I went to Auroria once...

But all I got were these lousy screenshots.

     In all seriousness. I was one of the lucky people who was actually able to get into the game shortly after the Auroria launch. Three of my guildies had managed it as well so as soon as I logged in I got invited to a party and told to get over to Solzreed. So off I went by worldgate and gallop to Desireen (since I'd never been there to have the location.) Then I glided onto the guild clipper just offshore, Aelithar landing with a flourish square in the middle of the deck. (I'd never manage to do that again if I tried it.) And off we went. It was a long ship ride north, with plenty of time for chatting and speculation and worries about running into the Kraken or the Oran'thul. I'm not sure which would have been scarier but we avoided both.
     The lag hit just offshore and the clipper and everybody on it started lurching in slow motion. But we eventually made it to land and mounted up to ride. I don't have patron so there was no land dreams for me, but the guildies had some hopes. So we rode around to have a look. It was chaos. We died once to a large group of mobs and again to a massive pvp group. The castles got claimed... but there was no land at all to be had. It all seemed gone in seconds, even with so much of the playerbase unable to even get into the game.
     My husband and best friend ran into the glitch that locked them out and after I logged off for my raid in WoW that night I was unable to get in again either. And there are no roll-backs. The problems didn't really cause me any trouble, but for those people who were pinning their last hope of land on Auroria and couldn't even get into the game... I feel awful for you. I think the entire thing was handled pretty shoddily. There was no way it could have been handled that would have made everybody happy, but it seems like something could have been done better.

     The next day when all was said and done I logged back in. I'd logged off near a shrine in Marcala so I took advantage of being there to do a long exploration ride while it was a little less chaotic. It's a pretty continent with its own eerie music. There are floating motes of ash and lots of large scary undead monsters. The East has three Castles at the moment (Sinister, The Oran'thul, Meowcenaries) and the Arcadian Guard claimed one for the west. None of the Eastern Castles had started going up when I was there, but the Arcadian Guard had already build a nice sturdy looking structure.

     Much sturdier than these ruins I found during the exploration. I was happy to finally find one area of Auroria with some ruins. It seemed to me like it should be full of ruins, but perhaps most of them are in the large part of the continent that's still not open.

     When I'd finished looking around I recalled back to Marianople so Aelithar could go about the more prosaic business of planting and harvesting and running trade packs. No land for me, No Archeum trees, no reason for joining the current pvp insanity that is Auroria. And you know... I'm still having a really good time in this game.