Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Issue: 146   Editor: Shaktoolik


BootCast Off Air! IrBabyteckz
No longer will we be seeing the yellow (On Air) lights flashing the stage of Bootleggers. It’s a sad, sad day when the powers that be have decided to cut this small pleasure from our cozy mafia world.
“Bootleggers is in some small way worse today than it was because a feature enjoyed by some is no longer there” – Mags.

I come to you now as a former DJ to state my case, my sadness, and my displeasure at the BootCast being ripped away from us. But, also I come to you as a player, with the BootCast from the very start to tell you the joy, distraction, and friendship that I have gotten from the BootCast and before, in its mighty reign.

I want to start my story from the beginning, where a young and ambitious player named iRetribute made a radio station and called it BootRadio and launched it onto the OTF. It received a welcome to the Bootleggers world like nothing had for a long time before and nothing has since. Sure there were others who tried to imitate it and claim it as its own, but they just didn’t cut it and BootRadio prevailed above them all. A fairly new player myself at this time, I was thrilled by BootRadio, I applied and after auditioning live on air I received the honor of becoming a DJ. A few others I’d like to mention here are Sylv and Myst, they also joined with BootRadio and followed it on into becoming the BootCast. It also boasted (then) HDO Nyxxie, then Moderators, Air, 5Litre, Annihilation and Admin, Sabin amongst its staff.

BootRadio was later sold to another player, Killeribo for 2,000 points and $200 to settle vets bills that iRetribute had earned while rescuing a stray kitten. (If you can believe that!) Killeribo did little work with the station, quickly passing it onto BSF2000 for an undisclosed amount. BootRadio remained as was for a while. A station run by the players for the players, but it was fast becoming evident that the guys in red jackets were not satisfied with the great success that BootRadio was having. Was this the start of its demise?

Soon it was confirmed to the DJs that BootRadio would be having a revamp, and resurrecting the name of the “BootCast”, a once loved feature started by LukkyB, where the weekly goings on in the world of Bootleggers would be streamed as a downloadable podcast. I speak now for all the DJs when I say we were thrilled at the idea of becoming an official feature, if a little perplexed by the new equipment we were to be trained on! So in July of 2007 Myst became the first DJ to broadcast on the new and “improved” Bootleggers radio station, now known as the BootCast.

At the start everything was going well, the BootCast was on air 24/7 for the most part with myself and the other DJs pulling stunt like 10, 12 and sometimes even 19 hour shows regularly. Later more DJs left and others joined, the currently popular Mags and Option were two of the later DJs to join, equally putting in as much effort. Along with the BootCasts external restructuring there was some internal also with Myst being promoted to Head DJ, later the position was passed to Sylv and then finally Mags carried the torch proudly for us, doing more in his reign than any of the others.

The BootCast has had its ups and down, more downs lately sadly. I’m not about to make any excuses as to why people were not DJing and I know myself to have been idle on this front also, all I have to say is the BootCast failed. But why? All I have to offer to you is my opinion, and tell you what happened to my drive to entertain you.

I feel that the BootCast was taken from us, it was taken from you. We are the players and the BootCast was and should always have been ours. Yes, we were given some very nice updates with the layout, request options, a nice shiny forum and other mod cons, but what was taken from us? It was our freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to entertain, freedom to express ourselves and express you. The BootCast was never intended to be a professional thing, it was intended to be fun, but BSF almighty stole our fun. He censored you and made the BootCast what he wanted. He stole our heart, and replaced it with a machine. Everyone knows machines in time, fail.

I can understand the fact that the BootCast needed a change, and I have seen in the recent weeks it pick up some more and Mags making a thread on the Game Forum asking for your input, bringing it back to what it was meant to be all along, something all about you guys. Sadly the Administrators saw fit to axe the BootCast without so much as a word to the DJs that have put a lot of time and effort into their game.

“I really cannot fathom why after asking BSF if he wanted to make a GF thread or shall I he said he wasn’t going to make any comment about it as a public notice. He informed HDO+....not even the current DJ's.....and left it at that.” – Mags.

The least they could have done is show us that little courtesy, the slightest of respect for what we have done over the last two years.

(Former) DJ Genasai