I'm not usually the type to write introspective pieces. I prefer to report news, or juicy rumors when I can get them, and I'm sure most of you have noticed that I'm not afraid to hand out my opinion on any given subject. I like to think it's one of my more charming qualities. Still, it is New Years Eve and this has been quite the year for us, and for the game as a whole.

One publisher failed and another has failed quite spectacularly and repeatedly too, but people are still playing the game on the GamersFirst servers. I have no idea why. Yet another publisher has opened a server and not too many people have moved there yet. Yet. Don't be put off by the possible language barrier on Games Campus 9D German server. There is plenty of English spoken there and our league is off to a good start.

One factor for the near future will be the issue of event times. GamersFirst obviously have no idea what they're doing. It's a major holiday long weekend here and they have no event at all.

Games Campus isn't quite that clueless. We have an event for this long weekend but it's 2x only for experience rates. Skill rates and drop rates haven't been adjusted to match up with experience rates, and drop rates were low to begin with. When an experienced player like myself can't get a Wan Daye RL weapon there is something wrong. I haven't seen any Wan Daye weapons in the game so far.

I have been pushing Games Campus on the issue of drop rates and regular events too, as opposed to the marathons we've had so far. The only way to attract people to the Games Campus server, and to get them to play regularly will be to offer regular events, much like what we had with Acclaim. I really hate to show Acclaim as having done something right, but they did do at least that one thing right. We had regular events.

There isn't much more to say. Our league is spread out all over the place. Some of our people who followed me to 9D Germany even went over to the white side! No more cookies for those guys. And we haven't heard from many good people in a long time.

When goodgrrrl, RedCross and myself started this league and started recruiting we were all about the same level. We played together every day and always had someone around to get buffs, or help with a quest. People don't all level up together though and eventually we spread out a little. At one time we got to a point where we started losing people because as one person put it, there is no else around these levels but me! We lost a few people because of that.

Before Acclaim pulled the plug though we were coming back together level wise, and we started playing together again too. We were partying up, grinding together, trading buffs, running dungeons and generally having a very good time. I miss that, and I miss our old league chat from Bardo.

They may have been the best of times that we'll see in this game.

Auld Lang Syne.

- SpearDriver