bigger they were, harder they fell

IRON is no more. Can't honestly say I didn't see this coming. I read of IRON's reputation when I found out I was coming to Bismarck, and I got a firsthand account of it in September. It was strong, dedicated, and determined. When the weekly "event night" was skipped for the first time I could hear the disapppointment in the leaders and the shell. Slowly, one after another vet was pulled away. Some went to other LS's but most went on to World of Warcraft. Slowly we were down to about 20 members when it was announced a merger with EventHorizon would happen. This happened in November while I took a month off to explore FFXII.

Membership was almost tripled overnight, but EH wasn't the same type of shell that IRON was, and slowly the more casual members of EH left IRON because they weren't all that interested in an endgame LS. By late December we were at a comfortable number but many of the remaining veteran IRON people were slowly growing tired of their new LS members. Some were slackers and never showed for events until drops might be available for them, some of them were just not that educated in what endgame LS means, and some of them frankly were hackers. (I even caught a person who hacked to get to KA on Wednesday night... we left Dynamis and within 5-8 minutes they were at KA camp... and this was a pre-merger EH person wearing an IRON pearl) This past January a few pre-merger EH people got suspended for hacking, and that was not something IRON wanted to be associated with. Finally, a handful of the pre-merger IRON people left the shell to form their own shell.

What was left was a LS with the name IRON that was about 75% EH and 25% IRON (pre-merger ppl). After New Years IRON wasn't even going to camps anymore and most events were sparse at best. The lowpoint came when IRONdynamis held a Dynamis-Xarc run and only 15 people showed up. It seems that the guests that got their flags with us no longer had any desire to come and the actual IRON members that were required to come just stopped logging in.

Last night a meeting was called at the Kobka Hostel and it was laid out for all LS members. The pre-merger IRON people understood, mostly because they knew first hand what IRON was and what IRON had become. Sadly, some of the pre-merger EH people started to say that leadership was quitting on them, blaming not the people who stopped coming to events but instead leadership for the state of the shell. Leaders didn't make Tredvolt, Deidre, Valkerine, Sendo, Winraf, Aidama, Narbie, Luminaire, and countless other amazing IRON people leave. Leaders tried as hard as they could to keep it together, but the leaders are not to blame for the elite players of IRON to either going to WoW or leaving the shell altogether for other LS's.

In the end I'm glad I was part of IRON, I made some really good friends and met some very knowledgable people. I'll remember the first time I fought Ouryu and got slapped after casting Thunder IV on it, or the time when we did a Seiryu which Hundred Fists right onto Winraf and he just stood there laughing and never used Invincible and lived. I'll remember farming those stupid Lamia Kamans for hours, and then the sheer joy from Valky when she made a +1, one of the first 2 on the server. I'll remember the first Jailer of Love we did followed by 2 more all netting Novia Earrings... I'll remember killing Tiamat in 36 minutes and being in awe of how easy they killed it, or the time that Benediction claimed Nidhogg, then flailed it killing the entire Aery. We all HP'd and Aribeth, Moontang, and Lunarian were able to sleep it for almost 15 minutes while the entire LS rushed back out there. We got 2x M Body that night. Those will be the memories I take from IRON. They also helped me get Zenith Mitts and Crown, Pahluwan body, Yigit hands, SMN AF2 and AF+1, and countless other memories.

Thank you IRON.