Tue May 28 06:58:18 2013

At 9 o'clock PM, Day of the Bull, 1st of the Month of the Ancient Darkness
on the Theran calendar Swaareti perished, never to return.

Of mortal life, time is but a point, and the substance is in constant flux, our perceptions dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul is a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a flowing stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after comes oblivion.

--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

I enjoyed interacting with Swaareti.

Hopefully I was somewhat helpful to you before I hung it up.

Invokers in nexus bring back fond memories for me from my first nexus char, and you confirmed again why I liked them so much as an ally.

I’ve been limping along for a while with this one so losing most of my stuff was as good a time to quit as any. With a new baby in the house, I simply haven’t had the time to focus without distractions. Between the demands at home and work, and summer lifestyle, I just don't have time these days.

This was really my first non-shifter mage. I tried a drow invoker leading up to this, with a really interesting role in mind, destined for Scion-- and then got just destroyed in the mid-ranks while Reksah went dormant, so decided I had learned a few things and would try once more before giving up on the class. Went for a low xp-penalty race and far more grouping options (and a cabal I already knew to minimize the learning curve), and kind of a goofy throw-away role that I wasn't so tied to in case things went poorly again. The mid ranks were still tough but after that life got easy. Spamming spells was a ridiculous pain the ass at times, but eventually it pays off I guess, though at times I was pretty grumpy having spent a 100 hours or whatever spamming spells that a midnight dragon geared Villager would spellbane, evade, and resist consistently with no effort while beating me down easily. So it goes.

Akresius- Not sure if our times were mismatched or I just wasn’t that interesting or what. I tried writing some stuff, did some good RP when I could and for a while, had some pretty great fights. After waiting around for weeks and finally catching up at 250 hours or whatever, having been a Seeker for a while, to get “I’m watching you” was kinda disappointing. But sometimes that’s how it goes. A little challenge to do something or prove myself by some accomplishments, or feedback to point me in the right direction would go a long ways. As sphere beauty I felt like the focus maybe could be a bit more in the philosophies and less on the physical combat/victory, but maybe it’s more about the latter. Or maybe I just simply didn’t RP well enough when you were around. Anyhow, thanks for the limited interactions we had. It was fun and that customized experience is what keeps CF interesting over time.

Nexus- Treyliu was my last character, more or less, other than the failed invoker attempt described above. I had a pretty different take on the Nexus philosophy with this one and had intentions of pushing it further, maybe even becoming a Herald eventually, had I stuck around a while. Ah well. A good group all around and perhaps on a bit of an upswing lately?

Mylene- Always quality. Didn’t see you all that much with this one as my time dwindled. You aren’t around a ton but when you are you give it your all. One of my favorites and glad to see you still kicking. And thanks for winning me some luck through my tournament bet with Whiysdan!

Olthundor/Ursetra- Things got less fun for me once you guys were gone. Had some fun running around with you and learned much. Thanks for that. I felt the same boredom kicking in around the same time as Ursetra deleted, but managed to push on for a while and somewhat overcame it as the cabal dynamics shifted.

Svinbinden- Like you a lot. Guessing you’ll continue to thrive with those forms.

Arratok- You were tough as hell and always classy. Maximum respect to you. Keep on doing your thing, man.

Kraldinor- Really liked you, though admittedly never felt you as the evil emperor. Felt like we were running around a lot during some really tough times for you and the Empire, so it’s been fun to see you really shining now after pressing through some real challenges.

Ekaerok- Likewise, was glad to see you rise up after Jawn passed. You earned it and are crazy tough. We had some great fights that could go either way, depending how the dice rolled. Fighting together we were extremely dangerous--wishing we had more often. Solid all around.

Immortals- Thanks again for all you do. Just a thought, one thing I think would keep things fresh around CF is more little global type quests. Tough things to hunt down, items to find, puzzles to be solved, challenges to be overcome. Things that can be fairly minor, filtered down through cabal leaders or imm followers or notes, just little mini-quests (kind of like what happens on some holidays, but maybe more spread over the duration of a couple weeks) that happen on monthly basis. This kind of thing would be a real bonus to help keep things interesting when it starts to feel monotonous. And more imms being active like Rayihn and Whiysdan would be awesome. Having played several chars now to have immortals go dormant, I really think the game benefits a lot from that and getting some of these young imms up to take those RP aspects seems really important. Nythos, Iklahn, and Inerayo have been sitting around forever and IMO could be more useful as an imm with followers even if they don’t finish writing up some super awesome area. I realize they have to build trust with time invested, but just more diversity, more religions/philosophies, etc. for the game would go a long way, IMO.

Nothing much more to say for now. I ran around alone a lot and learned a lot more with this one.

Not sure if I’ll be around again or not. This could be me calling it quits as life has changed but not feeling the need to say either way. Time will tell. Have fun and remember to get outdoors sometimes and play in the real world- and fight the good fight and shine your love with all your heart, my friends. Peace out.

>
>Akresius- Not sure if our times were mismatched or I just
>wasn’t that interesting or what. I tried writing some stuff,
>did some good RP when I could and for a while, had some pretty
>great fights. After waiting around for weeks and finally
>catching up at 250 hours or whatever, having been a Seeker for
>a while, to get “I’m watching you” was kinda
>disappointing. But sometimes that’s how it goes. A little
>challenge to do something or prove myself by some
>accomplishments, or feedback to point me in the right
>direction would go a long ways. As sphere beauty I felt like
>the focus maybe could be a bit more in the philosophies and
>less on the physical combat/victory, but maybe it’s more
>about the latter. Or maybe I just simply didn’t RP well
>enough when you were around. Anyhow, thanks for the limited
>interactions we had. It was fun and that customized experience
>is what keeps CF interesting over time.

I know that gank-o-meter is not the end-all, be-all of solo PKing, but yours was so consistently high that I wasn't sure that you were trying to live up to the tenets of Akresius' religion. This is not to say you were doing anything wrong; I believe we had a conversation about cabal goals vs. religion goals.

Your cabal goals dictated that you raid and retrieve from Battle constantly, and that's fine. Oftentimes, that leads to situations where you dogpile on someone. Your choice was to make that your priority. I tried to nudge you in a direction where you could choose to concentrate on solo-PKs, but I never saw anything from you that showed commitment in that direction.

Your roleplay was great, and I really enjoyed the notes that you sent. I gave you a title befitting your character (Silvertongued Seeker of Akresius), but the choices you made dictated that you were not on the path to a tattoo. If the choices you made enabled you to have fun with the character, then I'd call Swaareti a success.

Good luck on your next!

Kind of figured as much based on our interactions. I really did try to focus on solo PKs and stepping out of gang-type fights--had endless 1-vs-1 "victories" that resulted in people running but had hard times sealing kills. Couldn't do it often enough to overshadow the group kills that were inevitable.

The whole gank-o-meter thing is a bit fuzzy to me, particularly when it comes to fights where it's 2-vs-2 or 3-vs-3, which happens a lot in Nexus. There were almost no times when I was ganging up against anyone outside cabal raid/retrieval situations (and even then tried to stay out of it if I could justify, but so many Villagers just simply can't be taken down in a 1-vs-1 fight), though certainly times where I'd fight someone that had been fighting someone else usually unknowingly, or someone else would jump in during a fight or whatever. Those just tended to be the times where someone died, I guess.

I honestly didn't realize how important the whole 1-vs-1 fighting thing was to the religion--something well-suited for villagers and pretty damn hard to live up to in practical terms otherwise. Maybe I'll try again some time (if I play again in the future) but I'm more interested in ideas and philosophies and less so in being a top notch PKer, so maybe it's just not for me. Seems like what you're after here is geared toward the most elite pk players (or at least the ones who will be "successful" based on gankometer) which I suppose is a niche for some but pretty limited. I tried to spin it a little different and it didn't work out, but was worth a shot. So it goes.

It was fun regardless, never really expected a tattoo but thought I'd see where the religion might lead. Always interesting to try as it adds a whole extra dimension to the game. Thanks again.

This is a big loss to the Isle, any time you were on and there was something that needed "fixed" you made it much, much simpler. I hope you had fun and thank you for your help. You will be missed.

--Mylene