Dear Friends,

With a few brief exceptions, I have not logged into AO for several weeks. Over this time, I have taken a step back to re-evaluate my role in this magnificent online universe. While I immensely enjoy the game as well as its many wonderful people, the following issues have forced me to suspend my involvement for an indefinite period:

1) The demands and relative importance of real life are outweighing the desire to indulge my fixation with all things AO. I simply do not have the enormous amount of free time required to accomplish my in-game objectives, nor to maintain a constant barrage of message board spam.

2) Gaining experience has become a chore due to the increasing difficulty in finding a team of sufficient ability and honesty. I am tired of endless missioning with jerks and prepubescent teens that refuse to cooperate or even maintain the pretence of civility. When a game begins to upset you, it is clearly time to take a break.

3) The increasing number of rare and unique items that drop from ubermobs has dramatically altered the focus of the mid-to-high level game for the worse. After camping TIM for 21 hours to get his silly RI scope, I have little desire to repeat this experience for every single piece of new or quasi-interesting loot.

4) Finally, lag, sync and load time issues have made AO practically unplayable for me. I do not necessarily blame Funcom for this since I use a 56K dial-up connection with an ISP that is, at best, unreliable. However, I can honestly say that these issues have been seriously compounded since 14.6, to the point whereby I have no wish to log in.

In conclusion, I still do not have the heart to cancel my account outright, given the massive amount of time that I have already invested. I plan to keep my account open through the New Year and will hopefully have a chance to peek in over my Christmas vacation. At that point, I will make a final determination on whether or not I will stick around.

In any event, I just wanted to extend my thanks and best wishes to Conquistador Coffee Inc. and the Fixer Community for offering me the most incredible and joyous online experience that I could ever imagine. Hopefully, I will have a chance to /tell everyone I care about before I finally bow out for good. If not, I want you all to know that I will never forget my time on Rubi-Ka.

Take care and best wishes,

Skeena