Best Of

That's not a comeback win. Circumstances beyond your control affecting the outcome means that the outcome was beyond your control. If the outcome had not favored you I doubt you'd be pleased with the result. It's the same as complaining that certain skills/combinations are OP - if they are, in fact, OP, then it's not the fault of the ones who are fighting against it whether they win or lose. It's the fault of the admin for not making the playing field fair. No offense to Orael or anyone else, because hindsight is 20/20.

There's not really many real-life comparisons to online lag. If the goal in your scenario was to win the game despite the odds, then that could be a valid competition(though it sounds unsafe). But server responses don't affect everyone equally at all times, as would be the case on a bad playing field. 

Xenthos said:

I think it is a fair point to say that the competition did not involve $ (that I know of, at least).  This has not always been the case.  Final Ascension challenges in the past actually have had seal holders requesting significant Paypal donations for support- personally this feels extremely metagamey, but perhaps the mere fact that it has happened helps you understand how invested players are / think others are in the outcome.

Beyond that, though, a competition does not need to involve money to be treated as a competition.  There is the prestige involved in gaining something that is a "limited-time offer," for example.

A question for you at this point: if Ixion was raised TA, but something else minor was done to acknowledge Choros' win in addition to that, would that offend you?  Would you be as demoralized as you say you were after the event ended?

Woah woah, who and when did this happen? That seems like something that should have been brought up in years past, why didn't it? 

Why not give Parhelion an additional Honour Line? If Ascension does change in the future, this can be retroactively changed to state he was the Last True Ascendant to be raised or something in this ballpark. I am sure he would appreciate it and @Xenthos can feel better knowing it will be an honour line that Ixion cannot ever receive and Ixion's TA will be diminished in some form.

Parhelion said:

I would really prefer not to be given anything extra, thanks. I'm not interested in being that ascendant who got a bonus because his opponent was so close, and I dont want to be the guy people point at next year and say, "He got this, why dont I get it?!?!?!"

I hear you, and for the record I think you've been an incredibly gracious winner.

But consider Terentia or someone else giving Parhelion some kind of cool and unique token because of this. :x

(I'm kidding. Kinda. Your wishes should 100% be respected though.)

I have maybe a little bit unique of a perspective to offer in terms of IHC IC/OOC.

Seren leadership has had a lot on their OOC plates. When it came time to support someone for TA, Gaudiguch wanted to support Dys and Magnagora wanted to support Ixion, and Serenwilde was the tie-breaking vote. We voted together as a commune when we had a high enough population to have a semi-fair representation of what characters wanted, and while Ixion overwhelmingly won the vote, my character Lief was one of two to voice support for someone who wouldn't be undead. She noted that while she would fight for Creation and honor the alliance's wishes, since Serenwilde had the opportunity, she thought it would be best to support someone she could feel good about supporting.

IC, I'm not fully sure how she will react to someone undead gaining TA, but I am OOC hopeful the event will make it make sense to call on Ixion. OOC I am thrilled the admin are willing to look at everything that happened and decide that the numbers were incredibly close, both sides were really good and had prepared quite a bit, and while Parhelion won and his alliance came out tops, it really is difficult to know the outcome had the lag been even half as bad. Even if we all had been fighting in the same lag I experienced early on, which was maybe around 5sec lag instead of the minutes+ that was experienced.

So many players on our side really were crushed by the outcome more than usual because of the lag. This is a lovely morale boost and I'm not sure how it OOC takes away from the winning side. I am 100% sympathetic to the IC, as again, I'm not sure how Lief will react. But I really do feel that OOC it is a phenomenal gesture that our current admin will take responsibility and work to improve it for next year.

There have been people who have explicitly (although privately) stated that their reasons for denying Ixion was due to 'griefing' and that it would be a 'terrible thing ICly and OOCly'. No, not everyone who is opposed to Ixion shares these views and are toxic, but there are people who do have these views, and their behaviour is toxic.

If you do think that 'griefing' and 'terrible IC and OOC' instances are not toxic and detrimental reasons have in opposing Ixion, I am all ears for explanations.

Chessboard for Halli for a year? I've been envying Glom's chessboard for a while!