A long vacation, or a more permanent departure?

 After a lot of thought, I will discontinue posting on the official forums. My reasoning behind this decision is a bit complicated and long winded, but if you humor me and take a few minutes to continue reading, I will try to explain things from my perspective.

When I first came to World of Warplanes, I started something that took on a life of it's own, my little "blogs". "From Tanker to Airman" all the way to my current "From the hangar to the heavens", I have become a fixture within General Discussion. Whatever I was doing, got me noticed by the Community Manager of the time and I was offered the title of Community Ace. Believing it was something truly special, I accepted.

A short time after that, I was invited to a messaging program where I had direct contact with WarGaming NA staff and other CA's. From then until a while ago now, I voiced my feelings, concerns and ideas about the game and for the playerbase. I felt no fear in expressing my passion for what Planes meant to me and tried to talk about things that didn't seem right at all with the game. Although I was misinterpreted on how I was trying to say certain things, my message of what I was saying got through.

Sadly, not only do I feel most of it fell on deaf ears, but certain important people to say it to were not around as much, with increasingly longer intervals of their reappearance. Then, I was starting to sound like a broken record on ideas and concerns, not only to those who would listen to me, but I wasn't liking the way I was sounding to myself either. It's been a long time since I logged into that program, but I have this feeling I haven't missed much, probably the same old recycled topics of discussion, with only newer timestamps.

I am getting myself off track here. My "blogs" turned out to be pretty much me, talking about what I was doing in the game, my thoughts and feelings of what was going on, with very little feedback from others. A forum is supposed to be an environment of active discussion, not just one person doing all of the talking, in my opinion. While the viewcounts on what I was producing impressed me, the low number of responses to my posts was disheartening. I do appreciate the brief conversations with some of my "regulars" and don't get me wrong about not giving due credit to those who did comments.

Another surprise I never gave much thought to, until just recently, the moderators and/or WarGaming staff never moved my "blogs" to Off Topic, or some other obscure location. Perhaps they knew, what I had going on was drawing people to the forums, specifically to that section. Then again, I could just be imagining things, to make myself be more than I truly am.

So, as of right now, for an indeterminate amount of time, I will abstain from the forums and allow my latest "blog" there to go cold and carry on here, full time. Time to allow some more room for those who want to have an ongoing conversation, not somebody with this habit of preaching from the soapbox. Being here carries no expectation of a response from anyone who reads this, unlike the forums over there. Unless there is an overwhelming outcry over this decision, or a fair number of people can make a case that my continuing presence there is absolutely needed or wanted, I feel this is the right move. 

However, you are welcome to leave a comment or two here.

And who knows, perhaps somebody will fill the void that I leave behind....