I can’t say I quit for any particular reason, personally I found the mud drifting away from the PK environment of “losing it all when you rip” I grew up in, and more toward catering attitudes where people were protected from “loss” when they ripped. This was marked by attitudes, but also in policy and simple things like zone changes, skills adjustments and equipment changes. There is no one to blame or point at here for this, it is in my opinion just an evolution based on a change in how players think about a game.
Ive played through several “era’s” of mud “management” which were all different in how they handled things (most notably the times where in order of appearance Nass, Vivienne and lastly Austin were in charge), but I was able to do my own thing nonetheless, and if I hadn’t lost my drive to play, I am sure I would still be doing my own thing still.
Which brings me to the thing that has always defined me on this mud, atleast if you ask me (and hey, you are still reading this essay of mine, so you seem to care about what I got to say
), which has been drive to play.I started in 2000 or 2001, I forgot. I started some characters, and didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know I could save my character when I logged off, so I kept starting new ones time and time again. Finally I learned that I could keep my char over logging off and started working on Argayle, who I made into a Gaidin. Back then so many friends I played with, all but one or two now lost to the mud: Salyn (my first bond mate), Lirianne (crazy Fin who always figured out weird stuff), Wynoa (the original Aiel in my mind), Jothel (the winner of the first Malkieri academy, me being runner up), Lylia (Jothel’s shadow, I think sincethen restatted by someone else), Juvy (weird story with that one, but still a friend online), Torwyn (one of the five first Illuminators, not many know I was one of those five
), Vayus (so much fun we had in the illuminators), Sindor and Vaylor (can’t seperate them still even now), Amberyn (my second bond mate), Ravhaiel (muddy!), Iliana (my third bond mate), and so many more others I can’t remember right now, but who as soon as I see the name will think off “HOW could I not have listed him/her!!”After a veritable stint with Argayle, I had to reinvent myself somewhere in 2004, not in the least helped by a declanning vote from the Gaidin. I am not saying it was or wasn’t deserved, all I’ll say is that I wasn’t an easy person back then, and I probably got what had been coming to me fair and square. Whatever the case, it led me to for the first time playing DS for real, and soon I landed on Razhak, a simple 19 xx xx 14 19 hunter, whom I exped up and took Dha’vol (actually a very RP driven choice as I wanted to raid with him and the Dha’vol were the Great Lord’s scouts). And gosh did I raid, I found out that those couple of years as a gaidin had taught me well about how LS handles raiders and I took full advantage of that experience I had. In hindsight (always colored after so many years) it seems to me that I painted the braem woods red with LS blood for weeks on end, escaping way more often then I should have. It was also a time of making new friends, albeit that these were of a different kind. Where my first stint as Argayle took me from being a total newbie to warder, where most my friends were as newbie as me, and we discovered so many new things together, here on DS I was a relative newbie. People that stood out to me were: Mendoze (love ya pal!), Grekli (always so cool), Snorakk (99% of the mud hated him, I loved this guy for some reason), Mangler (love-hate, mainly love.. he actually helped me on my master quest both as Razhak the trolloc AND Razhak the myrddraal.. About 10 years apart!), Zangief (we used to talk so much about the state of the mud), Bryan (the dude that actually got me into what it would mean for me to take up my mantle as a DS leader) and also many many more.
I took Razhak through highs and lows, and made friends and enemies along the way. Some still seem to want to drink my blood after decades, which underscores not only my drive (be it for good or for bad), but also what drives other players in this small little niche web-based community we have going on here. Razhak had many firsts, going through over almost two decades as a Myrddraal. I faded in record time: 13 weeks from clanning as a Dha’vol untill fading (Dagre once commented to me it had taken him longer then that). Razhak was in sequence the first player-controlled Myrddraal (Neksyl doesn’t count as an imm-character!) who made rank 7 and 8 (talk about drive there
). He was a Chosen, I even ran a player run newbie clan for DS newbies in two different occasions 
I also always tried to give back. First I’ll acknowledge that I also took a lot: about 13k worth of remort qps (up past rank 7 at a 0-1-3 ratio, from just past rabk 7 to 8 at a 0-3-5 ratio). Whole generations of players were preyed on by me, also because of this drive I had to advance on this DS ladder. I am certain that for a couple of years between 2005 and 2015 during European play times a lot of players were always keeping half an eye out for the shadows to see if I might pop in for a quick “hello partypeople.” These players also deserve my thanks, but sadly my trophy Players cuts off after a certain amount of pages and most of the earlier kills all dropped off the bottom..
But I like to think also that I tried to give back: I have always tried to be a fair leader on DS, and up untill the day I stopped playing, people have thrown equipment to me for splitting, and I still believe that’s not only because of the rank thing on DS (which had been gradually eroding over the years anyhow), but also because they trusted me not to screw them over.
Another thing I tried to do was to give DFs a good time and a fair shot. DFs have gotten so much flak over the years, which is not very fair. These were people who for the most part were trying to advance through harsh circumstances with varying and unclear parameters. Most burnt out before even getting to DF2 or even further, and most of the time that was because of lack of player remort interaction. I’ve fostered many of them over the years, trying my best to come up with tasks, schemes and meaningfull shenanigans for them to do. I always adhered to a harsh character separation and demanded the same from my DFs, which included full ingame handling and communication (only leeway was that I always asked for a log to be mailed to me AFTER a meeting, so I could document at my leisure lateron). So many interactions went into my big book of nasty deeds.. sometimes I felt like the Anti-Santa
And then lastly a word to my “enemies”, my “critics”, whatever you like to call yourselves, you know who you are
Like many of you, I kind of grew up in this little makebelieve, but all-to-real world of ours. I went through mud-toddler school, then mud-puberty and then mud-adulthood. I’ve made mistakes willingly and unwittingly, just like most of us have done here sooner or later. I’ve taken punishments (actually only once, a level docking after Nass found out I had farmed Kreeza by ordering her mobs out of her room.. how was I supposed to know that wasn’t allowed after I had seen Zork do it before…
) and I was placed on Vivienne’s last chance list (let’s call it mud-puberty… but I got taken off after almost a year of good-better behaviour without any punishment). Now I haven’t played for over a year, it all feels so petty, and I think I could’ve been good friends with many of my “enemies” easily had either of us been in a different mood at some stage of our mudcareers, who knows. Bottom line is, looking back, it was a blast. The good, the bad and the ugly, I don’t think I would’ve wanted to miss it.
