Howdy all, my name is Mike. You may know me as the person who writes long blocks of text, or as one of those guys who's been playing for ages and has a bunch of high leveled characters. Another way many of you have known me for the last two years is as one of the Administrators here, and for a year before that, as a Game Master. Today, I start anew as a regular player once more. My reasons for leaving staff are simple - as is the case often in the real world, our directions change, our wants and desires become different. Sometimes, that means that people you formerly agreed with are no longer the same to you. This is my situation on MapleRoyals. I have always believed in the fun, easygoing playstyle that MapleRoyals has brought us since October 2013, however it's clear that our direction is not the same anymore. I stood up as best I could to maintain that, too. You may not know it, but I've probably heard from you, yes you the individual reading this, at one time or another. I always made it my job to hear you, listen to you, understand you, and then respond accordingly. At some point during my time on MapleRoyals staff, I lost myself. My opinions, my desires, my thoughts, they became this ball of wax that got shaped and molded by what I heard from the community, time and time again. I was in there somewhere, but sometimes I was buried in what other people wanted so deeply that I lost my own voice. My voice became yours. However, as I said before... sometimes, our directions change, and because of that phenomenon here at MapleRoyals, my role largely became unimportant towards the greater operation of the server. So, I've left. I will still exist on the server as a player, at least for the short term, but it was always helping people that encouraged me to stay here. For now, I stay to enjoy time with my friends who have stayed by my side, to host my guild, Heroes, which has been an amazing success early on, and to keep enjoying the game that I've loved for years while I still can. Feel free to find me on any of my characters if you want to chat. I'm a pretty open person, though I'll warn you now that if you want more about anything staff-related, you're not going to get anything. You're welcome to ask me anything else, though! --Mike
Staff won't be the same without you, being the constant important voice of the community. Will be nice to see the Mike that lies beneath the rubble of wax again though.
I respected the way you handled yourself as Admin. I remember having some strong words when @Haul had scammed a bunch of people and you messaged me directly and were just upfront and honest about things. I appreciated your proffesionalism when dealing with critisism directed at gms and the server. I know how hard it is to bite your tongue and go about doing your job when people are being relentlessly stupid. You were a refreshing breath of sanity sometimes when threads derailed. Your ability to speak to the players as a player who still loves the game while still fulfilling your duties as gm/admin will be sorely missed. I am glad you are sticking around and am glad to have joined heroes. I look forward to the day i finally get to boss with you and hope to repay the kindess youve shown me and many other players. I appreciate ya mike. See you in game
:^) it's okay I'm expendable anyway. And sometimes what you stand for and lose is more important than what you already have c:
Thank you for all you've done for this server, Mike and welcome back to the community as a player where your levels of stress will (and should!) be much lower than they have been over the past 3 years.