Alright, I'm usually not the type of guy to write things like these and was originally not planning to either, but as some of you may have already noticed I've stepped down. Since people came to me wondering why I stepped down I think this will be the most efficient way of letting everyone know instead of having to talk to everyone individually.
Unfortunately I've been lacking activity for a few months now, this is because of my holiday but as well because of an issue that recently occured which is my PC, it stopped working. I've replaced multiple parts with parts that I borrowed from friends to track down the issue but nothing resolved the problem so my PC is now officially declared dead. While some of you may now think, just buy a new one, it's not as simple as that. As we all grow older, I'm finally moving out of my parents' house (which feels weird, but being 24 I think it's time lol) and as you all can imagine that's going to be quite an investment, so buying a different PC is not one of my priorities right now - and most likely won't be for a while.
Aside from soon living on my own I want to continue my focus on travelling, it's something I love to do and want to keep doing - it has absolutely changed my life in a positive way. I think being hit by a car driving 40 m/h while being a pedestrian two years ago definitely changed my perspective on life and is also the main reason why I want to live life to the fullest, because it definitely opened up my eyes as you never know when it will end. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'll quit gaming overall, because gaming is still something I love to do and will do whenever I feel like it (preferably PC, but right now I'll use the PS4 until I have a new one) but it's definitely something I will do less in the future. I've been within this community for over 10+ years now (many years of which I administrated) and I don't regret any of the time that I've spent in this community. I can honestly say that I've met great people in this community (and still hope to do so) that I can definitely call my friends, I've seen a lot of people come and go and seen various changes in this community (higher up wise etc).
I can also say that this community helped me in my development, I've seen myself grow not only in this community but as a person too. When I joined this community I was at the age of 14 and was an absolute napalm addict. My English back then was pretty terrible as I'm originally from the Netherlands and while I'm still not very strong at English grammar I can definitely say a big improvement has been made. When I did my british-english exams on school my teacher noticed that I had an American accent and jokingly called me a 'filthy american' (although it was more a british exam, I still scored an A) so yeah, this community helped me more on my English than school did, thank you for that lol.
ZE: In September I've left for my holiday in California for a good month and returned back to the Netherlands at the beginning of October. As I got back from my holiday the first thing I noticed when logging back into steam and/or the website was the population drop in ZE, this honestly caught me by surprise and I was not really prepared for any of this, mainly because the server was doing so well before I left. It took myself and Black Rain quite a while to figure out what it is that caused this massive population drop, but eventually when we got a good understanding of the problems that ZE is facing, we decided to apply major changes to the server based on the feedback that was provided by our community members. While that definitely brought back some more interest again for some of you, the server unfortunately is still struggling population wise. I can only assume what the reason for that could be; school, new games (such as PUBG), people moving on the different communities or simply not interested in ZE as whole, however those are all assumptions because frankly I honestly don't know the actual answer to that question. I'd like to take a moment to thank all the ZE regs for sticking around, suggesting improvements for the server and helping ZE get back on it's feet - we are not there yet, but I'm positive that we can and will be with the current players and staff that we have in this community.
TTT: Never thought CSGO TTT would be as much of a success as it currently is. We as a community definitely made the right choice to give it a try and see how things will turn out. It developed it's own playerbase and brought great members to this community. I haven't been a CSGO TTT AO for too long but since TTT was my pretty much my baby in GMod I was absolutely honored to be given the chance for CSGO TTT as well.
AOs/BDs: It's been a pleasure working with you guys, not only the current staff but also the people who've stepped down. I'm absolutely grateful that I've been given the trust and chance to be an AO and I hope not to have dissapointed any of you. I know that we can't all like each other (simply for being in the same rank) and I'm not expecting everyone to like me either but in the end it's all of us together that need to keep this place running.
CAs: Thank you guys for helping us out moderate the forums, testing things for us on the servers, providing feedback for the community during meetings and being helpful overall. I definitely believe that you guys are a great asset to this community and each one of you are unique in their own way with their own qualities. There's a lot of potential for many of you, so as long as you guys and grills step up your game and show how much worthy you are you'll get there eventually.
TAs: You guys are amazing. The work you guys do is unfortunately not always noticed but I know that you guys work your asses off. All the work behind the scenes is incredible and we should be thankful for having you guys.
SAs: Thank you for keeping the servers clean from rule breakers, without you guys the servers would be absolutely chaotic and this community would probably not be where it is right now. Just know that we need you guys and appreciate your work!
Finally, thank you to all the members, subscribers and VIPs as well. You guys are the reason why this community is still here after 10+ years.
Again, this is not a goodbye - it's just that you will notice me less from now on. Thank you for reading.