A Short Goodbye ...

Well, just as all things change this was no exception.  I've enjoyed my time playing SWTOR but it's changed, or something in the game has changed.  Maybe I'm now reaching the point that caused people to leave months ago - it's hard to say.

Mostly my decision is a personal one, there are some things that I've noticed about myself while playing the game that I don't particularly like.  My drive to play has gotten lower and lower, and I think the knowledge that there isn't any more progression for me to accomplish is stagnating my experience.  The game just eats up so much of my time, with running multiple characters and trying to run this Blog it feels like I've lost the overall enjoyment that I once had.

In the end it comes down to something that I've said frequently "I'll play the game as long as I'm having fun" - there are times when I am having fun, but for the majority of my time any longer I feel like I'm doing work.  I've come to acknowledge a few things, like: I'm probably not a good enough player for Ranked PvP.  That running Ops, while it's nice to have that accomplishment, can really feel like work on some days.  That trying to credit up, run multiple characters through Datacrons, gearing up end game, augmenting everything, working on trade skills, complete daily/weekly quests and levelling another Imp alt to 50 basically ate up 4-6 hours of my night every night and didn't leave room for anything else.  Like I said, it's kind of like work to "stay competetive".

Maybe that's my real issue, I don't like being on the back burner, I like to be at the front doing things and innovating.  If I can't push the edge of progression what's the point?  So I don't think it's anything to do with the game, I think it's just my attitude when it comes to playing it.

These last weeks have been a kind of test, I took a few days off here and there - and while the immediate reaction was stress that I was taking a day off ... lately it's felt stressful to think about going back to play.  I had planned to hop back on and finish raiding commitments this week but since I'm not sure when those are now, I think I'll just finish up here.  I know I'm irreplaceable, but I'm sure you can find someone to fill in for me and do their best.

For those of you that I've gotten to know, it's been a pleasure.  Thank you for inviting me to your Groups and to your Guilds and making me feel welcome.  This has actually been a relatively unique experience for me in that I've found multiple groups of people that I got along with and that were happy to have me around.  The only regret I have at this point is that I won't get to hang out with you all any longer.  I hope that I made as much of an impression on some of you that you've made on me.

I think I'll finish this off here since I don't like long goodbyes and I'm not trying to fish for the "Please Stay" comments or anything like that.  Normally I would just leave without saying much but since I have commitments with people I wanted to write something up to explain, I also didn't want to lead anyone on that this would continue to be a fresh content site.  I hope the rest of you continue to have fun for a long time yet.

I'll be leaving TankingTOR up until the domain expires since it is still getting a bunch of use.  I hope the work I've compiled continues to aid those of you still playing the game.  When the domain expires this will revert to: http://swttor.blogspot.com - so if you don't want to lose it you might want to bookmark that as well.

Goodbye.