Jul 2003.
Sometimes, the good guys win in the end. About a week after Aurora and Shylo stole the mud out from under us, the machine hosting it was hacked and the mud deleted. Aurora promised week after week that the mud would be back, but she of course never delivered. So on June 12, Nix reopened Astaria on a different ISP, at astaria.lpmud.com port 5000. This new Astaria is managed by the House of Cool™. No backstabbers, channel and pose whores, or egotistical assholes putting up statues to themselves. It's mo' better.

Feb 2003.
Mmm... drama. Queen Aurora, who'se been inactive for almost half a decade, decided to take the reins back in a bloody power grab. Nix and Yizashi have been forced out. The new wizardry is pushing some bogus explanation as to why all this happened, but for the real deal, check out the new and improved Astarian Times.

Sept 2002.
La la la... I like cheese.

June 09 2002.
UbiSoft: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. Namco: Dead To Rights. Tecmo: Ninja Gaiden, Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball (ahem). Sega: Panzer Dragoon Orta. S'all I'm gonna say.

May 12 2002.
Guess who's back, motherfuckers.

July 5 2001.
Aeroleous, on the "What The Hell Happened To Astaria" board:

Question: anyone have Kafka's email? His web site promised a response to my remarks back in May, but he still hasn't written!

Sorry dude, it's crunch time at work right now as my product approaches ship date, so I haven't got a lot of spare cycles. I'll see what I can do.

May 28 2001.
I promised to post my comments to Aeroleous's farewell postings a long time ago. I drafted something up at the time, but I wanted to edit it a bit before putting it up. Then apathy kicked in; I was gonna abandon the text but then several thousand people — ok, ok, one person — asked to read what I had to say, so I'll be posting it shortly.

May 27 2001.
Holy crap, it's been almost nine months since an update! Let's recap what's happened since then. Perrin and his moll Lilandra have both left the wizardry. Yizashi returned from the dead. A whole bunch of idle wizards were defrobbed, including Alexia, who was probably an active admin and regent for a grand total of three weeks.

So you're playing Astaria, and in an unexpected moment of clarity you experience an epiphany. "This mud sux0rz," you divine. But, you wonder, what's an awesome mud like?  Here's a log of me playing an oldie but goodie. If only Astaria was this good.

Sept 12 2000.
It's been a while since I've updated this page. Yizashi resigned from adminhood a while back. A clean break, no drama, no nothing. The drama of late has been Aeroleous getting nuked for certain posts he made. I received a copy of Aeroleous's posts and some mudmails that he sent, and archived them here. He has some good observations and some inaccurate ones. I'll post another version with my comments inline in a few days.

6th July 2000.
For crying out loud, there's an NPC named Pedro. Oh, and when going from Sakai to Ido, you can kill a few minutes by taking the new boat instead of walking east through maybe two dozen rooms. Woohoo! We're talking QUALITY, baybee!

25th May 2000.
Belated props to Nix and Yizashi for achieving admin rank. What's more interesting for me is the cleanup work they did -- getting rid of much of the deadwood in the staff, and reorganizing the ranks. Now there's a "builder" class for area creators, and an "implementor" for mudlib work. Astaria may yet not suck. Let's see if they can get rid of the last bits of deadwood left.

28th Mar 2000.
This is somewhat old news, but in case you haven't noticed, Nix is an elder now.  Props out to da man.

1st Mar 2000.
Both Variax and Quinton have left the wizardry.

8th Dec 1999.
Following my departure, Otis and Jeniun have left for their own reasons.  I noticed that a whole bunch of wizards got promoted today.  Yizashi deserves the rank of elder; he's got the best grasp of the lib among the active staff.

Hmm... five or six crashes in under six days.  This doesn't bode well for the future of Astaria.  I may be biased, but there's no arguing against empirical evidence.  Crash frequency was never, ever this high during my years as both player and wizard.

23rd Nov 1999.
Here it is, my parting essay! Multisyllabic words! Quasi-incisive meditations! Read it all here.

23rd Nov 1999.
Before I post a lengthier update, I wish to take this time and bequeath some of my prized possessions to certain individuals.

• To Culetto, I leave my collection of gay porn. Enjoy, man.
• To Clovis, my Sanrio® Badz-Maru™ purse, because Badz-Maru™ is a badass like him.
• To Shimmer, my blue tricycle (and some loaded dice).
• To Lyranthia, my copy of "Who Cut The Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart" by Jim Dawson (ISBN 1580080111)

21th Nov 1999.
My time on Astaria as a wizard has ended. At some future time, I may elect to use this space and relate the events and issues surrounding my voluntary departure. For now I shall rest, and visit the realm from time to time, that I may enjoy the fellowship of the people I have come to call friends.