Hi everyone. I been thinking about a way to say goodbye to this game. It has been a long road… And I feel so proud of have been part of this community. From its ups to downs. I think I can never find a way to express truly how this filled my life. And so many things can be said. Personally I decided to write down my journey (although very much shortened). As I can not speak for everyone, but just my own experiences and the interactions I had with others.
I am sorry, for this is a long one. So much just happened… And for me Orbus was never 1 thing, it was a flow of events and communities and circumstances coming and going. To say it was a big part of my life!
So let me start with… the start 
Open-Alpha phase
It all started for me by seeing a Youtube video of one of the first open alpha tests of this game. Either by Cas and Chary or Shadow’s Thoughts. And it is very blurry, but I guess I just got really excited to try it myself. And it was free after all 
So my adventure begins there… (According to the forums at 23th of February 2017. But I am pretty sure it was a bit earlier than that.)
I got into an excited community that wanted to try out all the content that was made. But mostly chaos of people exploring the environment and their classes together, making friends, making jokes. Personally I walked mostly the lonely route for a long time. Not that I wanted to, but that just is how it was.
So I wanted to try and see if I could do anything at-least once in the game. And that got me into my first love and passion of testing. Testing for anything. Bugs, game-play, classes. And that was coupled with feedback on the forums. Lots and lots of feedback. xD. And because the game always has a small time limit before an alpha/beta test shut down again, it was always a bit of a race against the clock and big grind.
One memorable moment of that, was when the warrior had the ability to throw the sword and then you could teleport to it. So I like climbed a giant mountain of-course that had nothing on it (duh). (ref)
And one huge shout-out to the dev Riley. If there was anyone I could feel the passion for the game, with all the transparency, responses and posts he gave on the forums, it was him. (I might have been a bit of a fanboy of him :O)
Now in the mean time I also found the new passion of “friendly borrowing the camera of the game” and making many photo’s of the game from above with an “automatic worker”. Essentially making the first map of Orbus. Not that many people could see it though as Riley appreciated it to stay private obviously. Potato’s map of Reborn is much better though of-course (Shout out to Draven who made his own handmade map at that very beginning time)
Closed Alpha and Beta phase
Eventually there was a kickstarter, which I of-course had to back (tier: Epic Founder). Followed by multiple closed alpha test, and close beta test. But basically it went the same as above. With the occasional temporary group-up to do some harder content. But never really as a sticking group as far as I can remember.
By this point fellowships like Alphabet and Ethernal Knights already got well established as they were there from the start.
I want to mention 1 specific thing from the beta test that is probably going to be part of me for a lot longer heh. My profile picture! As it is coming from the Orbus artist Elijah. That came from one weird trip/story I decided to make of a sunfish… ref
Early access phase
After the beta test, the game went into Early access where everyone can play it. Somewhere around that time I max leveled my mage first as my favorite class. And started doing Warrior leveling. It is at this moment that I met Luminary (he being mage) and BadTower (also warrior lol) in Lucian Plains also leveling their classes. And at the end of the day Luminary said “Lets meet again at the same spot at the same time tomorrow”. And then… it became a tradition. We logged in every day of the week for I think was around 2 to 3 hours. Exploring all quests for xp. And this slowly started to become more people. Not gonna lie, we became a weird amalgamation of characters xD. (with ppl like: Tamara, Sevine, Andy, and many more I sadly can’t remember the name… of but I do remember how they were heh.)
Eventually we wanted to make a fellowship. I can’t remember exactly who was there at that time, but I definitely remember the discussion. We couldn’t think of a name. After a while “The Fireflies” was mentioned. And we weren’t so sure for a long time but couldn’t think of anything better. Then crazy Lum(inary) that he is, kept saying “Lets call it Luminaries flies” or something in that order (grrrr). I think by that constant reminder/joke of him and some tweaks we eventually decided to call it “Fireflies”. And thus the fellowship got born 
The fellowship slowly grew, but at the same time also fell apart. Not everyone was compatible I would say. Or weren’t enjoying the game the whole time. Or whatever reason. I can ramble about that for ages, but no need to… The group just got 1 focus, to get our characters to max level (level 20) and then start doing dungeons/shards with that. As we ran behind the end game content in comparison to other known fellowships, it was a bit of our own slow route (hidden in the shadows). But that was our motivator. (Shout-out to: Andy who really helped in the beginning phase arranging things. But in the end left early because of much friction)
After we finally got to that point of all being stable max level. The order of the day was often, login, try to get some people for shards, and repeat. Often if we were in a phase that there wasn’t enough people of the fellowship, we asked some random person walking around. Or I messaged someone on discord we played with before. It was often head hunting in a way. But almost always on discord as we couldn’t trust the game audio. This way we also started to become friends with more people over time. And some were sticking around. Or even becoming part of the Fellowship. But it was shards first. So it was rare for new fellowship members to come in. As we weren’t focusing on it most of the time.
This is also how we ended up with new key persons joining our fellowship: OthinFrench, astragt, EwokBlaster. (I think in order of when they joined fellowship, I am not sure… But it is not the order of when we started hanging out heh). But basically the people I still hang out with today and stuck around.
Othin still speaking only french. So we could not understanding each other, but for some reason it is still working out. But I think only things I learned in french from him are curse words xD
astragt, after being stubbornly in Carnage for years while playing with us, loving to hide in his tree and away from ppl. And being obsessed with ranger . One thing he is. And that is very dedicated!
Ewok, joined very late in old game to our group, but was part of us pretty soon as friends when he did. Although I do remember the initial doubt I felt from him. But that might have just been me. And sorry again for the “incident”. But we are still friends to this day (right?..). One thing I want to say is that I really appreciate you keeping the ball rolling of keeping us connected weekly nowadays.
Then there was also Acavi, who was also for a long time part of the key ppl of Fireflies. I still remember grabbing her just from the General Orbus discord channel for shards. Many old Orbus Fireflies achievement were done with her help. And wouldn’t have been possible without her
Old game did not only exist as Fireflies for me. We also needed more people for raids. And for that some special community formed. We called it the PUG group (Pick up group). Often we were in the Orbus Unofficial discord, doing a random normal mode raid. Slowly attracting more and more people.
And when things got serious, we started with the more dedicated players to do hardmode raids. This kept going until we also got as far as eventually doing Expert mode raids. And slowly until almost the end of Old Orbus we were killing the Expert bosses, until we killed them all once. Which was a proud long journey achievement for us (thank you to the final group that killed the last boss: Acavi, OOChucko, ezze, Arillia, Luminary, astragt, sunnysun, kellyx, briareosx. But also a special thanks for Vasilia who been there for lots of our raids.)
Around that same time ‘Fireflies’ + random friends also reached a point where we were doing the highest level shards (lvl 10) with as end goal beating shard times unconventionally as fast as possible. From glitching out bosses sideways, like constant kiting mistkeeper with snapturn, to stupidly fighting bosses without a healer. We were even able to go healerless on every boss in the end. I would say though almost always doing stupid stuff yielded us often worse times instead haha. But it was a fun journey of constantly inventing stupid (difficult) ways of playing. (at-least fun for me :P)
We eventually also reached a proud achievement of the quickest shard before the shutdown of the game. With some eeehm ‘couch’ interesting tactics. This was a special group put together. Where I want to mention the group that we did it with in the end being: Acavi, astragt, EwokBlaster, OOChucko
Also I enjoyed playing occasional raids with Monday Knights (way past my bed time heh). Got some good memories there too. Although I feel like I am just too distant to be called ‘part of this this’ I still wanted to mention you all as a fond memory I had . (still wasn’t sure if you guys appreciated me trying to naked tank some bosses, but eehm that memory particularly sticked heh)
And at the end of Old Orbus, just one more thing to remember, the shard grind vs Tman heh. Both having done 1000 shards, trying to outdo each other before the old game shut down. And I decided to not sleep apparently. So that was a long grindy fun day. Tman was the smarter and better man though, and did go sleep and let me win.
I am trying to make it not a whole book, so if you excuse me not mentioning everything. But I do remember multiple people and groups I occasionally joined, like fellowhips like Dysfunctional, Gummy Bears. And people I played with like dTox (ex Firefly), Overrated, Mistthename, Morfran, HandyGatget, Sparky, charlol, Alex, Sift, xeno, Datalus. And all the memories I made with you
And also some stupid challenge stuff I did like, solo a worldboss (ref), solo tank expert boss 1 (ref), and more stupid stuff… But also fun
Then lots of people in the tavern saying goodbye to the game while Riley with his headset half on his head, shutting it down. 
Anyway, that was ONLY the Old Orbus part of it… heh…
Reborn phase
Reborn, changed things for sure.
Initial part was just experiencing the game again, level again, testing the new classes. Riding the dragons. Giving feedback. But that went all much quicker. And I remember a lot less of it to be honest.
We did our shenanigans again in shards, finding methods that are questionable, but fun . You know the usual stupid stuff… Skywalking ground away of dungeon troll, healerless mistkeeper. Tankless Dovregobben.
Just want to mention Werehound here, as he has also been playing with us lots on Reborn shards. And it was lots of fun with him. Don’t want to really place him anywhere else. As I remember him mostly from this
Also had more interactions/hangout with Alphabet than before at the end of old game and beginning or Reborn. Even went to an IRL meetup, that was fun. And enjoyed some of the more public drunk raids. Although not been there often. Started to know people more like J, Rickness, Potato, Landru, N, Kizzleton, Roxy, Burnator. (To be fair still not a lot of knowing)
Around that time Fireflies also slowly stopped playing. Things got sour too. That didn’t help heh. After a while we started maybe playing like once a week instead of daily.
Over this period it wasn’t only fireflies slowly stopping. Many others did. Specifically noticed Alphabet quit and came back I think like 1000 times during old and new game 
And others alike had their drama. Ethernal Knights had their Laughing Coffin drama and that destroyed them, and many didn’t enjoy Reborn as they did Oldbus. You got that nostalgia drama happening on the forums for a while haha.
From this point onward I want to mention a big shift in my playing style. I would say I was constantly the one organizing events and happenings, but this stopped after this. I mostly from now on joined other people organizing things.
This shift brought me to a new group of people playing. The Rebels. This is where I find a different dynamic of people playing shards. Old friends from pre-born Lawzy and Piupau were there to welcome me. For me new faces that became my hang out group. People like Malchin, Metris, Shazul, Eletarian, Breaking, Lz, Jae, and the (in)famous Zalabro
A new group of people got into the picture. Called “The Travelers Hall”. They weren’t advertising themselves as a fellowship. But more as a community. In this group I learned to know Pherosis, Zom, Squishy, Lance, Farmer, Mägus, Tai, wungerman, and much more…). So started doing battleground events, shards and raids with them. And random fishing, mob grinding in the ‘new’ dlc ect. It was again … a new time, a new experience (again).
Also a bit later another new group appeared of friends. They were creating their own fellowship, called “Virus”. And doing their own things. Sometimes I hung out with them on raids and shards. But for me more often it was with Rebels and Travellers Hall. And for general hang out but not playing the game, it was more Virus people (the time period here was a bit hazy for me). I still hang out with them sometimes. But not as a fellowship way, but more as a friend group way. People included in this list at that beginning time (although not all): blueduckyy, Shuga, vodka, NextLevel, Beef, Oysta, esca, Lance, LemonTek, and of-course this random mafia still hanging around with us called Mishka. He is more all over the place though, but I gotta put you somewhere! Our Orbus promotional youtuber 
But what also happened in this time period of reduced Fireflies shards and new friends, I started working on a new passion project. Something with the game but not really playing the game: Cindy! The dps parser. I wanted a better overview parser and do much with it. Keep adding new features. Eventually just to jump ahead I also made the parsing leaderboard with thought of having more content for players, but of-course also out of curiosity how well the community plays and does. I just like data too much haha. Spend many hours throughout the years on that. (Fun fact: The name Cindy btw came from the fact that the program always seems to break down after midnight. Just like Cinderella. Thanks Acavi )
I also put my passion into a less known program called Greg (just the name of a random guy known by the ‘Virus’ group). A program that calculates the theoretical dps of all dps classes. This with the initial goal in mind of finding out which class has the highest cap dps in which order (ref). But it became of-course more. Ppl using it to make their own rotations, checking mechanics of classes, etc etc. Much data gathering was done by testing stuff in game and writing down the numbers. Was lots of fun.
(Funny side note, just realized I spend a significant time just grinding mobs, but got almost no memory from it haha)
Eventually also Rebels and Virus started dying in Orbus and/or gotten distanced myself from it. And got into the next chapter:
The Travellers Hall, they wanted to become a Fellowship instead of a community. And that in combination with other drama broke the group apart into the name “Thrive”. Basically a new group started to be created. I started to hang out with with this new group. Some of the new key people/friends in that became a prominent part of this new group: Akeno, Gravity, Fluffy, Kingme, Jackbro, Jordan, PopTart, treyway, Noellia, Saltyy, Katsui, Thaumatergy, Jutsu.
Then suddenly, when hardmode came out and no-one was able to kill boss 4, I was not accepting it being impossible, and took the opportunity to grab people together who were confident in their ability as a good player to make a “dream team”. With this dream team we killed boss 4 eventually after throwing our bodies against it, and thus boss 4 hardmode tactics were born (sorry xD). Luckily the devs did nerve the adds after that haha. Thank you to the team: Beef, Kefka, buckyboy, Werehound, Richleth, Foxy, EwokBlaster, Lz, Malchin, camboy, vodkaa, Potato, smile, OsciPlaski, Talia. (link to 2th kill)
After doing the raid many times, I wanted a new challenge. And together with Kingme and Pherosis we decided if we could find a way to kill all Guild City bosses on normalmode with just us 3. And after much playing around with tactics, we got them all down. From leashing boss 2 adds in corners, to taking 1 circle explosion on boss 5, and most difficult moving the boss 4 adds in such a way that they don’t build stacks was one of the hardest things I had to do heh. But so proud to have done it all. (ref)
Then of-course there was this fun moment/challenge where Potato challenged people to do solo level 1 shards in the fastest time possible. And I hooked into it, maybe too much (post with shards)
And lastly, I stupidly decided to see what else I could solo. So of-course I went to Citadel. And solo’d boss 1 and 2 normalmode. But worse of all, eventually kinda solo’d boss 2 hardmode. That took a while… xD (boss 2 hm solo’ish
And then there was the Cindy leaderboard contest… loved to see another spark of people getting themselves involved in this event. I just want to shout-out a few who I know spend respectful amount of time on the leaderboards in general (astragt, Jutsu, Ethan). And I know much more have . I know this kind of thing can have a positive impact and negative at the same time. I like to believe in the end the positives outweighed the negatives in this case. But it is always hard to know for sure.
Eventually things started to stagnate. Our weekly Fireflies shards eventually got to an end, and the only thing remaining was weekly raids with Thrive. This kept going on for so long, and I slowly lost my passion after killing Mr. Sepholepotepodeporepotepotap 100s of times (After initially taking many many months to have the group experienced enough to kill it at all heh). While the devs stopped really pushing any content and more groups disbanded. So I decided with a heavy heart to kinda ‘put down the axe’.
Pherosis kept going organizing some of the raids “Thrive”/“Saturday” raids. But eventually stopped too not much later. Before I stopped we had our fair share of new people enter the raids and leave again. Just the default rotation of any game where person A leaves and person B fills in the gap heh. Seen it many many times. But in particular one of the new people joining was Celesta. She took over the stick of keeping this raid going, not as Thrive but as our own “Saturday” group by that point. (and yes CelebiBoo, you were in those raids too at that time before I left)
So I stopped for about 1 year, with the feeling of being the only one left from the beginning era of Orbus (even Riley left 
). And no new challenges. But miracle above miracle eventually, Celesta did get me back sucked in the game. Initially for the Saturday raid. But then bnky also with easy to sign up events got me into that.
So here starts my last chapter of the game, where I enjoy hanging out with the community one more time, meeting again a new group of people I started playing more regularly with, like CelebiBoo, Herobrine, Sammy, Pizza-EL-VE-ARR (), BadFortune, bnky, thin. And our Japanese friends Sheltie, KaeruJP, Kuretake, okudy. Oooh and of-course Fireflies came back again just one last time doing some shards after we heard the news heh. And my last ‘challenges’ I found to keep me entertained, warrior tanking boss 4 and shaman boss dps.
I know I missed mentioning lots of events/things. And didn’t give everyone the credits they deserved to have. Or the memories that I might have mixed up… But I know everyone I met in this game has given me great memories. The good and the bad . I can be proud to have been part of this story. 8 years of my life and around 8000+ hours in game and lots more outside of the game. I think I can say I made the most out of it. And all thanks to everyone involved in this part of my life. As this is the dawn of the final day … lets end this chapter(book?) together!.. 
Scott
