Holy cow, this is my 5,000th post on the forums! I figured I would use such a milestone post to talk about my experiences with the server and the community. If you couldn't care less about my experiences, mark this thread as read and move on. I first came to MapleRoyals in 2013 when Dan (@Daniel), former GM Faye, and several other of my friends from another MS private server were looking for a better server than the one we were on. I remember one of my first days on the forums, interacting with Matt via the shout box and talking about my server administration experience and offering to help in any way I could. The rest, as they say, is history. There are so many of you that are new, and so many that have been part of the community even before I joined. Regardless of your length of time here, I consider myself fortunate and lucky to have met and talked to many of you, and unfortunate in that there are so many of you I have never been able to have a personal interaction with. There are far too many people to name but looking back and reflecting up to present day, so many of my closest friends are people I have met through here. I have met several Royalers in person, will be meeting more in the coming months, and have had hours (heck days) worth of conversations with so many, as well as deep heart to hearts with a handful. Some of these people know pretty much everything about me, which if you know even a little bit about me, you would know I tend to keep to myself and don't detail my personal life all that much (I do work in Information Security and know all too well about cat fishing and people being someone other than who they claim to be. Needless to say, some would call me paranoid ) In summation, I'm thankful for all of you for helping to build the community which I have called my home for coming up to two years now. I am thankful to you for helping to bring in people I now consider my friends, and I am especially thankful to those who have reached out to me during my time here, and have wanted to get to know the real person behind the screen John and learn that I'm not just Admin John, the jerk who is unfair, rude, etc. If you want to get to know the real John, just PM me. I'm very busy, but I always try to respond to those who are genuine and sincere. Here's to my 5,000th post, and looking forward to making another one of these for my 10,000th!
