This is a post I've written in my head a hundred times and something that has been on my mind heavily as of late. It is with the heaviest of hearts that I announce my departure from World of Warcraft effective immediately. I want to take some time to tell you my story and why this decision has been made now. If you don't care about me or the story of what brings this all about, then you're welcome to stop reading here. I'm mostly writing this for closure on my part and to give some insight as to where my heart lies.

THE BEGINNING

Throughout all of the expansions of World of Warcraft, I have prided myself as a player who goes against the grain and plays the harder specs that perform better instead of playing a spec that requires very little skill. During Burning Crusade, I played a rogue and, when everyone was combat spamming Sinister Strike and Eviscerate, I was playing subtlety, managing uptime on debuffs and maintaining a precise rotation and set of gear. This was proven beneficial because, more often than not, I was at the top of the DPS charts throughout the raids in Burning Crusade. I was being rewarded for being more skilled than my fellow raiders.

When we moved into Wrath of the Lich King, I immediately switched to a deathknight and made a name for myself on my server as one of the best deathknights in the game. Every top end raiding guild competed for me to join their team, even if just for a week, to get a chance to play with me and glean knowledge from what I knew. This was a time when I had no job, no obligations, and was constantly playing World of Warcraft. Briefly, I played my rogue again, until I fell in love doing heroic Icecrown Citadel on my hunter. Back then, everyone was beast mastery. It was the only spec people thought was worth playing. Not me, however, as I mastered the complex rotation of survival and used it to be the top of the charts for DPS. Once survival was nerfed into the ground, I began the journey of a Lone Wolf as a marksmanship hunter.

I played marksmanship all through the remaining expansions that I played. Any time I logged in, I was on my hunter, being marksmanship and being at the top of my game 100% of the time. It was during this time that I met a group of people called GamingLyfe and the story of our guild starts.

BECOMING A LEADER

In World of Warcraft, I never wanted to be a leader. There is so much responsibility that comes along with it and so much to manage. This is something I knew to be true throughout my time raiding with various guilds. I never wanted to be the guy that had to deal with assholes like me hopping guilds and try to keep everything together. However, in spite of this, I became a leader in Legion, right in the beginning of mythic Emerald Nightmare. The guild, GamingLyfe, had a leader that was too focused on his outside engagements (a gaming community, other games) and was disenchanted with the game. Yet he still held on to the leadership position, making decisions behind the curtain that he had put up between he and I and the rest of the group. I was stonewalled with my ideas of progression and left to tell my raiders that we couldn't do something because our leader wouldn't allow it. A small group of the raiders, most of which have long gone and left the game, came to me with an idea of leaving the guild and the server and creating something new where we could be free to do as we pleased.

And, out of this idea, came the guild Ascendant. We left our homes on Tichondrius and headed over to Mal'ganis to join the masses recruiting for guilds with the promise that we would be successful. However, that promise was hard to keep. When we came over, many players had already either let the infatuation that comes at the beginning of an expansion wear off or had joined guilds that met their playstyle. As a result, we were left with scraps and players that wouldn't have made it anywhere else. But still, we persisted. Through groups of people leaving en masse to join more promising guilds and people joining just to farm parses on WarcraftLogs, we continued moving forward. It wasn't until the end of Legion that I made a post on our realm's forums asking people "Why are you still trying to be your own thing? Let's be our own thing together!" and it brought me to a shadow priest named Zelse who brought me to the guild of Inertia, led by Shapeshiftzz (who has also stepped away from our guild to meet his own goals).

For several weeks, we raided together in our separate guilds until we killed mythic Sisters of the Moon. After that, we formed a guild that all of you know and (hopefully) love, MYTHICC. Throughout the last year, we have grown and shrunk and fought to get to where we are. And it wasn't until Battle for Azeroth that we finally realized how successful we had become. And now, I'm met with the same decision my previous GM was met with. Do I leave willingly or do I wait for the rest of you to leave and let all of this work go to waste?

THE FAMILY, THE COMMUNITY, THE REALIZATION

Throughout my time as the leader of MYTHICC, I have pushed to create a family of raiders. One that has grown exponentially. While also promising to have high-end progression content and all of the things that people wanted. We successfully created that family atmosphere but have lost so many of our family members because of progression being stifled to the point where we stagnate. This is something that is no longer happening. Yes, we have our hiccups some nights, as all groups do. But our group right now is the most competitive it's ever been. And everyone knows it. This competitive nature, however, is not something that I ever wanted to take away from the family feeling of our guild-- and it has.

I started the weekend group in an effort to maintain that friendly sense of family and camaraderie. I started it as a way for people to come together and just do something together without worrying about how well it went or how poorly it went. And even that was taken away by an overwhelming lack of interest when people realized it wasn't the 'full clear' group they were looking for. This means, to me, that all I have left are my friends in the guild. Whom I haven't spoken to personally for more than a week.

I've also lost friends that were very dear to me. And I continue to grow further away from the friends I still hold onto in the game. And this is why I would much rather share these other games with them and one of the largest reasons for the new Riposte Gaming you've been hearing about.

THE DEPARTURE

World of Warcraft has begun to feel like a chore to me. I constantly feel like I need to be playing the game to be at the top of my game and I simply do not enjoy games that force you to play and then do not reward you for playing well. It's something you see in player vs. player content. What's the point of being a 2200+ arena player if you don't get anything different than someone in the 1500 bracket? What's the point of being a Cutting Edge mythic raider if someone can still get just as good of gear as you by playing more often doing mythic dungeons? What's the point in going against the grain and playing something that requires more skill if it's just going to be absolute garbage? "Just get good at BM," is what I hear. But I don't want to. Just like I wouldn't want to get good at cleaning up shit from a toilet. Lately, I've just been asking myself "What's the point of all of this?"

With my current job, the state of the game, and all the factors leading me away from being a leader, even a player, in World of Warcraft. I find it better that I hand over guild master to someone who is deserving of it and will take over the guild in my stead. I will continue to manage the backend and be a part of your lives through Discord and, hopefully, the gaming community and organization that we are starting in 2019.

I make a promise to you that our website, our Discord, and my guild are not going anywhere. You will continue to progress and you will continue to succeed without me at the helm. And you will give your new guild leader the respect they deserve as they've earned it. I'm sorry if this post is all over the place. It's extremely difficult to write it as I never thought I actually would. But I hope you get the gist of it and, if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you for spending the last year being the best guild I could've ever hoped to lead and I hope to see you all soon.