Selling human blood on ebay.

starting bid is $5,000? how good would it be if this shit gets no bids?

Good, we saved someone from being suckered.

They moved it to their own online store, where the suckers already reside.

Totally clueless, but hardly surprising.

Starr's "gee willickers, Richard... this is why I love working for you!" oozes sycophancy and utter toadyism. I tried to watch the R31 hangout, but the moment they talked about the reliquary and Starr showed what a spineless, servile doormat he is, it turned my stomach and I just turned it off in disgust.

Any self-respecting professional would realize what a bad idea this was from the start, and how creepy/narcissistic it is, but if you lack spine and the bossman and hero you worship suggests it then I guess you just roll over and go along like the good little lapdog you are.

And don't even get me started on RG when it comes to this. I get that he is a "legend" and when you have people surrounding you parroting how amazing you are for most of you life, it clearly distorts your perception of what is tasteful far beyond what I can grasp, but even so (and despite all of his "fuck you" money and stature as a "designing god")... this kind of thing is not healthy, at least not selling it and marketing it like this. Sure, maybe an argument can be made to make art out of this and sell it or distribute it among hero-worshipping toadies (or artsy types who really have a legit interest in this type of stuff), but I'm sorry, it is just too macabre and narcissistic to think in any instance that there is any kind of legit market for the selling of bodily fluids. People buying the clothing of dead celebrities is already strange enough to me, but selling your hair and blood takes it to a whole new level of egomania. What's next, them selling their toenail clippings?

The thread decrying the practice by Sargon was the only thing done in good taste with relation to any of this.

The fact that they still decided to sell it in their own store despite that thread, and the comments in the Massively OP article, shows how incredibly out-of-touch they are:

massivelyop.com/2016/07/08/richard-garriott-and-starr-long-are-literally-selling-their-blood-for-shroud-of-the-avatar/

It's stunning to me how unwilling they are to listen to feedback from people who they can't silence/control. As we've seen on Steam forums and reviews, as we've seen on their own forums, they just don't grasp that there is any kind of reality beyond the echo-chamber of cult-like devotion that they've created for themselves on their game forums.

Talk about an unhealthy parade of cognitive dissonance!

I can see the brainstorming session.

"Alright guys, our funding is drying up. We need ideas and we need them fast."
"What about the gold crowns?"
"Yeah, that has gone poorly. We introduced them as a 'new revenue stream' to help us transition and further fund the game and had June was our lowest funding total in a year! The average account is up to $150, we are bleeding these people dry, but we're running out of shit to peddle! Think guys, think!"
"There's nothing left to sell. We're going to be reduced to selling off parts of ourselves."
"That's brilliant! Fire off some PR emails to sites and let's get the ball rolling. The opening bid, we'll make it fucking outrageous. No one will even realize that there's no value in the shit we are peddling because they'll focus on the $5000 value."

www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/please-get-a-pr-person.54201/

Getting better and better. Right now they are roasting someone named Kristof. Apparently s/he got under the skin of SeleneNoctua. Jesus that twat is annoying. Someone needs to bitch-slap her into the next county.

Bowen the pussy is spouting his standard rhetoric. That loser never changes.

Envy and Baron are having another lovers spat. Not sure which one of those two freaks I want to win the argument. Both are assholes.

I'd screenshot it if you want to save the conversation. I think it'll get locked as soon as a mod sees it.

3 of the reliquaries a old the add on store for a combined $20,000.

You know, the whole thing is pretty interesting. The pattern is, and has always been, how they are out of touch. I mean, of course some frothing at the mouth fanboys are going to buy up that blood artwork. Somehow they think it will imbue them with some sort of magical something - luck? Omen they are some sort of privileged person? Who knows? Who cares?

Portalarium has never looked at the larger picture of how this will affect a broader audience. They cater solely to a select few they know will blow their wad on anything Garriott spews. So, none of that is too interesting, it's same crap, different day.

But what I find interesting is how Envy wanted cannibalism and took great delight in people being squeamish about it, and somehow that is not a problem. But some blood artwork is. lol And he used to defend the game's reviews, saying only a handful of trolls/twats/whatever he cared to call them, weren't representative of the main community & to ignore the negative reviews. And now that he's turned off to the game (because he's blown a wad of money on it that he won't be able to take advantage of people and milk them), he's claiming the same stuff we've always claimed, that the reviews are tanking the game, because the game itself has a horrible overall concept.

But when we told Envy that shit, he trolled us and flipped us shit incessantly. Yet now he's still the troll and changed his tune, and still trolling.

And last, those boys in Texas just don't get it, that we are going through some increasingly hostile & hard economic times in the US, and elsewhere, and they keep adding to the stress. Games should take away that stress, or help people alleviate it. But do they? Blood running in the streets of Dallas and elsewhere, and blood artwork. Negative publicity sells, this much they know and have tapped into. The news stations harp on it to gain viewers, Trump & the Brexit voters/proponents have capitalized on negativity, Youtube channels have turned to negative clickbait to gain larger viewing audiences. It just goes on & on.

The golden key to making money is to be as nasty as you can be. And people gobble it up. Me, I'm checking out of that shit.

Me thinks you give him too much credit. It's the real world where he wanted to scalp people so he could make money from the game. When bad press about the game comes along (like the blood art), it threatens his real world money-making.

Me, I wanted a good game for everyone, that didn't involve making real world money.

If he was the doxxer, it would make sense, but at this point, it doesn't really matter. It would be in keeping with his tactics and personality, because over here at SU, we give the game bad press. And that is affecting his pocketbook. Thing is, it's everywhere on the web and Steam, not just here. He's got an awful lot of people to doxx and threaten, but I think it's beyond that. Even he's disgusted with the game, because they've essentially made his property worthless, so he can only now blame them, not us.

The thing is guys, I think they banned all the more literate/listened to people who objected to a lot of this. They controlled the message by removing dissenters. Leaving the odd few to say, yes we listen...but they have made their forums a "yes" man place.

That's true, if the game development continued the way it has.

But if they had listened to the dissenters, we'd have a very different game and many of us would've stopped dissenting.

Whether he would or would not is irrelevent to my point. I'm not accusing him of doxxing or stating that he would or might have or anything like that.

My point was that some speculated that it could have been him because of his penchant for taking his style of play outside the confines of the game. People can perceive his moving outside the game (to other guilds message boards, etc) as him having a more gray boundary.

I think taking the conflicts in game outside of the client is cool. My only point is that doing so leaves people to question how far outside the game one is willing to take it. I'd actually suggest that Envy's upfront nature would make him far less likely to be one to stoop to doxxing someone behind the scenes.

I apologize if my previous posts gave the suggestion of an accusation. It was probably a poor example to use.