Blogging quantity and quality is pretty hard to sustain unless you are a really talented individual. You must be armed with enough learned literacy to get your point across succinctly; as well as creative desire to put to words the topics you feel are most relevant to you and any audience you might think you have. Then you need to do this over and over enough that said audience will take it for granted.
I don't even pretend to think that I am such an individual. I know my quantity is spotty at best and the quality is workmanlike. But Lauren/Saylah/Alysianah/Illianah/Suri of Mystic Worlds is one such individual. Her ability to describe worlds never visited prompted me to try out Wizard 101, a game I still keep installed to this day. She brought her wit and insight to so many posts over the years that we did just take it for granted. Which is why her decision to shut it all down saddens me. But not as much as finding out the real-life details of what prompted her to start blogging in the first place.
I was lucky enough to be in the same guild as Alysianah (that's what I'll always know her as) in WAR. She was one of the first guildies I encountered ingame and on Vent as my (I think level 9) Warrior Priest went on a guild run to get the Shawl of Spring. Her Bright Mage was higher level at the time (level 11 I think) and we ended up running around the Chaos side of Ostland by ourselves before finally joining up with the rest of the guild group. I wrote about it briefly in this post. The memories of this and other Casualties of War events are why I will always remember WAR fondly even if it's a game I doubt I will ever return to.
The final post on Mystic Worlds has comments disabled which is understandable. I felt like I needed to thank Lauren for the many years of quality blogging as well as wishing her the best of luck with any future endeavors. So this post is my way of doing so. Don't be such a stranger, you know where to find my comments page and email.
