I posted a lot of this on Discord already, but I like to write my thoughts here so I can look back in a few years and see how wrong I was about everything.

Faramond was kind of a throw-away character, because I knew I needed to have the experience of playing a warrior to more effectively counter them, but also knew the experience of playing a warrior would not be my cup of tea. I figured perhaps my experience as a goblin would translate a bit, though (it really didn't much). So I came up with a ridiculous enough character concept for this to be fun and keep my interest from an RP perspective and crossed my fingers.

I had only played one warrior since weapon specs have been a thing, back in 2004ish, and had never played Tribunal. Neither appealed to me. After this character, I at least have solid confirmation that neither are for me. Warriors are just prep-dependent to a degree that is off-putting. Like having to quaf potions just to rank properly is dumb. And with no hides or detects, you are a sitting duck who can't see anyone unless you are super diligent with those potions (or know gear to give you perma-detect which I do not).

With my previous characters, I felt like there were power spikes here and there, but in general they kept up with other classes in power. With the warrior, I felt ok at around level 30, and it was all downhill from here. The main reason being, you get your second weapon spec at 40 but that only adds versatility. You have nothing new or more powerful that a warrior who took that spec first wouldn't have. So you really need those legacies and edges to bring it all home. So from level 38-hero really sucks.

I wanted to power through to hero, but there was basically no pathway to do that. The PK range for me was all evil all the time, with a few people in particular who were going to find me no matter where I tried to rank, and were likely going to kill me reliably if found. And playing a level 44 warrior for a length of time long enough for that PK range to change just did not sound like a bit of fun, hence the delete.

Tribunal was a weird cabal experience after having a couple Fort characters. Fort feels good and natural. You have a lot of people working toward the same goal, so the cabal channel is mostly calling out where people are or RP related to camaraderie. Tribunal, by its very nature, is a more mixed group with less camaraderie. And at least for the time I was in, not really much in the way of RP happens on cabal chat. It was very disjointed. Lots of people using cabal chat to talk to people they were grouped with for item gathering or whatever. It just made me feel like I wasn't part of anything cohesive. And I always thought Tribunal would be a boring cabal where you sat in your guild on duty most of the time, and then had people whine at you whenever you actually did your job. Now I can confirm that is exactly the case. Not to my taste and I doubt I will do another Tribunal character.

Sorry, this is all quite negative.

As usual, the people you meet make all the difference even if the experience of playing a character mechanically isn't for you. And this is no exception. I met some really great characters in my time as Faramond. Basically, if I ever talked to you more than once, count yourself among them, because I only sought interaction from people I enjoyed even on an enemy level.

Finally, some specific apologies to Yvcalla and Viera. There was one night I was playing and hating everything about the game, and you tried to interact with me. I said things that were verging on OOC and probably broke immersion, which is something I personally hate and never try to do myself. So I can own up to it, and I hope you can forgive me for the slips. You both seem like awesome characters. I just felt really beaten down as Faramond.