I've seen all sorts of things since I started posting on this site. It was my first foray in to online communities. I started out much the same as anyone else, looking for information about Everquest, trying to solve that quest that had me boggled. Migration happened about 3 years ago to the OOT. My god, those people had opinions. They talked about stuff that my friends and I did. They talked to each other the way my friends and I did. There was a sense of order, a hierarchy, if you will. There were people who's opinions were absolute and treated as such, and there were people who were largely dismissed as being genuinly retarded, but most of the people were tolerated and the community was good.
In the time since my move to the OOT, the forums have changed, the players have changed, the stories have grown more mythic and the haze of antiquity has clouded how we remember the good old days. We have had well intentioned posters draw us out of the shadows and subject us to the insipid drivel of EQOA, FFXI and WoW general retards, developed an evolving language Greek to the morans and cnuts who question it. We have seen people come and go, some leaving an impression, some simply leaving. We've seen the personal highs and lows of some we have come to consider friends. We have seen the mocking taunts of those who really just want to be included slide off the top page like water off a duck's back. The circle has been expanded to include those we deem worthy, and the ranks have been closed to those we don't.
Recent events have conspired to destroy a community that many of us have grown to love. They have threatened to bring crashing down the walls that we have erected to fortify this, the internet home for many of us. Agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, the lord and master has decided, for reasons that he alone will have to sleep with, to associate himself with an entity that many of us consider the bane of online gaming. As a matter of principle, many of us will now have to go out and find a new cave to squat in.
To those of you who feel you must be true to your principles, I would say the following:
I wish you well, you shut in mother f'uckers. Gain a sense of perspective and claw your way above the fray. Do what you must, but don't expect any respect for the stupid-assed, myopic decision. Don't let the doorknob hitcha where the good Bob splitcha.
As for me, I'm staying. F'uck off and enjoy the disappointment, Katie.