I've been a gamer since I first sat down with wide eyes and plugged the Commodore 64 into my 14" television. I've been counting pixels in order to calculate perfect jumps in The Last Ninja, while writing down tape counter marks in order to know where on that tape my various games were. I lived through the exciting new era of the floppy disc, back when they were indeed thin and floppy. I built my own PCs, from my very first 386 through that aesthetically horrifying but oh so very 'leet' stationary that makes my computer corner look like a freaking nightclub. I came to appreciate the various innovations with keyboards and mice, as I quickly figured out that my performance was no longer limited by my own skill and speed but by the conduits through which I let my godlike commands flow... yeah, that sounded a bit dirty, didn't it?
I went through the days of vertical mice. I giggled at their phallic symbolism, took a firm grip around it and jerked it around with glee... except it did kind of suck. I tried the trackballs. I have tried various keyboards, a number of joysticks, gamepads, mousepads... in fact, now that I think about it, I'm fairly sure there's not a single 'innovative/experimental' gaming peripheral I haven't tried.
In short, I'm an experienced gamer, and an avid user of high-performance gaming hardware.
Imagine my glee, back in the day, when a bunch of gamers decided that the peripherals manufactured by the large companies just didn't cut it. When they decided to create something purely for the gamers themselves. The Razer Boomslang. A legendary mouse. Looked terrifying, in it's alien design. It felt so weird, for a new user. It... was... awesome... Well, performance wise. And since then, they've kept upping the performance in each subsequent product.
Yes... I'm a Razer fan.
Or... I was. I kept trying the other mice on the market. I enjoyed Logitech's hardware. Didn't like their design choices. I was always sucked back to Razer's products, partly because of the high performance. Partly because I liked their design. Partly because I still giggle at the 'badass' lines they try to lure in new 'leetkid' users with.
And now I'm spent. Other manufacturers have caught up to them in performance (while failing to provide ambidextrous mice, but that's another story for left-handed people). While Razer still delivers vicious high-end performance mice, that's no longer unique. Should that make me drop these marvelous manufacturers like so much trash? No... but when Razer themselves have lost one important feature on their products, they've shot themselves in the foot. Especially when the market now holds several contenders.
Quality. Endurance.
My beautiful Razer Copperhead mouse is now a decorative piece on my desk, and no more. Laser stopped working. My previous mouse, the equally beautiful Razer Diamondback stopped clicking. All in all, I now have one functioning Razer mouse, but unfortunately the components are dispersed between two non-functioning mice. Why? I have no clue. They were both fairly new at the point of failure, and they've been cared for like small children. After all, they're the most important piece of hardware next to my computer itself, for a precision gamer.
Farewell, Razer. Your competitors hold equal performance to your own, and even greater... And also provide higher durability and endurance, if customer and critic reviews are to be believed.
Why am I telling you guys this? Why am I writing a tl;dr post about something like this? Well... it may seem inconsequential, but for me this marks the end of an era. Something new is on my horizon as a gamer, and something that started so wonderfully have now come to an end with an anti-climactic... fizzle, or whatever. And perhaps I can steer some other users clear of inferior quality products.
As I now fiddle about with the mousepad on my laptop, I look mournfully at my Copperhead as I just can't bear unplugging it and lose that pulsing blue LED. I can't bear taking it off it's lifesupport, as doing so will be that final end... the end of an era. An era where Razer, who gave me so much joy with their pioneering of high-performance gaming hardware, ends...
Well... Once my new Logitech G9x gaming mouse arrives, I'm fairly sure the Razer'll be yanked out and tossed aside like so much trash. When an era ends... another begins, after all.
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Topic: The end of an era... (Read 2062 times)