Let's start with the obvious one: Highlights

[Dryunya]

My personal highlight was the beginning of the ARG. I bumped into it at just the right time, explored everything, and actually made quite a difference. My involvement dwindled late in the game, but the sense of accomplishment was all worth it.

The ARG itself?

1. Don Quixote. All of it. He was quick to respond, responded to everyone, was hilarious and Crazy Awesome, while still being annoying and stubborn enough to actually stay a living person. He also beat IWBTG on Impossible, guys. I just. I don't even.
2. Still a part of #1, but it deserves a separate entry. Tara's death. Yes, it was a terrible event, and no, I wouldn't want to go through it again, but such a Player Punch made everyone react with a hurricane of emotions never seen before. Worth it.
3. Mr. A's AMA. While Slender said (I think it was him) that all we got were the answers about the dartboards and foosball, but I got a lot from there. His moral stance (which was all I actually wanted from him at the time), the Void's workings, his eldritch and vindictive (but still incredibly goofy) nature, "The Wall Ted Fall". And that they have a mini-fridge. Can't miss that.
4. Gurt! Taking a thrown-in wild idea (which was totally mine) and rolling with it AND incorporating it into the plot AND the finale... That was some very quick thinking. Even though they probably didn't affect the midgame plot. But that's the stuff for another thread.

[narrativedilettante]

I thought of another one: Seeing tropes from stories that I wrote included in the character page.

[Tom]

About the AMA. One reason for that was that suspicion about Mr. A had started to build to a boiling point, before we needed that to happen. The Cabal had not yet emerged as a possible source of information, so the choice was Mr. A or Not--basically, Play or Not. So I looked at why the players didn't trust him anymore.

I saw frequent complaints of "he doesn't share enough information". I looked into it and realized he had actually told you guys everything you needed to know, except for the one big lie, which I wasn't going to reveal. But I really did think you were being unfair to him, since he HAD shared everything you needed at that time.

I thought to myself that asking for more information from him was only going to yield useless, silly stuff. And then it occurred to me that showing you that useless, silly stuff might actually prove to you guys that you had what you needed.

Slender was right that only silly reveals and confirmations of things you already knew came out of the AMA, but if the implication was that you learned nothing, I disagree. The purpose of it was to show you that although the instantiations suck at communicating clearly, they don't actually hide mission-critical information. With one exception, and that was Prime's call. And he lied to most of his instantiations about it, too.

[narrativedilettante]

I thought to myself that asking for more information from him was only going to yield useless, silly stuff. And then it occurred to me that showing you that useless, silly stuff might actually prove to you guys that you had what you needed.

I LOVED that useless, silly stuff, so even though I and others were still frustrated and felt like we didn't have as much information as we would have liked, I think the AMA did a lot to keep us willing to at least consider the possibility that Mr. Administrator might be trustworthy. And it was loads of fun.

[Tom]

"Trustworthy" might be a strong word for what I was going for, which was "doesn't lie to you about stuff you NEED". Moreover, he had no reason to lie to you about most stuff. When he lies, it is typically self-serving.

There is a cynical way to interpret the AMA. If Mr. A is a sociopath who just responds to incentives, then he simply made a calculation and realized he benefitted the most from being nice.

Of course, it's impossible to determine if this was the case or not unless you were inside his head while he was doing that. And I ain't sayin.

[Sophira]

At the risk of derailing slightly, I'm happy that I got the first question in the AMA, and that the question was "Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses?". I didn't actually know the AMA was starting at that moment, I just caught it on my Twitter feed and thought it would be fun as all heck to throw the question at Tom and see what he replied, if anything.

(The question, for those not aware, is a common meme for AMAs on Reddit.)

[TheJester]

To ask what my favorite part of the ARG was is not hard honestly. It was Romeo and Juliet.

Their settings imbued in symbolism and their personalities matched in tune. It felt as if characters had not just come out of their pages, but had evolved, as if they had become a hybrid of what they once were. They became a modernization of themselves through their own self-doubt and reliance on others. This was what captured my imagination. That and I learned something...

Some of these characters are hundreds of years old. However, some had grown accustomed to their life while others not so much. Why did they however? I believe it is because realistically speaking, it is not the authors who truly make the characters, it is the people who read them. This is why fan-fic's are so important. Each human is a builder, each author a developer. The author creates a diagram of what needs to be built and the builders build it.

Each human creates a picture in his head through imagery, the authors merely create the character but the readers, the readers build up on that and bring them to life. These seemingly old characters, way beyond their age, have taken up residence among the future and have become the future that is represented among the hearts and minds of thousands of people that have read or even seen the play.

We are the builders and the developers. The Great Architect's of Literature. Through this Alternate Reality Game I have seen that these characters can live among new times, through the hearts and minds of the people. It is through the hearts of us, that these characters continue to grow and adapt, like the evolution of the lizard and the ape, they adapt to every environment. It is us that allows them to be like that.

I think the main lesson I learned is that I cannot bring back the past, but I can make it something to work with in the future.

[GuestUser17]

I had the most fun trying to explain to an elderly nun in Sydney why some stranger on the other side of the world was asking about who was buried near Saint Mary MacKillop!

[The Wild West Pyro]

Holmes and Poirot working together, Don Quixote's misadventures, The discovery that Joe's Posts were missing and the first discovery of the Cabal, all that fun in the Coffee Room, and fighting Cthulhu.

[TheJester]

Another thing I loved about it...

Well, being called an "ODD FELLOW" by Mr. A was the highlight of my life. XD

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

I loved all of it. Mostly, however, I was just overloaded with joy by being able to talk to fictional characters (something I had dreamed of often). And I apologize for my e-mails to Morgan, and their... awkwardly casual nature.

[JackAlsworth]

(swear to god, next time i see font size less than ten i'm resizing it myself)

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Well, sometimes the brightest points can come out of the darkest ones. When I almost ragequit over Pixie's post, and Mr. A told me I had made valuable contributions and sent me pictures of squirrels... that made me cry. Whoever did that, I <3 you.

On a less-heavy note, all of Mr. A's and Don Quixote's tweets ever were all made of Win.

And once I powered through my meta-problems with it, Sicon's confrontation with the Witch was EPIC.

[Dana]

Well, sometimes the brightest points can come out of the darkest ones. When I almost ragequit over Pixie's post, and Mr. A told me I had made valuable contributions and sent me pictures of squirrels... that made me cry. Whoever did that, I <3 you.

That was all Tom Isn't he great?

[Tom]

Mr. A told me I had made valuable contributions and sent me pictures of squirrels... that made me cry.

That was me. I am so glad they helped.

[VicariousShaner]

I would have to say when Sicon and myself had that ridiculous meta wall of text argument back when we were all trying to get in the Wicked Witch's good favor.

I don't think the GM got much out of it, though.

[Tom]

We were impressed, at least. I was pretty glad the decision was up to others, though.

[H22]

1) The tram!!!
2) The whole Cabal story line
3) The only things I really had an impact on, the wall piece puzzles.
4) Mr. Administrator
5) Interacting with the characters.

[Sicon112]

I would have to say when Sicon and myself had that ridiculous meta wall of text argument back when we were all trying to get in the Wicked Witch's good favor.

I don't think the GM got much out of it, though.

No kidding. That was INSANELY fun.

[Tohrinha]

I loved the interaction with Morgan, how she responded to every person who contacted her (that I know of, anyway), even after Don Juan's betrayal. It was also a good medium for me to try and build a connection, something I wasn't as versed in on forums or Twitter.
I was probably most elated over Holmes coming to Denver. As well as the origami puzzle. That crane is still sitting on my mantel.

[Bill Cohen]

I had the most fun trying to explain to an elderly nun in Sydney why some stranger on the other side of the world was asking about who was buried near Saint Mary MacKillop!

o_0

DETAILS!

[Connor Fallon]

I loved the interaction with Morgan, how she responded to every person who contacted her (that I know of, anyway), even after Don Juan's betrayal. It was also a good medium for me to try and build a connection, something I wasn't as versed in on forums or Twitter.
I was probably most elated over Holmes coming to Denver. As well as the origami puzzle. That crane is still sitting on my mantel.

...I had a hand, often an entire arm, in everything in this post.

Thank you =)

[Val Reznitskaya]

As well as the origami puzzle. That crane is still sitting on my mantel.

You just made my day. You have no idea how many cranes I had to fold in the process of ensuring that one was solvable. =P

[Endless Sea]

Just the fact that we got to write stories for an active ARG and have them be incorporated into the canon. Makes me wish I'd finished my Metaguard and Cthulhu fics.

[Scarab]

Just the fact that we got to write stories for an active ARG and have them be incorporated into the canon. Makes me wish I'd finished my Metaguard and Cthulhu fics.

You know, I still can't quite get over the fact that we saved the world through, essentially, writing fanfiction (not that I have a problem with fanfiction, at the root of it, I was just really surprising to see it used as the solution for saving the world... and that it actually WORKED.)