ALLEN GREY CALLS IT A DAY [Author: Lum the Mad]

Allen Grey, creator and editor of Crossroads of Dereth, the most popular fan site for Asheron’s Call, posted his resignation and farewell to the online community this morning.

My departure has actually been planned since last October but wasn’t to happen until July. However, after nearly 2 years running this site, both public and private matters have convinced me that its time for me to take a break. This was never a job I truely wanted. But I was asked to do it and tried my best. I have enjoyed meeting many of you both in-game and in real life and stared in absolute amazement at the infantile tantrums some of you have thrown. But the time has come for me to worry about myself and my family.

Allen has been operating under considerable stress, both from the continuing failure of the XRGaming network (of which CoD was easily 75% of the total network’s traffic) and from people in the Asheron’s Call community who disliked his style of moderation, both on the wildly popular CoD boards and in the Asheron’s Call chats that he helped to moderate. Despite his being a lightning rod for the bile and hatred of the sorts of people who dislike “board nazis”, the fact that he did in fact run a popular and in many ways essential service for so many people speaks for itself, and the people who helped create and shape it.

He leaves very large shoes to fill in the AC community and will be greatly missed. On a personal note, I’ve known Allen for quite a long time (years ago we were on opposite sides in Ultima Online – Temple of Mondain vs. the good people of Yew on Great Lakes) and I’ve never known him to be anything but upright, honest, and devoted to a fault to the communities that he helped to build.

Kick back a beer for me, dude.