All good things must come to an end. We opened Firan to players in July 1998 as a sort of experiment, and weve had a pretty good run since then. I think we did something unique and special. A lot can happen in 16 years, and truth is, we just dont have the time and energy to do justice to the game anymore. Firan is a complicated engine that takes a ton of care and feeding, and its time for us to retire. Steph retired years ago to work on her writing career full time. Leia stepped up to fill her shoes but shes moving on to other things. Ive been withdrawing from the game more than usual and its time to read the signs. Even though we still have about 130 active players, I think its time to shut the game down. Better to end on a high note than a low one. In the span of 16 years of real time, Firans world spanned 46 years of game time. Characters grew up, married, and raised children. Those children grew up, married, and raised children. And so on. Firan is a generational game and its stories were told through families. We got to know some real-world families through Firan, too, and some of our players found real love and started their own families. Firan has always been more than just a game to us. It is a community and thats the hardest part to let go. We hope everyone will remember Firan for its stories. Of war and destruction, but also the courage and fortitude people show in the face of adversity. Of torture, slavery, and rape, but also the inner strength of survivors. Of petty dictators, but also of people protecting a Republic or rising up to form a democracy. Of secrets and betrayal, but also of undying loyalty and love. Firan players brought an amazing intensity to the lives of the characters that Steph and the rest of the staff crafted. We could breathe only so much life into the roster; it took great role-players to give characters their souls. Firan was a sort of experiment, and I think we succeeded in many ways and we failed in others. We owned our failures and fixed them when we could, changed course when we couldnt. If nothing else, we fearlessly tried many things others didnt dare to do in 1998. Im proud of what we accomplished: code, staffing, storytelling, grid, community, all of it--but mostly the community. To the entire Firan Community, all the countless thousands of players who animated the game over the decades, all the hardworking Player Helpers and Wizards who stoked the furnaces that made the engine go, I thank you. Especially, to Leia, who carried our vision forward when we were tired, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for a great 16 years. Its been a good run. Next Steps Firan will not close immediately. Well give you a week to finish your role-play. Use this time to get some closure. Please dont spoil huge secrets or treat the game like a Dream World Day with no consequences; wed like to preserve the option to re-open the game in the future if circumstances change. On Sunday, August 10, well replace the game with another (empty) server called FiranCommunity on the same ports as Firan so that you can socialize with your Firan friends. If you log in, youll connect to this game and you can use whatever name you want, even your character names. We wont police those at all, but that means we cant promise you that Elianos is actually the person who played Elianos on the game. Use caution and be nice to each other. We retain the copyright to the Firan characters and world. However, we realize that these characters and these stories are important to you, too. If you want to keep role-playing on FiranCommunity without the codebase, without the news files, and without any staff support, youre welcome to do so on FiranCommunity. The wiki will stay up for the foreseeable future. If you have an account there now, you can keep it as long as you dont abuse it. You can update pages and if you have a character page there, its fine to add an Epilogue section that explains how you think your characters story might end years down the line. Dont use it to step on the stories of other characters, on or off the roster. If you have logs you can share, send them to us (see help logs). If we have time and energy, well post them for people to look over. Certainly theyll be useful to Steph as she publishes stories set in the Firan world. And theyll serve as our best memorial to all the great times weve had together. Adam Chief Wizard
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 21:06:00 +0000
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