Aah, I somehow missed this thread! Caught it now, though, and I won't let it go! I read everyone's posts, and had a great time. Thanks for posting, everyone! Now it's my turn, as although I didn't know about EMC yet in 2011 or 2012, I do consider myself a lasting member This is going to be long, sorry :3 -} When did you first join Empire Minecraft, and what was your experience back then? I joined the website on January 5th. I clicked the wrong button on the Achievement Generator site and ended up here. I saw the post about the Empire Firework, and thought it was very interesting, and so I made an account. The first player-made thread I checked out was Ilikeapig's Redstone Update thread. I loved it, as I played every snapshot and he described everything very nicely. I made a post, and noticed an alert. JackBiggin had welcomed me on my profile ^.^ That really impressed me. A welcome within 15 minutes was something I didn't expect at all. I thought I was going to go unnoticed for weeks... Originally I wasn't planning to actually play on the server, as I wanted to keep using the snapshots. But once I accidentally "updated" (downgraded) to 1.4....7? I figured I might as well try the server out. Anyway, bla bla bla, wappity wappity, tutorial, welcomes, picking up stuff found on a random residence, yadda yadda yadda, making noob builds, oogly oogly oogly... the big difference between then and now is that I actually played back then... I started making a farm, and a shop. AndrewBryer noticed my noobiness and wanted to help me, and after a month I had the huge farm I have made few changed too since. I made friends with Lasluin on the forums and I also visited her in-game, admiring her Lumpy Pumpkin build. I kept playing, because I had friends! Then AndrewBryer didn't really visit me anymore, and Lasluin left. . And I got bored, and decided to leave. I tried. Then AlexChance pm'ed me, saying I had won a Voter's Block Well, I didn't want to let that go to waste, so I got online and picked it up. While being online again, I got excited again, and I stayed. Not too long after I actually got inactive in-game once again, but by this time I had made new friends on the forum, and this is what brings me to the next question. -} What has kept you in this community and why? What would make you leave? Well, obviously not the game. Minecraft is great, and EMC is set up in a great way, with great plug-ins. But I'm not someone to play the same game for months. I tend to have periods of playing one certain game intensively, and then move on to another. Minecraft has longer periods for me than most other games, and keeps coming back (although the periods get shorter and shorter). What kept me here was the community. After being here for some months, I started to be able to really converse in English. I loved participating in threads, and created my own occasionally. And I got to know people, talked to them more often, and felt in place. And that's how it is still today. There are many, many people I miss seeing around, but there are also many people that I still see around. And of course, new people have since joined that make me happy to see them. Many people here aren't "just" people I like to see around either. I have real friends. Some people think you can't make real friends via internet, but I know you can, as I have friends I hadn't ever met IRL before getting friends with them. And while a game can get old a little and make you want to move on to another game, people stay interesting and fresh. So yeah, I think the correct answer is absolutely "the community" (now why did I have to use so many words for that? xD I just like writing, okay!). What would make me leave? Well, all of my friends leaving. But that won't happen any time in the slightly near future, I think. When I was still new here and Lasluin left, she was pretty much the only person I talked to. Nowadays I have so many people I could talk to, I won't even begin listing them Anything else? Well, I could get a forced leave by getting site-banned... but I don't see that happening But say I would get banned, by I-don't-know-what influencing me to do very stupid things involving EMC, I'm not sure if I would keep using these forums until getting unbanned. Surely, I could use OrangeDuck607... but that would seem very different. But I think that I'd definitely try to keep into contact with my better friends here, and eventually try to get back into EMC somehow, even if I'd get the nfell treatment. -} If you planned on leaving the community forever, what would you do before saying farewell? This is the last question, and not an easy one. Perhaps that's why I took a break of like a month If they are still there, I'd definitely try to get contact information of more people than I already have. There are certain people that I really want to be able to contact, asking how they're doing, in a few years. Friends I've made that I can't just leave and forget about. I don't think I'd make anything interesting in-game, or do something special with my residences. Perhaps I'd give my friends admin permissions on my residence, but that's it. All those promos I have? Well, I suppose they're vaulted forever. The saying farewell itself though, I would probably do extensively. If goodbye threads aren't disallowed by then, of course. Even if I'm having an emotional breakdown, I want to write about how much EMC has meant to me. I'd update my profile, too, to make it clear I've left. I'd keep following the people I'm doing then. Perhaps, I'd want my profile to be updated if I die in real life. I'm not sure, but to me there's a big difference between having left and being alive and having left this world entirely. So I think that even if I have already left this place for years, because EMC has been so important for me and I think I have meant something for EMC too, if I die I'd like someone to make a post about it on my profile. Wow. This post. Thank you, ForeverMaster, I think it was good to write this. Now it's your turn, don't you think? In two days it'll be my three years anniversary on EMC. ... and now I don't know what to say anymore. I'm probably done. Bye.
