I remember not so long ago thinking roughly the same thing about gangs. Then when I sat down and really tried to remember what the 'old Knight days' used to be....I remembered a lot of gangs. I remember them mainly, because as the mortal leader of the Knights at the time, I had to try to figure out a policy to deal with them within the framework of 'honor'. I remember this even before Empire showed up. I'd wager most old Knights can toss out several stories of them walking along in FoN and getting jumped by a group, I'd wager that most of them would have several such stories.

I will agree with you that one on one fights weren't *as* rare as they are now, and that people were slightly more willing to go toe to toe without support if jumped one on one. However, here's the thing...CF has grown up. We can remember the old days with happy thoughts and how good things used to be, but if you want to remember the old days...let's remember all of it:

- people talking about their day at school on the cabal channel
- INSANELY overpowered classes (old school clerics/mages, need I say more?)
- suicide charm squads
- insta-assassinate
- names that we'd never allow now: MrBlonde, MrWhite, Santa, SlipperyJim, Ripsaw, etc etc etc
- Smurfs
- roleplay that rarely peaked above 'thou should meetith me at mkt []'

I'd could go on and on, but I think minor frustrations aside (and the whole gangbang mentality, I too grumble about at times) CF is a much much better game now than it was back then.

As for the cabals, you're way off base here in your memories, my friend. CF cabals were originally set up to diametrically oppose each other ie:

Knight - Shadow
Rager - Master
Justice - Entropy

If anything, we're slowly returning to the good old days of cabal wars. Just like the rest of CF though, we've evolved. Cabals are gaining back some of the old charm, but in the process we're not going to dump the fun things we've picked up on the way. There are a lot of things we do on CF as an immstaff that are, in a lot of ways, grand experiments. Some of them work out brilliantly (warrior legacies for example) and others fall on their face (the initial set-up of the 2000 cabal shuffle for example). CF is never a finished product, it's always a work in progress. Where I'm going with this line of thought is basically to remind people that it's posts like this and others that help us keep CF moving forward. Even if you never see anything come of a post made here, it doesn't mean we didn't get an idea out of it. On an additional note, for any of you that this applies to, if you've got a gripe and you don't post it somewhere that the imms will read and respond...you're wasting the bandwidth.

so rambles Unca Floofi.