Carpe Datum

Farewell, Puddleby

I sort of talked about why Michelle and I have left Clan Lord (an on-line role playing game for the Mac for those of you who aren't familiar) a few months ago, and everything I said there still holds true. Koric and Felicity (our CL characters) gave all of their belongings of value (including 3 albino maha pelts and some other choice goodies) to Kiriel, and we're sure they'll find a good home or make good prizes in newbie tournaments and the like. We officially spent the last couple of puddleyears or so hiding in the library and coming out occasionally to work on building a boat. The boat is finally built, and we sailed off at dawn one morning to return to the mainland.

There are lots of reasons to leave Clan Lord, but precious few to stay. CL will always be an incredible presence in our lives, simply because it led to us meeting in the first place. Who knows how our lives would've been different and undoubtedly for the worse, had we never gotten involved in CL. But that fact doesn't provide for us a continuing motivation for playing.

We have some good friends there, but most of the fun things have to happen on a schedule because they take planning and a good chunk of time. With a new baby and three other kids besides, we just don't *do* schedules well at all.

The two major reasons (for me) to play CL are social interaction and the gaming experience (tactics, whomping things, getting ranks, solving puzzles, etc). Well, it is hard to justify putting a lot of time into on-line social interaction when you have four kids who need interaction. It's also hard to prioritize on-line socializing when, to be brutally honest, we just aren't lonely anymore. We don't have a pressing need for those relationships because we are too involved in building our own in the real world. We're very lucky in that regard.

Another aspect of the social experience is CL politics, which takes on many different aspects. We can both get very passionate about that kind of stuff, very frustrated, very exhilirated, very involved. Like with the other kind of socializing though, I find that I have a far more pressing need to vent about real-life politics rather than vent about on-line gaming politics. I never thought I would say this two years ago, but even though there are some really serious pricks in CL along with some really wonderful people, I just don't care anymore who comes out "on top". I don't have the mental energy to expend on it, I guess. It is much more rewarding and constructive to bash the pricks in the government and media and laud the wonderful people in real life.

I don't know if this would be true, though, if I were still playing CL a lot. I mean, I was hopping mad about politics even back when I was playing CL (some may recall a vigorous debate I had with that complete idiot in the CL newsgroup over the Florida debacle), but not so mad that I would sacrifice a lot of CL time to think or write about it. Oh well.

The other reason to play CL, the gaming experience ... well, I can get my gaming fix from any number of games that I can play (like Heroes III or Diablo II or poker or Pop Cap games), and I can do it when *I* have free time. I don't have to go through the hassle of organizing a group, dealing with late arrivers, sticking to a schedule, etc. I don't have to deal with the social aspect of whom to invite, whom to exclude, who hates whom, etc. Those are some of the negatives that drove us from CL, too.

We never really considered letting other people inherit our characters. I'm in the camp with those who believe main characters should retire and make room for new characters to take center stage. Of course, I actually took over the main character (Biff) of a friend, just in case the clicker decided to return, and I eventually gave Biff to Michelle so she could have a coin hunter, so I guess I'm a hypocrite there. To be fair, Biff wasn't played much, only as a quiet coin hunter, never a major character or critical part of a hunt or what have you.

Some people leave because of frustrations with GM's or the way the game is run, the pace of the plots, etc. That's only a very small part for me. I'm kind of GM-neutral (dislike some GM's, like others). I recognize that I probably only know about 10% of everything the GM's have ever done (including which characters are played by GM's, mystic issues, etc.). If I knew everything, I would either be really mad and bitter or really pleasantly surprised and impressed. I'm curious to know everything, but I don't care enough to stick around and find out (maybe that kind of news will finally spill in a blog someday, but I don't read enough CL blogs to find out).

The bottom line is ... farewell. We feel incredibly lucky and thankful for what we got out of CL. Sure there were some crappy parts, but they were far outweighed by the good stuff. If we stuck around much longer, that balance might start to change.

Posted by Observer at August 24, 2003 10:11 AM