Sun Oct 28 01:47:57 2007

At 12 o'clock AM, Day of Deception, 9th of the Month of the Old Forces
on the Theran calendar Isspyn perished, never to return.

I've had this character for a long, long time. This is my third hero thus far. It gets easier each time, provided I can find a group. I did some things well with this character, and made some mistakes.

First, before I get into anything else, I want to apologize to the imps once more for that nasty e-mail I sent in response to that one event in Isspyn's life. It still totally sucked, and I still don't think anyone really knows what the deal was with that, but I'm over it now and it wasn't worth becoming absolutely unhinged over. I sincerely apologize for that whole scene.

Isspyn was sort of the late follow up to my previous dark-elf Tyrelyn. I wanted to make some different choices with the build, and ultimately my goal was to build a rager killer out of Isspyn, which worked out well. To my recollection Isspyn died to one rager in the course of his life and it was due to nothing but pure dumb luck on the rager's part.

Sorry to everyone for the short lived Advisor-hood. I had 4 con left when I got made advisor, and they gave me 2 more. Thanks for the chance by the way, I really enjoyed the nightmarish voice stuff. I was already pretty much done with the character and trying to con kill him rather than delete. I was hoping leadership would help breathe some life back into Isspyn but unfortunately it didn't help me get back into it any.

I've also recently started a new job, which leaves me with less time than before.

The biggest mistake I made with Isspyn was having a role that required too much imm involvement. It never really got off the ground. I think it might have made a cool mini quest or something.

Anyway, some goodbyes... Isspyn wasn't very close to anybody. He didn't ask for help much, and was mostly a loner doing his own thing.

Scion - Well we went from super weak to incredibly powerful. That's a good thing in Isspyn's opinion. I urge you all, however, if it isn't too late already to not follow the cabal trend of gank-everything-in-sight-when-we-have-the-strength mentality that seems to be popular. It's a vicious cycle -- when one "team" does it the other answers in kind.

As an aside (perhaps least of all aimed at Scion), this mentality has almost made the full circle now, starting at Empire way back when they were strong, moving to fort/outlander, to tribs, to Nexus, and finally to Scion. Battle was probably in there somewhere and I just missed it. Everyone should do their part to break this cycle though. Grow some balls and challenge yourself! Get into some solo fights and stop drooling on your shiny gear that you never use without 3 other people to make sure there's zero risk of losing it.

Fortress - Out of this characters entire life span I can name only 3 fortressites I had any respect for at all -- Juliane, Pesawwkt, and Niheriva. I enjoyed fighting all of you. Lyriana might be a distant fourth, I saw her kick some ass alone from time to time and we had some good scraps. The rest of you were ganging wusses. I'm almost positive I never saw anyone else alone, ever. In my opinion, you were all easily the WORST about the mob-mentality issue I mentioned earlier. I'll post the 7v1 ganking of Isspyn later I'm sure. Sad, sad and ridiculous. You should all be disgusted with yourselves.

Nexus - While I like the concept of this cabal, I hate the kind of people that play it. I despised what I saw of the Nexus from the inside as Denenskel, I despised them with Isspyn, and I despise them with my current character already in the works. I don't know what it is, but if fort got the massive ganking award, Nexus definitely gets the award for having the most extremely whiny cheap shotting assholes. Some are dead and gone, some are still alive, so I wont mention any names. I liked Xilia consistently. Breamly and Glimdar seemed ok too. That's about it though. I've encountered more Nexites and Nexus wannabes that insist on being piss poor liars, too, about completely stupid things/things they probably shouldn't actively lie about. Not sure what that's all about.

Battle - I liked most of you guys, with an exception or two. I could always find someone that wanted a fight, and wasn't a complete weenie about it. I didn't have much extensive interaction with anyone, but I had no complaints here. Good job guys.

Outlander - I'm fairly neutral here. I didn't have any particularly bad experiences or particularly good experiences with Outlanders.

This character lived over such a span I'm not going to attempt individual goodbyes. If you want to post, I'll respond.

See you all in the fields.

--Nightshade

I thought Isspyn was a great character, and I liked that you did your own thing, even when there were others to travel with. Especially liked that log you posted of two of us landing a kill at the same time on opposite sides of Thera.

You might not have realised it, but I intentionally kept scion outnumbered specifically in order to avoid the ganking mentality setting in on our side.

Where fortress were concerned though, I saw different things gank-wise. I definitely saw some not on your list who went out of their way not to gank, and others on your list who ganked me.

I still think the game is in some ways set up to encourage ganking. Anti-gank code is a huge improvement, but trib-outlander in particular is always going to be a problem until tribs can see all outlanders on the who list. Otherwise two might decide to try their luck, only to find that that are 10 outlanders on. So they come in a group of eight, and end up ganking the 2 outlanders that are on. Either way odds are one of the two sides is in for a ganking.

Never realised you made advisor, but congratulations on that one.

I enjoyed Victoria from a distance and I'll always remember being part of the chasm with the first of the powerful dark-elf APs.

Isspyn, like many dark-elf males, really had this thing against dark-elf females... particularly, powerful dark-elf women. That was certainly Vic.

Isspyn was sort of ambivalent toward Vic. He recognized her potential to lead the Chasm to power, but was also VERY cautious of her due to his past. With Vic around, Isspyn always strove to show his strength from a distance and give the impression of being valuable to the Fold without ever really attracting Vic's personal attention. It seemed to work, and kept him away from her as much as possible.

Good job on Vic, if I didn't already say that somewhere earlier. I'm glad you enjoyed Isspyn as well.

I figured you had your reasons for keeping Scion small. Knowing why you did now, that's great, although I wish it could just be as simple as being able to trust the players not to be asshats to their fellow players. Unfortunately, there will always be players that are all about winning at any cost instead of challenging themselves. There was a lot of respect flowing to and from Scion during Victoria's reign. A pleasantly evil atmosphere if you will.

Thanks for the words.

--Nightshade

I just saw the PBF, I thought I was just missing your log in times.
Isspyn and I had some great knife fights always ending with lots of blood trails. Thoroughly enjoyable all round including the little talks back and forth. You seemed to have been quite successful, can't believe it's your third hero! Well done.

See you in the fields.
Pesa

You were the only other dagger spec that seemed to consistently outfight me round for round and I was never sure why. I always wanted to try the hamstring/impale route against you to see if that would do any better, but I don't think I ever did.

Thanks for the solo fights. I always saw you running around doing your thing without the need for massive backup, and we always tangled. Enjoyed our interactions both in combat and conversation.