Thu Jun 19 21:48:48 2008

At 4 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 25th of the Month of the Old Forces
on the Theran calendar Pargtorix perished, never to return.

My computer died and I autodeleted. I'm using a home-brew PC hooked to a TV, hoping to log in and remain active until I have a monitor, and find this. On to some farewells:

Imms

Coders; Please for the sake of anyone who repeats my path, find a way to let the caverndwellers see hiddens in the caves. I could scan and see them, but not do anything about it. It's a known bug, and it really affected my playing experience on a few occasions.

Daevryn: The waylay bug is a bug. I understand that you want to avoid command abuse, but that's not what happened. I was being followed and was not in a group. There's no reason for waylay not to work there except to prevent a 'ungroup partner;waylay target' incident.

Corrlaan: I worked you into my role in what I thought was a well considered and potentially interesting way. I never found your shrine and after asking your followers for help, writing you a note, and wasting a few of my evenings, I simply ran out of man-hours. I still wanted to meet up with you but it was starting to feel like you were avoiding me. True story?


Battle

Fjarn: I really liked you and I got the feeling that you were worried about my feelings during our interview. It came off to me like "I know it's been a long time, come on, you're in now." and I really tried to do all of the things that I promised. I didn't get the kills that I should have and so there were some embelishing stories that talked about me waxxing the floor with the guys who I had, though I never mentioned that they always got away. I did perma-lag a Fire AP once though with bearcharge. That was fun. You were great to be with though, and I'm glad you're still contributing though I was honestly a bit sad to see you no longer the mortal leader.

Jalenkan: You were great but the fact that our interview was totally ooc really bothered me. I never came back to finish that one and for a reason. As mates in the village, though, I really enjoyed having you around and doing stupid things together.

Cheaters: I'm not going to call names, but I was really put off by a few things that I was witness to and really can't believe that the people doing it got away with it, or later finding out who they were, that they did it at all. All I want to say is that the imms should be kicking ass like it's 1999. All of this hand-holding to win over new players is good, but when the vets are taking advantage of it, well #### that.

So I can"t remember names right now, but some good memories that stick out are: the puritan bard, weird and fun.
the silent thief, always causing trouble
the drillmaster, pissing people off and taking names later
the cloud giant, kicking ass then getting booted
the 8 billion applicants that i ranked with, talked to, and raided by
Xiu (sp) the assassin who raided by me for a week without interruption
the human hth warrior that was always in self-despair. baymon?
the svirf warriors, outdamaging me 3:1 each
the arial warrior who helped me out of a sticky situation in darsylon, jabree?
the arial warrior that surprised me in aran'gird. scared me for real

Too many more. Battle was a good time and I'll come back eventually, but not with a ranger next time.

Enemies:
Lump sum. I hate every last imperial with every ounce of my being. These clowns are running around ganking ragers and taking the head and we're being told not to fight back. I stirred up some trouble in that arena and things started turning but the bards, oh the bards. Killed a few of you, got killed by one of you a few times. Remember to be creative.

Nexans drove me insane. Probably half of my time playing after level 11 was spent fighting you, generally to no avail on either side, raiding, or retrieving from you. Those inners need to get looked at. I'd take fighting two destructors over those guys any day of the week. In particular there was a druid, a shifter, and the imperial army that I always hated fighting at the island.

Random mages, sorry. It's part of the role and honestly, I tried to always make sure you knew who I was and what I was about. I only caught one or two with their pants down during ranking sessions, and I was a ranger so we'll have to live with that.

Mizfara: I really didn't know wtf to do about you. I was so stunned at my keyboard that by the time I threw in my obligatory bearcharge, you were long gone. I figured the next time we met I'd return the favor. I'm 99.999% certain that I know who plays this character, and let me just say, I hope you imm and stick with it. Also, telling the fort who they can or can't rank with, I think, is well intentioned but incredibly stupid. Our numbers aren't good enough for that mentality.

Lich: You should have gotten me that time. It would have been worth it, and I didn't even go that far. It's a nice phylactery. Maybe you felt bad because my spellbane was down. It was my mistake though.

Too many names are escaping me now. The scion flurry machine of a fire giant, I'm so glad you were able to kill me in the round _following_ my retrieving the head instead of the round before. Sick sick warrior.

Anyone else, I'm really sorry. It's obviously been about a month since I was on CF and my mind is occupied in other places.

My half day from work, meant for Pargtorix, is now lost. So long to a fun character, high hopes, and master plans.

-PP signing out.

>Mizfara: I really didn't know wtf to do about you. I was so
>stunned at my keyboard that by the time I threw in my
>obligatory bearcharge, you were long gone.

Yeah. I never knew you were a rager, so I figured I'd include you when I spelled up your ranking group. Oops!

>Also, telling the fort who they can or
>can't rank with, I think, is well intentioned but incredibly
>stupid. Our numbers aren't good enough for that mentality.

I don't plan on making RP concessions based on the player count. Ever. I rescinded that particular regulation, basically because someone convinced me it wasn't categorically bad mojo for a fort guy to be cooperating with a battle/outlander guy *unless* it causes strife between that fort guy and a cabalmate who may be hunted by battle/outlander.

Nuts! Nuts nuts nuts nuts nuts.

There's a special place in my heart for Rager Rangers. It's always seemed like a tough combo to play, but I've never had the cahones to roll one. In fact, I was looking ahead to the next character I might play at the time as far back as when Pargtorix was inducted. It was essentially your build with a different race, but of course that's been overcome by events.

Which leads me to a request - How did you like the terrain and specialization you chose? Did you find that you were still rangerly useful in cabal raids? What about your wilderness skills - did they work reasonably well for you, considering a good portion of your life was spent in civilized terrain?

Did you find much opportunity to battle mages in your terrain, or did they stick to the roads and cities?

Anyway, good work with a potentially frustrating combination. It was good having you around, and I really wish I'd had more opportunities to fight alongside you.

Man, about six weeks ago the frustration got to me and I rolled another character. I tend not to do that and I got tired of it after less than a week of sparse playing, and came back to Parg. The problem is that somehow my laptop got totally screwed up and the fan was going totally insane. I was out of town for a good amount of time on business and personal travel, then came back to a whole new slew of faces in the village. I figured hey, no problem. Let's mix it up. Then my laptop died and I've just now gotten a working PC (no monitor mind you, I'm hooked to a TV right now). I hoped that Parg would still be alive and I could get back into it. Now it looks like I can't, and so I'm going to take some time to finish setting up my system before I get pulled back into CF.

This was a comeback character and I think it showed sometimes, but hopefully only sometimes. Take a look at my PB stats and you'll know that I didn't get many kills. I didn't get killed much either.

I =NEVER= got to fight a mage in a cave. I twice got to fight imperials there, one that I chased there from a civilized room, and one when I didn't realize that someone changed the Ashes tunnel into a cave, and missed the easiest kill on one of those bastard Empire Bards (tm). Being an explorer-class ranger was incredibly helpful to me for raid situations and general battle-ness. It also made me decide absolutely against defender path. Scout I've played through before with a ranger so I decided to take the berserker which worked fairly well.

I don't think that I would recommend a caverndweller for someone that's very cabal-oriented. Some of the skills triggered now and then in cabals, which was nice, but it wasn't enough to give up everything that I couldn't do. My wilderness skills (I think) were more affected by the fact that I was never in my true home terrain than the fact that I messed around on the roads, cities, and cabals a lot. A forestdweller is probably a much better choice for a rager because of those trails. The best ambush I ever landed in the course of Pargtorix's life was on that annoying female assassin whose name escapes me just now, and that was an Annihilate at high levels. After this experience, I'm going to take a good break from the ranger class. I love their versatility and am increasingly disappointed with their melee as the years progress. Change to them or everything else, this is true.

The build was frustrating for me, because though I had few ways to truly get myself killed, I had few ways to get kills without the patience that I've moved from my CF personality into my work one. The lack of excessive time lead to my lack of patience, lack of levelling in the end, and inability to complete many personal goals.

I'll miss this one. I'll write something for you personally in my other post.

-PP

Had fun leveling with you on the mount and probably would have been able to help you finish if it hadnt been for Mizfara's note banning travel with battleragers. It was fun popping a magical staff out of my sack whenever you were sleeping and waiting for you to catch me with it, and you did fast every time. I had like five imbued staffs in my sack that I made ahead of time. I knew leveling had to be hard for you and I had edges to make me stronger on Calydryl. Undead hatred and stuff to make me fight better there. I really wanted to help you hero and I think we would have that day if I hadnt been told to knock it off by Mizfara, I felt so bad about that, It was fun travelling with you while I had the chance and I hope you enjoyed it too. Good luck with your next. I wonder how many staffs of mine you gave to Tahren. I was forest/explorer and could tell that my Wilderness fam was top notch compared to yours as my ambushes were hitting harder and more succcessful on hitting thier secondary arguments, for instance I would hit UNSPEAK with distract ambushes while you were hitting Anniahlate/Erradicate with I dont know whether they were onslaught or regular.

And I mean they were AWFULL compared to likewise equiped rangers of mine. Could there be something wrong with how Svirf Ranger compute Ambush?

Perhaps it is size based in someway?