NineMoons's Last Stand: Farewell to the New World

This is likely to be the final post at the NineMoons Family blog. I want to wrap things up properly, and get the last bits of everything off my chest, before I leave the New World, and I hope you and I can soldier on to the end together.

***

The Yays

YAY to RCM Hrin. She may not update her blog so frequently, and she may not always be in the forums or in-game, but she has always been my favorite GE-admin-type person. She's sweet and funny and kind - and if you're polite and patient enough she will always be accessible for any comments or questions.

YAY to the GE PH community, who continue to crusade for the game even after over a year of indifference, lack of promotion and distribution, and even the occasional act of sabotage. They come to the defense of the New World when they are called, and stay vigilant against all attacks. They are its true and stalwart pioneers and they are its most deserving inhabitants.

YAY to the GE PH fan artists: the fanfic writers, the fanart creators, the machinima directors, the independent cosplayers, and everyone else in between who has contributed their tangible and considerable talent to the community. You may be a small group and you may not always win the prizes, but your talent and sheer love for the game definitely show how much you rock.

YAY to the GE bloggers, and especially to the horde of them in the GE PH players' community. Without them, the game might have sunk into obscurity and be left on the wayside as other gamers rush towards what's new and what's shiny without considering the relative merits and demerits of each. The GE PH bloggers have fought long and hard for the game to get equal attention and love from the local gaming community. I may have started the entire GE fan-blog thing, but I could never in a million years have done it alone. It is everyone else who followed this little idea who are the real heroes - they didn't have to, but they did, and that makes all the difference.

And finally, YAY to all the friends I have made through this blog and through this game. I make no secret of the fact that if it weren't for GE in the first place I would never even have started this blog - hence I owe any tiny measure of celebrity and recognition I now possess to GE. But more important that that are the true friends that I have discovered in the process of playing, blogging, and living GE. There are many of them, and there are even some of them I may not get to meet in real life, and they are all cherished and dear to me.

[And now, because every list of Yays must have a list of Nays to balance it out.]

The Nays

NAY to IP e-Games. It's been a recurring theme in this blog, ever since that extreme disillusioning sometime during 2007. Thanks for nothing. Yes, you lot brought in the game, you distributed the pretty posters and the very first set of installers - and then after that there was really not a whole lot of anything. You let us down and dropped us as though we were hot potatoes, all the while enticing people to play your other games instead without mentioning the game you once marketed as the first Triple-A MMORPG brought to the Philippines. I don't know how to run a game publishing business, but I am certainly not going to run it as you attempted to do for GE, because you botched it, big time.

NAY to the fishers and to the saboteurs both in the community and from the competition. Nice try, kids.

***

As I write my final dispatch from the New World, I wonder how much it will take in terms of money, talent, and love to bring the game back to the forefront of gaming in the Philippines. GE has been unfairly sidelined and woefully underpromoted.

I only pray that the game can survive. It has its very devoted fans and its loyal players. Long may they last and well may they prosper.

Goodbye.

~NineMoons, as she lays her pen down
27 November 2008
[One year, eight months, and fifteen days in the New World]