Securan ex-counsellor/ex-senator/forum troll Waylan Pestivar was interviewed by our ex-staff member and Newshawk Necro Gardius.

Tibianews: Hello Waylan, it’s good to have you here.

Waylan: haha wow i'm surprised anyone even remembers me to tell the truth. i figured if you asked people nowdays who waylan pestivar is they'd probably tell you it's some kind of fat free yogurt.

Tibianews: How did you decover the game? How long you played?

Waylan: some of my real-life friends introduced me to tibia. i started playing on secura around 2003, almost 2004 despite what my account creation says. i used to play on nova for a little while before that, ironically as a massive, random pk. very few liked me on nova as you can imagine since murdering innocents wasn't the best way to bond those eternal friendships ;D and almost everyone hunted me. the situation esculated so bad that anytime i logged in victims i had killed (even a few major guilds back then) as part of an "anti-pk" system (as this was before the fabled skull system existed) would announce in gamechat the last place i was seen and that i was online now hoping nearby highlevels would kill me. i only ever died twice on nova, so i was pretty successful back when it was still new. unfortunately it became near impossible to play there over time. so when secura was released i gave it a shot as i thought the idea of non-pvp was interesting and different.

Tibianews: Probably you’ve heard this question before. How did you become a counsellor and who was your gamemaster?

Waylan: laelian was my former gamemaster, but i don't exactly remember why or how i was asked to be a counsellor. i think it was the $300 in beer i sent guido ;D. however i remember A LOT of gamemasters had wanted to appoint me as a counsellor and laelian was about the third to ask me about it in-game (though i had previously declined twice as i wasn't very interested at the time/had no time). at the time she asked, i had been snowboarding in banff for about two weeks (on vacation) and after i came back home and settled, i logged on secura. the then-counsellor queen of light II messaged me saying the newly-appointed gamemaster laelian was trying to contact me in the last few days. as far as i know at the time, she never had a character on secura, never played on secura. i didn't have a character on calmera or had ever played on calmera. we had never met or talked on any server, nor had any contact before. but she wanted to appoint me anyway.

we talked it over and she told me she would post on the gamemaster internal forum "verifying" whether or not cip & the current gamemaster staff approve of the possible promotion. all future counsellors were subject to a private screening process if you will -- to make sure they didn't have some kind of *pseudo/evil alter ego thing going on. she posted on the internal gamemaster forum inquiring about appointing me and the response was overwhelmingly positive. extremely positive. Most likely again thanks to the guido beer.

after they gave the ol' a-okay i was appointed near the end of october 2004, i believe. which it was kind of ironic in itself. the first thread i read on the counsellor forum was one which was a set of guidelines created by an old antican gamemaster; elaborated on by an old novan one warmly welcoming all new counsellors! It was a very humbling thread. the second thread i had read was by guido, about how they were planning to dismiss all counsellors. >:) The second one wasn't so humbling. A case of easy come, easy go i guess. i was the last counsellor to be appointed too before they decided to axe the rest, i believe. just my luck. ;D

Tibianews: Haha. And how long you were in that position?

Waylan: about a year and a half, nearly two years. i was extremely active and helpful (yes, helpful that wasn't a typo ;D) for about the first year, but after that life became very busy and i had lost interest in tibia. whether that be playing the game, answering reports, etc. i had lost my motivation (in-game) for no real explainable reason. there had been a lot of changes and weeks and months skipped by before i'd log in and take reports. there was also internal discussions a brewing about how cip had planned to replace the current counsellor system with a new, improved (and slightly automated) "tutor system." the gamemasters, mostly on secura were very supportive and kept telling me to take long(er) breaks and come back when i found my motivation to help again, but it never really returned. they kept me as a counsellor anyway. i had asked 2-3 times on the internal forums for someone to dismiss me for being inactive (as you couldn't dismiss yourself) and no one ever did. i remember reading over a thread one afternoon on the counsellor forum though. the notorious knightmare had been very active in it so i made a reply at him saying simply like;

"@knightmare

please, if you read this dismiss me from being a counsellor. with no questions asked and no second thoughts. i'm heading out to lunch now but by the time i get back i want to be dismissed. i've asked 2-3 times now and it seems impossible. thanks if you can."

and when i came back, he had listened. yes that wasn't a typo either: CIP ACTUALLY LISTENED. i was no longer a counsellor.

Tibianews: And when you stop being a counsellor and became a senator, did you tibian life changed?

Waylan: no, not really.. after i decided to resign (more so, after cip FINALLY decided to let me go ;D) i didn't login much. perhaps twice or three times in the following year. surprisingly, the position that i didn't really want anymore turned out to be the very thing which was keeping me there. and for just reason, i regret staying on rookgaard in a way. in the last few weeks i've randomly logged in i've gained maybe 30k+ experience and i'm STILL about 70% to a level.

WHY DID I EVER STAY HERE TO BEGIN WITH!?! it takes soooo freakin' long to level.

i have to admit it shocked a lot of people though, especially my gamemaster who didn't even have a say in whether or not she wanted to dismiss me. i logged in the day after not really knowing what to expect and everyone had just assumed cip had enough of at times my cocky, satirical nature. and that they decided to dismiss me maybe for my sarcasm, maybe just the way i presented myself, not sure. so i had a lot of explaining to do haha. afterwards when everyone understood it was my own decision to resign i was thrown a bunch of "thank you's!" and "we appreciate what you did." etc. after that i just slinked into hibernation for about a year. I didn't log on or play.

Tibianews: How did you became a senator? And what possesed you to resign from that too?

Waylan: i can't remember exactly how i became a senator either. and can you believe it? i have a photographic memory. i remember one morning while i was checking my emails i noticed solkrin had emailed me explaining they were going to create a new position for retired gamemasters/counsellors. called "senators". He asked me if i was interested in becoming one.

at the time i told him it didn't really matter and i'd leave the final decision in his hands. we exchanged emails a few more times where he answered some of the questions i had and clarified and elaborated on some of the answers he previously gave me, but he told me nothing definitive -- pretty much the day after our correspondence we ended up escaping up to banff to snowboard again. (that is, some friends and i, not solkrin and i ) i came home in perhaps a week after boarding the beautiful banff mountain slopes. after i was unpacked and settled i had been reading the real-life forums and someone had posted his "freestyle rap" there. i read it over it thinking, man... when will people learn tibia and rap just don't go together?!! and i posted something like he's the reason i support abortion. Only to realize solkrin had since appointed me as a senator. :^) which made for a good laugh for everyone reading the real-life forums that day. And A LOT of shocked awkwardness.

i think i was the third or second senator appointed and i resigned in a very short 2-3 months. again, questions rocketed forth boisterously exclaiming had i been dismissed by cip for something i had said or did? i still get that question today even, but once i cleared the air again, people began to understand my reasons.

i decided to resign over a few reasons. the first was false idolization. i had never liked how cip's support system was built almost like one of those seedy triangle scams you see on tv. you know, those ones for products named like "surgery in a can" where you're supposed to suck up to superiors but dump everything on those below you. it bugged me in a way to see some counsellors interacting with eachother like normal people then treating the tutors worse than brechins dog in real-life. then turn right around and treat the gamemasters above them about x10000 times better than brechins dog. btw RIP brechins dog. i always tried to talk to everyone NORMALLY but it seems as long as some kind of a position was tacked to the side of my name total strangers treated me like "a king or social misfit. " to quote someone i recently talked with on secura. whoever you were. >:) and i didn't like that. what's the point of talking to someone when they always agree with what you say? when they always think you're right, when they're always afraid to express what they truly think of you or want to say? --- there is none.

the second reason being because i had asked solkrin if some other counsellors (i had known before i resigned) were going to receive invitations as well and he told me no, probably not. that bothered me a bit because they put just as much time in and made just as much effort but were being treated like they never existed post-counsellor era. in all fairness - i could understand that answer as those counsellors were counsellors cip had dismissed themselves for a multitude of reasons.. but. if they weren't going to invite them it didn't really make me want to remain one.

Tibianews: Have you ever used proper capitalization in-game or on the forums?

Waylan: no.

Tibianews: We also know you are a very high lvl, not on mainland but on the beginners island Rookgaard. Why did you decide to stay in that island?

Waylan: (... like the birth of my little brother) it was actually a mistake. when i first started on secura i had created a sorcerer named tenshy raintear (which i'm guessing 97.8% of secura still has no idea i currently am today). i had every intention on leaving rookgaard and making this character (waylan) a knight, since secura was a very new server at the time. fireswords alone still costed over 25k-40k, plate armors 1k+ etc. i raised tenshy to maybe level 14 before i found it impossible to raise him any further because this was obviously before wands/rods existed. it wasn't cost efficient to slave over a bunch of fish to make a backpack of hmms, gamble it away killing a bunch of cyclops only to earn back 394 gp where i couldn't buy anything new due to inflated item prices. so, i made waylan.

his purpose was originally supposed to be a money making knight. someone i could hunt with and earn new spells & items for my sorcerer without having to use actual money. i figured, since the server was still new i'd level to as close as 9 as i possibly could, both to earn some extra gold before i left rookgaard and so i didn't have to level to 9 when i went to main. i don't know what i didn't kill but i stopped with 6398 experience or something; someone killed a monster i didn't finishing killing and i ended up leveling to 9. at that time i didn't bother killing him back down because i had no other securan characters on my account (yet). i decided i'd just keep him there and made a new-would be knight, one that actually left the isle this time: maerwynn, who later served as a character i checked for lurers/lures on.

i don't know why it happened but once i decided i stay, everyone just loved me there. back when i still played i raced a few people to "ground breaking" securan rookgaard levels. i think i won the race to 20, 30 and 40, but then i stopped logging in for over a year. 44 was as high as i got and probably will ever get.

Tibianews: Do you like the way tibia have been growing these years? Or you prefer the way it was before?

Waylan: haha, i can just imagine cips faces reading this wondering "oh dear god what's he gonna say next..?"

i think there's been both a lot of positive and negative mixture of changes. as strange as it sounds i don't like the safetrade feature, it destroyed the whole concept of making a reputation for yourself. since back when i played on nova, the safetrade feature didn't exist. whenever you wanted to deal with someone you didn't know you had to go by reputation alone. the introduction of safetrade kind of killed a major part of the community aspect where you build up and maintain a reputation for yourself; whether that be a honorable reputation or an evil one. i've never been a big fan of the quest system. more so -- how almost every item is attainable from it. it made most items incredibly common on all the servers and until cip made (most) loot sellable it eventually destroyed the economy on older servers as well. i'm not very fond of the skull system; maybe it's still the pk side of me but i've always thought killing/wars was probably one of the funnest parts of tibia. i'm sure most people are aware i've never really liked the tutor system, but i do. i think it was both the worst (and best) idea cip had. from a business perspective - it was the perfect solution to an understaffed support team. i think when it came time though it was disappointing how they handled it. i had long resigned before they made the final decision to drop the remaining counsellors, but there was still several (ex: Cardea) who had stayed faithful to the end who deserved to be appointed to gamemaster.

i didn't like how cip seems to have made rookgaard idiot-proof. although i did find it slightly ironic they made all those changes AFTER i had stopped playing on rookgaard and not while. i especially don't like how they changed it so you can aim runes on the battle menu. that completely ruined pvp skills. any other changes i'm neutral towards, or think has been a positive and refreshing change. (minus maybe level requirements for spells.. ;D) i didn't exactly like that idea when they first announced that one, either. ;P

Tibianews: We also know you are about to reach the incredible number 10.000 posts on the official board. Would you tell our readers the funniest post you have done/seen in all that time?

Waylan: uhh. any of my (near) 10000. ;D!

i don't know to be honest, there's not a SPECIFIC post that really stands out believe it or not. and i have a steller photographic memory, remember? ;D the only one i remember right now off the top of my head is a while ago on the real-life forums someone had made a "polish jokes" thread. the author wrote he lived in america as of writing it, but originally was raised in poland and loved polish jokes. not jokes in polish but jokes about the polish. and for the people reading his thread to post some. i doubt his "aha ha ha let's all share a good spirited politically incorrect laugh at the expense of poland !" backstory was ever genuine, but someone replied "i only know one joke and it's about people who smell really bad and when they put on cologne/perfume to try and cover it up they call it a polish shower. " i thought that was pretty stupid reply and i didn't laugh at that, but some poor polish guy below responded (to that) saying; "i'm from poland and i've never heard about this joke??" ;D

if you're looking for authors... there are a few who definitely stand out in the time i've posted. he probably gave cip hell with all the times he was reported but anything tonom replied with was comedic gold. 99% of what he wrote usually made me laugh out loud. hard. anyone who actively reads the forums would probably notice by now brechin and i have some kinda bonnie and clyde psychedelic thing going on. but i think his posts suck so he doesn't count. Saithia, although she doesn't post much anymore. starr cat. craban was sometimes funny before i resigned. rosie rose i read over often. hm.. duvel. there are too many to list.

Tibianews: Do you have anyone you want to thank?

Waylan: well.. strictly from a former-support sense, and to keep it relatively short since i've already written a book here:

cip first and foremost for their overwhelming patience with me. i know on several occasions with them i've probably raised eyebrows, controversy, voices, heads, arms and i sincerely hope no other masculine body parts. ;D i think they realized there was a decent human being in me buried somewhere despite the ruckus i'd sometime cause them voicing what i thought about person a or, person b, or.. person cdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy and z. i'm very grateful for all the opportunities you've all given me in the past to help, even if i didn't always see eye to eye with what you had planned or did. they were all extremely interesting experiences.

Queen of Light II for being one of the most supportive/caring/fair gamemasters who INSISTED on taking care of reports i had, even when i didn't ask her for help. thank you very much for always being there, being fair and taking the first initiative in making sure everything was always alright and problem free with me.

(former gamemaster) Excessus, tyrell and (former gamemaster) Syrn for all making the role of being a counsellor extremely easy and lax. again, i could always count on them to be fair, to solve a problem, to be reliable or just to talk. they all are and were obviously excellent at what they did and helped me out tremendously.

(former counsellor) Snave, for helping me a lot and answering a lot of questions when i was first appointed.

(former gamemaster) Talayne for again being nothing short of spectacular. i was probably closer to her than most gamemasters but she was also always there for me.

(former counsellor) Fame. ARE YOU EVEN STILL ALIVE!?

(former counsellor) Hayven on Lunara. ARE YOU STILL EVEN ALIVE!?

(former gamemaster) Pyre the Relentless for his totally unbias attitude towards me. not only did he know of me from nova, i'm pretty sure he banned me for mass pking a few times, too. i think i even attacked him once in plains of havoc. :^) either way once i told him who i was on nova, he never looked back on the past.

Fad van Nal for having to endure about ten thousand stupid questions i had when i was first appointed. like if you use summoned pigs to train does that count towards shielding advances, if it does, is it abuse?!! what should i do if i find some guy in the middle of nowhere with PIGS?~??! etc. i dunno how that guy kept sane.

Alguzara as towards the end before i resigned s/he answered many of the more complex questions or bug reports i had placed on the counsellor forum.

Chayenne before i had even thought about resigning. she seemed to be the one who always stalked my threads and hastily answered any questions or problems i had with the utmost care. and didn't sound totally robotic doing so. she was also one of the ones who coaxed me into staying a bit longer as a counsellor who didn't do anything. so if i didn't answer any reports on secura in like, july of 2005 blame her. ;D i'm very appreciative for all the help you provided however. you also made being a counsellor extremely easy with all the time you personally took to answer everything i had complained about on the forums, even if it wasn't always done in the best way. i truly hope you're doing fine and life is treating you well. .. and i shoulda probably put that sentence behind everyone else i listed here, huh? ;D

(former counsellor) Necroscope Secura for being probably the first securan counsellor to reach out to me and help me out again and again when i was new. luckily for you fad was already finished ripping out most of his hair from stress i caused him so you really only got a few "uhh, what if.." questions each time i logged in.

(former counsellor) Ogfetan Riglan for being one of the only moderators before senior tutors had the ability to report posts who actually used his powers.

(former moderator) Caidran, who was in the same (unfortunate) moderation boat. i look back on it and the amount of threads/replies i was asked to report through ctrl + r reports was crazy. so thank you too, wherever you are!!! (casablanca). i could especially always count on you with any problems people had reported to me regarding the forums. i gotta admit though dude your obsession with the male genitalia always creeped me a little.

(former moderator) Excessus - for being just as helpful as caidran, without the strange fetishes.

(former counsellor) Rebel Rimule for again all the help he provided in-game and out.

Solkrin for all your (quick) help whether it be with small questions or that rather large ab'dendriel map bug that trapped a bunch of people that one time i found you on danubia. the various help and responses have always been appreciated.

(former counsellor) Cardea for constantly showing me the human side of many people with position forget they have.

(former counsellor) Broken Winged Angel for always being supportive and backing anything i said up. whether i be the only one in the world complaining about an unfair banishment or if i was conspiring to torch down poorly guarded orphanages at sunset. the support was always, always there.

all the (former) support staff i've run into who helped me in the past - but i didn't get to really know.

everyone decent i've ever run into on tibia. mainly secura as a whole who made helping and playing there so pleasant. there was so many hate threads & replies made about other counsellors/gamemasters from other worlds often reported; calling them corrupt, unfair, bias, etc. insulting them and so forth. in the entire time i played secura i don't think there was ever one hate thread, let alone replies complaining i was unfair or corrupt. or weirdos insulting me in every thread i'd reply in.

(former gamemaster) Laelian for taking a chance and appointing me. i really hope life is treating you well now, too.

and last but not least Knightmare.. for taking it all away.

Tibianews: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers??

Waylan: wow. if you made it this far AND still are awake, thanks!

Tibianews: Well, thank you very much for your time and for everything you’ve done for the tibian community. Good luck with your life and future projects

Waylan: thanks, you too.