Jeanne and Moon Kitty

I know that in my last entry I said I wasn't going to update the journal to include the pictures I took, but I decided that I couldn't just leave them broken like that. So I went through every entry and put back the pictures. I also cleaned some of the entries up a bit so they're easier to read.

I also moved all of the pictures to one gallery and while I might go through and organize them (Bawkmas pictures into their own gallery as an example), right now it's easier to just put them all into one pile.

I updated my ranks on the PSA Rank Tracker and included those links on the sidebar to the right. Many of the numbers I include are based on the messages so I don't know precisely how many times I've trained with each trainer.

Right now Jeanne is training with Unrastin (the Bloodmage ring trainer) and Moon Kitty is training with Radium (the Asklepian radius healing trainer). Neither will help with passing the next circle test but I'm not concerned about doing that at this time.

I think Jeanne needs more practice in controlling the mobs and getting them properly trapped and probably is killing them in the wrong order. Aside from getting some more Swengus to improve defense and perhaps get a third swing, I think her training is adequate to pass.

Moon Kitty has a tougher time of it because so much of her training are in areas that can't be used in the test. Her 300 Proximus and 500 Horus do absolutely nothing and if those ranks were put in Sprite and Respia she would have passed ages ago. On the other hand, being able to cad everyone within eyesight and help raise exiles who thought they had to depart is worth much more than passing a test so I can get a new color shirt. I do intend to resume my Sprite and Respia and Horus training after I become proficient with Radium and eventually I will pass the test but it is not a priority. I think people appreciate my healing style now no matter what circle I'm in. That's the most important thing for a healer.

Now that I've finally finished fixing everything, I can post actual journal entries.

I discovered that I had a bunch of space for pictures and so spent the past several hours organizing the pictures for easy viewing. You'll find a link to the pictures on the right side of this journal. Most of the pictures there are several years old so you will see exiles who have left the lands and so it was a trip down memory lane for me as it might be for you as well.

I put the pictures into three categories: Jeanne, Moon Kitty, and Puddleby. The Jeanne and Moon Kitty pictures show what we've done and the Puddleby pictures are about what other people have done or general fun events that take place.

I also found a very old journal from many years ago (2001 and 2002) so I put a copy of them here. It is amazing how much I've changed and grown since then and what I thought was so incredibly important then which turned out to be not very important at all.

To find these journals click on the Archive link on the right side of the journal and then find the year, month, and day of the entry you want to read.

I haven't found a place for the visionstones I took, but since most of them are unviewable that probably aren't worth very much. Of course, I kept them so if I do ever find a place to put them they will be available.

I haven't integrated the pictures into the journal entries yet but I think most of the entries are readable without that and at this time I'd rather spent my time writing future entries rather then clean up past entries that no one may read.

I didn't think putting the old journal entries and pictures would take so long and make me so tired but it did.

Looking over all of the adventures I had, it makes me sad that I stopped updating this journal for so long. Now everything that happened is lost during the time I wasn't writing here. I must make sure that what has happened in the future is recorded.

Tomorrow I'll write about the recent adventures of Jeanne and Moon Kitty.

It's been a long time since I last posted here and the old entries seem to be written by someone else. Was I ever so naive and self-absorbed? Hopefully the intervening years have taught me both wisdom and humility.

These scrolls are the home of both Jeanne and Moon Kitty. You can tell who is writing the entry by both the picture next to each entry as well as the tags used. Posts about events in Puddleby or my thoughts on events will have the portal picture and the news tag.

I updated the tags and userpics of the older entries although I still have to find a place to put the pictures and visionstones so they will be missing for a while.

I have some news to report from both Jeanne and Moon Kitty but wanted to let everyone know that I'm back and will get to working on everything that I have neglected for far too long.

There's talk about why Clan Lord is declining and, while it has been talked about before, I can understand why it is being brought up again. It's an important topic since no one wants to see Clan Lord go away, not just because we've invested so much time in it but because there's so much unused potential and the friends we've made are so dear to us. So why isn't Clan Lord increasing its membership? Is it a lack of advertising? A lack of a PC version? Furthermore, why aren't people playing more often? I can only talk about my own reasons and perhaps it is true for others as well.

Like most things in life, if people don't do anything then other people don't do anything and so on until nothing gets done and people look to others for something to do. It's like that in Clan Lord as well with the knights being a non-entity, the Nox Sorora doing nothing, the two monk groups all but gone, no art or theater group putting on regular plays and concerts, and so on and so forth.

It's even difficult to go to more difficult hunting spots on a spur-of-the-moment basis since there either aren't enough strong people clanning or they are all busy. Since Clan Lord has a dependency between the classes it is impossible to really do anything interesting without at least a healer with you. The farther from town you want to hunt or explore, the longer it takes and the more people you need to bring with you. Right now the only thing I can do by myself in 30-60 minutes is hunt for money so if I want to do anything else I need to spend time organizing and then traveling to and from the hunting spot which takes a great deal longer than 60 minutes not counting the hunting time.

So I hunt for money and there's nothing for me to buy. I spend what I earn on library fees, skin dye, clothes repair, and storage. There's nothing I can spend money on that's interesting so even though I have 100 Skea and am able to earn good money if I wanted to, I'm disinclined to do so. Plus, slaughtering dozens of wolves and panthers and cougars is boring and without any sort of danger.

Then, there's the availability of hunting grounds. Since it takes too much time to organize hunts I just go with my clan, the Sun Dragon Clan, on our weekly hunts. Unfortunately, there are only a few places which are any good that won't take a long time to get there. Melabrion's Island, Kizmia's Island (with the portal), and the Valley are all we go to anymore and it's getting a bit dull. Other possibly interesting places like the Scarmis Pit have a spawn rate of molasses on a cold day so even if we can find a Mystic to get there, it's cleaned out in a few minutes and if we don't want to go to the Queen's Chamber (very deadly) the only place left to go is out. There are more interesting places such as the Foothills and beyond but it would take far too long to get there and so we're left with just a few places that has the spawn rate and the difficulty to support a group of about 10 - 15 or so. This would be a perfect place for Mystic teleporters but since that skill has been nerfed and there so few Mystics around this is an impossibility.

Then there are the lack of stories since they either all disappear or get completed with no exile interaction. There have been so many stories which get started and then vanish. Like Tenebrion getting his memory back and what that was all about, Dal'Noth and the bubbling goo which is supposed to be evil and that Sylvan guy who was undewed and disappeared, the missing Golem that a Brion slave was looking for, Peaceton, and more. Maybe it's a problem where the story is advancing but I just don't hear about it or maybe it's a problem that the GMs either don't care or don't have the time to advance them so the stories don't get advanced at all. Besides, it's not like I'm going to have any chance of getting involved since the stories will get started or continue when the GMs want them to and not because of anything I do or say.

It seems to me that Clan Lord is mainly all about role-playing and interactions with other people. This isn't a bad thing at all but it needs people and it needs effort and it needs time. Let's say only 5% of a game's population will start something whether it's a story or a hunting group or a controversy and the number of people who actively play falls from 500 to 200. That means while before you could count on 25 people doing something to make the world feel alive that's down to 10 and there are a whole lot less people able to work with you to implement your ideas and a whole lot less reason to do so.

Oh yes, and even in the jobs where exiles can train in such as brewing, baking, and woodworking you have to find the ingredients lying on the ground or buying them from people who find them and do pass them by. This means it's difficult to use your skills because finding the ingredients is a bother and isn't assured. I'd love to be able to farm or chop down trees for wood but it's all about luck or a whole lot of wandering around which I don't like.

Because of these faults there comes a decay and when the other aspects have such flaws that they aren't fun then Clan Lord as a whole suffers. This saddens me greatly because Clan Lord has such potential and such wonderful people that seem to be not used to their fullest. I think what should be started to turn this around is to get more people to role-play with, more GMs to advance official stories and official characters as well as to create additional areas that can be hunted without taking many hours to get there. This could be achieved by creating entirely new areas or increasing the spawn rate in some locations so they will be more than a pass-through area. Perhaps even increasing the ability to teleport either in a Mystic sub-class or a new tool which takes a quest to get. In that case, it would take less time to get to the more interesting areas.

As for myself, I'm around until January 28th of 2005 so I'm not going anywhere until then. Whether or not I decide to increase my interest in becoming a Moon Warrior and try my hand at role-playing is something I haven't decided yet. I just worry that these and other failures of Clan Lord aren't being taken seriously by Delta Tao and nothing will be done so that instead of deciding to pay $80 for another year I will also decide to leave. It's a disquieting thought that Clan Lord would cease to exist but it's a thought that must be faced so that it won't become a reality and that people won't leave. Will it be done? Right now it doesn't look likely since the GMs seem to be in denial but really, anything can happen so I will pray that it does as well as doing what I can.

Here are a few more funny pictures from the Feast of Tsrrin. Hope you enjoy them!