and ran the Delara's Tomb quest line again, since Gary Gygax does the narration for it.

I'm interested in fashion. Truly.

I'm of the firm belief that there should be no distinction between a "girl gamer" and a "gamer". You're either a gamer or you're not. Period. Others deem it necessary to differentiate, but at least they are doing it without the zealotry that some display.

Anyway, it seems that some of the boys drawing pictures for SOE's The Agency have been getting fashion tips from some of the girls on the team:

"We have to do a lot of women's clothing; half of the characters in the game are women. ... I think it's really good to have a female perspective there. I know more than once I've talked to an artist and said, 'Um, you can't cut the sleeves like that because her bra would show.' You've got full-figured women in the game, and they would have to wear a bra! [laughs] Actually, everybody's really respectful about it, and we do laugh a lot when we have these conversations. And I would say the men in our creative group definitely know a lot more about shoes, the cuts of blazers, A-line skirts versus pencil skirts and everything else than they ever cared to know. But they're definitely educated now, and they've educated me as well, so it's been really good."

Pencil skirts. 100%. A-line's are nice and all but nothing says hot espionage vixen like a black or grey pencil skirt. It's what Xenia Onatopp would have worn.

This Judge should be presiding too

This is the story that keeps on giving. In case you forgot, Alan Debonneville is suing Brock Pierce over some financial shenanigans. The original complaint document was hilarious, and read like the script for a David Lynch movie. Virtually Blind has learned some new information about the case:

Virtually Blind is acquiring the rest of the documents in this case, including Pierce's Answer and Counterclaims, and will post them over the next week or so. There is a mandatory settlement conference scheduled for March 10. If the case fails to settle, a jury trial is scheduled for May 20 in Los Angeles, presided over by the Honorable Manuel Real.

Get your popcorn. I'd rather it was presided over by the Honorable Judith Sheindlin, but I can't have everything we want. If I could, this would be a radically different reality.

While I was out at GDC the seventh episode of The Guild was released. Sorry I missed it, but here it is finally:

Yeah, Zaboo's mom is creepy.