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Hi. It's me, Anita, if you haven't already guessed that from my really obvious-alt-name of Ani.

I'm listed on the 'retired' players list - and it's true, I did retire Anita, and I had stopped playing for a good while prior to retiring and thereafter, having found that another IRE was more engaging and fun to be a part of, and the playerbase was upbeat and excited about said IRE - it was nice to be around vs. the doom-and-gloom that Lusternia did and has become.

However, I am a sucker for Lusternia. I've played it on and off across the last 12 years and over various characters. And I just can't keep away, and I don't want to see it die, so I made Ani.

Anyway, I'd just like to clear the air -- my main reason for retiring Anita was not Glomdoring.

My reasons can date back to the beginning of the discussion to reduce the number of guilds in Lusternia per org.

My reasons date back to the destruction of the Moondancers, Moondance Tower and self-sacrifice of Ridien, and the other guilds/guild tutors within Serenwilde -- when I learnt that other guilds had kept their halls and tutors alive and open to the public, I felt a little bitter and crushed that we had to lose ours (even though I was told it was discussed to do this).

My reasons for retiring can date back to the emergence of the new guilds, so shiny - so new, and an amazing opportunity for those who remained of the old guilds to band together and create something new together. But as always, there are vocal people and not-so-vocal people, and drama ensued. My guild, the Sowers, was the biggest guild of Serenwilde at the time until there were falling-outs and disagreements and people left for the other guilds. There was a lot of in-fighting in Serenwilde as a whole, and it can be boiled down to the alliances of forest and cities, and even the Divine of the commune stepped in - and how they acted alongside the players really just left me deflated, even though I tried to remain positive. That whole time took its toll on me, and I tried to stick it out, but most of my friends at the time had moved to Hallifax and Celest, and that's when I made the decision to move to see if I'd be happier playing the game elsewhere.  I moved, and I moved again - still looking to click and find that joy of playing Lusternia. I found it for a little in Hallifax, and then Magnagora. But, by that time, a majority of the people I once knew and considered to be friends had either stopped playing or retired completely - Ejderha, Kendra, Aramel, Aeldra, Saz, Tambador, Falaeron, Yarith -- you get my drift. Some of them might have come back as alts, might have logged in the odd time if they hadn't retired.

Why did they stop playing? A lot of people I knew stopped because if the imbalances of combat and skills, and the raiding/defense where a majority of it was losses. Met with the attitude of 'git gud' and 'be positive', the attitude of complete ignorance and apathy. I have found many aspects of Lusternia to be engaging and mostly had something to do - I was not a top-tier combatant, I dabbled my toes here and there and scored a couple of kills, but for a good few people, combat is what floats their boat and engages them in the game. 

My reasons for retiring...I felt like logging into Lusternia was a chore, rather than for enjoyment. I didn't enjoy logging in to be the only person around for hours on end. I didn't enjoy logging in to see Nil or Earth being raided over and over with few or none to respond and feeling helpless that if we did respond, we'd be quickly overwhelmed and more attackers would turn up, so much so that I turned off loyalsays and had to justify not responding ICly. Even the moments when a few of us went the other way, when we were the raiders, it was fun - you'd have a good fight, win-some, lose-some, but then suddenly it's a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of people, and that's not fun.

I can see it from both sides of the argument - this is not me pointing fingers of blame at anyone before that's jumped on.

Tl;dr My reasons weren't Glomdoring. As the name of this thread, it was a Snowball effect of many things and aspects of the game for me that had some and nothing to do with combat. It was years of playing one character and not enjoying playing a game anymore. It was the way it made me feel IRL that I needed to end, and since I did retire Anita, I have been better for it. Do I miss playing her? Sure. She had all the artifacts, skills, manses, shops, curios, good friendships and let's not forget Mianzi, the little red panda! But alas, it was a chapter of Lusternia and my life that I needed to close.

I apologize if this is off-topic to the thread, but.. It's been a long time where my thoughts could coalesce into one word-vomit of a post, and where I could post without the thread being closed before I could voice properly.

I don't think it's arrogance that's leading them down this path, but delusion. Or, more likely, a huge lack of common sense.

It turns out that griefing your opponents to oblivion actually means you don't get meaningful pvp and the game shrivels as a result. They're only Just Now realizing this.