A Letter from Jaxel, Owner of 8WAYRUN

You know, 8WAYRUN was launched about 2 weeks after the release of Soulcalibur IV. The community's previous home was having issues and we didn't know how much longer it would be around. We were taking a risk with 8WAYRUN; since it was community funded, we had no idea if it would be self-sustainable. About 6 months after the release of SC4 we became the de-facto hub for all things Soulcalibur.

At first we struggled, but overtime, as real advertisers came in, this website became more than self-sufficient. In fact, it was doing well enough that we were able to get our own dedicated server in preparation for the launch of Soulcalibur V. SC5 launched and since then there has been little to no downtime. 8WAYRUN remains self-sufficient and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Something a lot of you may not know, but a lot of the software for this website was written by me. In fact, except for the forum software and the skin itself, this entire website was built in house. The event system, ranking system, media library, the wiki, and even the way we handle spam bots and similar ilk have been boons for our community and have helped us become more feature rich than almost every other tournament community out there.

However, at the same time, most of the software I've made for 8WAYRUN has a modular design. I've been able to package them up and release them for free on the internet. Releasing the software to the public has allowed me to put a link back to 8WAYRUN on some of the biggest websites on the net. The result is that this website has one of the highest possible Google PageRanks to a simple forum.

But while the original purpose of releasing all this software for free to the public was to expand the reach of 8WAYRUN and increase it's PageRank, Soulcalibur has been declining in popularity. In fact, it has come to a point where the software I've written for 8WAYRUN is now more popular than 8WAYRUN itself. In addition, the advertising revenue keeping this website afloat is slowly coming down and will eventually meet the cost of our dedicated server.

Now don't get me wrong, I already said before that 8WAYRUN won't be going anywhere. If money became an issue, we would simply need to scale back to a virtual private server to cut costs. But either way, I now had to make a choice: I could scale back the server and keep things the status-quo, or I could use our extra resources to expand. I've decided to choose the latter rather than an inevitable bleed-out.

You should have noticed by now that these forums are now located on a "calibur" sub-domain. All the old links will continue to work; and with our routing system, they should always work. But new links all get forward to the new sub-domain. Its my intention to turn 8WAYRUN into not just a community for Soulcalibur, but a network of communities for many games; and not just fighting games either.

Why not use that extra revenue we are currently generating to help other communities that need it? I know there are a lot of communities out there that still run off free forums, or forums less accommodating for the tournament scene. Therefore, any community that is looking for a home, and can prove a minimum level of interest in their series will be welcome to join the 8WAYRUN collective. I will provide hosting, management, software and relative autonomy.

Turning 8WAYRUN into a network, will also give me the ability to offer a proper home to all the software I have made publicly available. Just let me know what kind of games you want to see join our family.

 

As a person who has played TTRPG's for 20 years now; the players are what kill the interest in that genre. Bringing them here is just asking for trouble, and would worsen an already existing problem, in my opinion.

I've been playing longer than that. My only attempt, however, to interact with others interested in the genre outside of my own circle, random conversations at hobby stores, and the occasional convention back in the day was the message board for TTRPGs on Gamefaqs. They were pretty caustic and I gave up quickly...but I blew it off as being Gamefaqs.

Anyway, I pictured a bunch of people talking about their Soul Caliber based campaigns and arguing over how much STR Siegfried has - We have so many people on this site, and fans of the game in general that lean towards RPing it just seemed like a good fit. What I did not imagine is a boiling pot of nerd rage as one geek tells another they are playing make-believe wrong. I've certainly seen enough of that over the years, but it wasn't what sprung to mind.

Side Note: I actually had to look up 'grognard'. I'm filing it along with with 'weeaboo' and 'try-hard' as an insult that tells me more about the person making it than the target.

 

I've been playing longer than that. My only attempt, however, to interact with others interested in the genre outside of my own circle, random conversations at hobby stores, and the occasional convention back in the day was the message board for TTRPGs on Gamefaqs. They were pretty caustic and I gave up quickly...but I blew it off as being Gamefaqs.

Anyway, I pictured a bunch of people talking about their Soul Caliber based campaigns and arguing over how much STR Siegfried has - We have so many people on this site, and fans of the game in general that lean towards RPing it just seemed like a good fit. What I did not imagine is a boiling pot of nerd rage as one geek tells another they are playing make-believe wrong. I've certainly seen enough of that over the years, but it wasn't what sprung to mind.

I play RPG's for the opposite reason that I play Fighting Games. A fighting game is created with an objective in mind, designed in a certain way, etc. So to me the casual or competitive debate has some place in a reality. On the other hand, I play RPG's because it has no intended constraint, as such, it is basically a game of creativity with some rules guidelines, and typically a flavor skewing. Then I see people making "class tierlists", talking about broken builds, and generally treating the game like a number crunching contest, and it always comes off as missing the point of why the genre exists in the first place. Kind of like playing FG's for the story, haha.

Side Note: I actually had to look up 'grognard'. I'm filing it along with with 'weeaboo' and 'try-hard' as an insult that tells me more about the person making it than the target.

The way I see it thrown around, I assumed Grognard was industry standard by now, theres even a website based around a tongue in cheek usage of the name. "Neckbeard" is a funnier one than grognard, and perhaps more in line with try-hard, etc.

2. Neckbeard

Talkative, self-important nerdy men who, through an inability to properly decode social cues, mistake others' strained tolerance of their blather for evidence of their own charm.

 

I play RPG's for the opposite reason that I play Fighting Games. A fighting game is created with an objective in mind, designed in a certain way, etc. So to me the casual or competitive debate has some place in a reality. On the other hand, I play RPG's because it has no intended constraint, as such, it is basically a game of creativity with some rules guidelines, and typically a flavor skewing. Then I see people making "class tierlists", talking about broken builds, and generally treating the game like a number crunching contest, and it always comes off as missing the point of why the genre exists in the first place. Kind of like playing FG's for the story, haha.

I'm 100% agreement with this right here. The rules are just the tools you use to make your stories come about. Though I do feel a certain satisfaction in the face of well-crunched numbers, I also recognize that when they become the focus the game becomes very boring, very fast. When they become the focus of discussion things also go very poorly.

The way I see it thrown around, I assumed Grognard was industry standard by now, theres even a website based around a tongue in cheek usage of the name. "Neckbeard" is a funnier one than grognard, and perhaps more in line with try-hard, etc.

2. Neckbeard

Talkative, self-important nerdy men who, through an inability to properly decode social cues, mistake others' strained tolerance of their blather for evidence of their own charm.

Neckbeard is an awesome phrase and one I've already added to my daily use. It also reminds me to not be half-assed when I shave in the morning.

I loop grognard in with try-hard and weeaboo because they are all insults based on something that inherently isn't a bad thing. Neckbeardism might just be the hidden piece that makes all of these benign things into defects though. Neckbeardism...I'm going to continue to use that one.

 

;.

You stole my avatar idea. Quit it.

 

Along with quite a number of people, I don't have much to do with SC anymore, and yet I keep coming back to the forums because there's a real sense of community, and it's just so well built and maintained, and so the idea of taking those things and employing them for other games too is a fantastic one.

The only other forums I know of that exist in such a similar manner are the ones on Serebi, and lord knows I haven't been THERE for years.

An excellent candidate, in my humble opinion, for a series to focus on, would be the Souls (Demon/Dark) series. There's a HUGE fanbase there, a real, genuine community, and yet the main hub of activity are the two Wiki forums or, heaven's forfend, Gamefaqs.

Having a mix of these forums and Dark Souls would get me wetter than an otter's pocket.

 

As long as Jaxel is alive, I have every reason to live

AZ

 

Smash

The main community forum for the Smash series, smashboards.com, has just changed management recently from MLG staff from the old days to a guy named AlphaZealot. Maybe contact him about this? He already voiced his intentions of upgrading the forums.

 

I would love to see this forum take over some of the games not already established within SRK. I've sadly had to resort to Tekken due to a completely dead SC community in vegas and I have been frustrated to all hell trying to learn that game with how poorly the information is arranged out there. I feel spoiled by this site in how well it got me up to speed and taught me calibur, I would love to see the same done for the other games.

While many game can be home here I think we should look to establish Tekken here. Tekkenzaibatsu is terribly laid out and I feel this site could easily step in and right that wrong.

 

How about expanding the forums by giving each region in the world its own discussion space?

Currently you have subforums for different parts of American and Rest of World countries all clumped together, so there isn't much room for discussing other (fighting)games or finding people closer to a particular region outside of US

I guess I'm mostly thinking of something like europe.8wayrun.com would be really cool, so we can have one section for SC5 related events/discussions/matchups in European countries and another section for general banter.

It might take away some emphasis from the main website, but if it helps draw more FG players towards 8WR (and SC in general) then IMO it could be worth a shot