User blog:Fairingrey/Quitting. Quitting for good.

何もない

Opening
My interest in this game is dropping like a pinball. Sad to say, but I think I'm quitting for good in this game.

Anyways, hello all, I'm... Lyr. I lost a wager to Bee during the last event where he said that he would take upon my former in game name if he ranked higher than me on the first day ranking when I had classes going, so there's that. That explains the name change, and it confused some amount of people.

But what's more confusing is the fact that I've been sorta dead for the past several days. It's the first time in a long time that I've ever ranked below 50 during a FAW event; even during Nuisance's event I ranked 32nd, so having ranked way below that is kinda new for me. I'll post a screenshot later if anyone's interested, but my rank is drastically low. Like, somewhere in the 2000s, I think.

Whatever the case, thanks you all for sending back to me and I'd love to make a shoutout to Rorona, one of our most recent recruits in AF for ranking first throughout the majority of the event last event. That adds another rank 1 member to the club, which is currently sitting at 5 people, and maybe 3 if I quit.

If I wasn't smacking your stuff and it didn't die on time I'm really sorry. Apologies... but I do appreciate all my senders' loyalty throughout the events and one day I hope I'll make a return to ranking to help you guys all out, but in the meantime you should check out the spreadsheet and add some other keeler traders. Maybe from my alliance, but also alliances I'm fond of also are FEAR, Sol Ciel, and Royal Unity (to some extent) so add people from there if you can too!

Small Note About Alliance Recruitment
Regarding the waitlist for our alliance, and I'll mention this really quick so it doesn't get boggled by other things: Bob doesn't manage the waitlist; I do. I maintain a waitlist for people that have a very high interest in joining us whenever a slot ever opens up, with them having the patience to either stick around in their current alliance or not be in their alliance.

However, it's not to say that one person should apply on the waitlist just so they have a slot secured once a slot opens, because that's not how it works. When there are free slots open, I let people know ahead of time so they can give Bob a headsup saying that they want in on the spot within some 24-48 hour window if we don't get any applicants prior to that. So in a way it's not really a waitlist, but more like a list of people that just say "Hey, I'm really interested in joining you all, and I can wait however long it takes to get in because although I'm somewhat satisfied with my current alliance or being allianceless, I really want to join you guys because..."

Knowing me, in a way, gets you in easily, I won't argue that. Bob has deferred to me on times where we have had open slots and I've looked to help fill those slots, and sometimes we get way more applicants than we expect. Not just here, but on TCGAPP's alliance recruitment boards for this game along with some private PMs. So again, the waitlist is just a tentative thing that I've coined, and it certainly isn't a free ticket to joining us.

The biggest reason why I hold onto it is because we have a turnover rate of members who want to leave because of the loss of interest in ranking; they don't stick around because they might want other people who are interested in ranking to join. We do have dedicated senders that are too lazy to rank but still send out things when they aren't, but sometimes people look out for the better interest of their peers when they're not that intent on ranking or they are just concerned with other things in their real life and as such they can't keep up with the activity requirements.

Point is, no such thing as a free meal, and the friend I was talking about in inviting waited almost 2 weeks before he could get in, I think. That's a sign of loyalty; other alliances will sometimes have some amount of extra slots open they're willing to accept a bunch of people in, but although we're full he waited because of the fact I said that people are thinking of leaving.

And that's a great segue into what i'm going to talk about.

Quitting
Quitting's been on my mind for a long time now. I think I remember pledging that despite how boring this game would get for me, despite how often my friends would criticize or make fun of me while I was in the clubroom for playing this monotonous card collecting game, I'd always try to have fun with it and roll with things. In addition, my great devotion for Fenrir produced a particular milestone to keep myself here, in game.

Being an active member meant a lot for me: I felt like I was helping out people, I felt like people were happy for having me around, I liked the sense of camaraderie that went on as I played, and I especially loved collecting cute girls that I could otherwise find better on pixiv or something.

Sadly, I think that my interest started waning when I began my degree specific classes in university and come this event AkkeyJin had not drawn the event FAW. The latter was a definitive first for me; I found a huge lack of interest in the ranking reward already, and that's to add the fact that whatever happened this event was pretty much a rehash of the same old.

Thing is, you know a game's gone dry when you start questioning why it isn't fun. There was some inherent addiction regarding my desire to get cute girls and their confessions every event. I don't think there's even a drip of it left. I've covered part of what keeps a person around in a game and I don't think any of the previous reasons I listed cover for any of that.

There's a big update coming up. However, I don't think even that will save me from the void of quitting. Unless they will deliver the same quality that I can find from the most popular artists I follow on pixiv save AkkeyJin, then there's nothing that will rekindle my interest. This game, intrinsically, has a design that doesn't allow the game to stem much fun other than deciding on the spur of the moment what skills to use or what team composition to make.

More About The Alliance
About some two or three weeks ago I became the vice leader of AF, mostly because of the reason that there was no need for emblems anymore and I was curious as to the privileges that a vice leader had over an alliance. Turns out, not much. Still, it's fun to mess around with the jobs and have fun tossing them around as new members came and go.

That being said, in a way I believe I've somehow become the de facto vice leader around the time Kelerik joined and I started to advocate for a more fresh and more relevant alliance policy that was more than just "donate to GW" with the coming of element buffer ranking rewards. In a way I've sort of become the face of the alliance when I started to rank so highly almost every event and be one of the most active players in my own community.

But that doesn't mean everyone agrees with me. Neither does that make the rest of this alliance my peons.

I'm probably one of the most opinionated players around. I'm probably one of the most streamlined. I know people dislike me for my strong opinions. I'm quick to disagree with people. I make people uncomfortable.

I know that. And yet I continue to push my opinions on everyone: about how I think the game should be played, about what I think is wrong with certain algorithms for ranking, about what I think is wrong with certain guidelines for alliances, and even what I think is wrong with the assessment of comrades.

I like to tout that I'm welcome to different arguments that I find valid, and I'm trying my best to follow up with that. But the fact is that I am who I am, and everyone's different in their own way.

Why do I mention this? It's because being the face of the alliance sort of implies, per se, that whatever one does is a small fraction representative of how the rest of the alliance and their culture is. But it's different. I believe my alliance is made up of very chill and very awesome people to be around with. We have a Terraria server set up by our leader for fun outside of VC, and we often talk about games, anime, manga, pix, and other things of the sort. I drop in a lot with seemingly random interests, and sometimes I might get no attention. But when I do, it's all the better to talk to someone that likes the same stuff you do.

What I like about it here, and why I've been a member for so long, really, is the fact it's like a family. When I began the game I was in this small alliance filled with a trio of active lv 120's and the rest were just randoms. It was called Aeolian Harp. Well, come January 2014 when I found myself able to donate to all the goddesses, I joined AF in hopes of getting a 6 card evo Nyx. I succeeded in getting it. Honestly I will admit, I stayed because of interest in the game and my perseverance to get the cutest AW slapping team possible, along with all the rest of the cute girls. But I also stayed because of the fact that it was fun chatting with new and old members as they came and went over the span of nearly 10 months playing this game straight.

And we became more than just people that just share FAWs and cute girls; we became friends.

Closing
I'd like to say that as this is my absolute final or almost final post, that I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for sticking around with me for so long: for helping me out when it really mattered, for helping others when it also mattered, and for having fun with me throughout these long 9 to 10 months I've been in this game. We've been through some sticky stuff but I don't think I'll forget for a long time the close friends I've made sticking around in this game, including the comrades that always shared me things that I was never good enough to return the favor to. And I only wish I could stay with you guys longer.

For those who dislike me and whatever I've done or said, I'm sorry. I know the drama might never go down with whatever things I say and however way they're perceived, but hopefully we'll have less animosity between each other as one of us leaves the performing stage.

Regarding my account, I'm sorting out what I want to do with it. I want to let go of it in a way that if somehow my interest ever rekindles in this game I'll readily know the right outlets to contact because I somehow dislike the thought of quitting indefinitely even though I'm doing that right now. Maybe one day the game will be fun for me again, but until then it's either me being dead or going casual.

Here rests my case. I quit at the young level of 146 after 9 months of gameplay. RIP.