I wrote this for Jenred and Arcaea, but I am pausing all the rest of my characters as well for the same reason. RP will follow.
Heya all. This is something I have been considering for a few months, but postponed because I thought this period in my life with such a drastic reduction in free time would be over at the end of February, and I would be able to dive back in like before. Unfortunately, discussions in the past few days suggest that will just not be the case, and in the best scenario I'm looking at a few more months, possibly as much as another half a year, before I can devote the time and energy Jenred's current positions need to be discharged effectively. My ability to do so over the past few months has, as many have noted to some extent or another (I'm not referring to the current round of protests, that's a separate issue, and one I'd ordinarily love playing out, such a change from the usual lockstep behind him, hehe) has decreased notably, to the point where I was missing letters I should have seen, misreading letters I should have read thoroughly, and making decisions based on that mistaken information.
I promised myself when I took the Rulership that I would never be one of those people who held on to a position I couldn't play properly. I've seen it happen far too many times, and it ruins a large portion of the game. I gave myself some wiggle room because I thought this was very temporary, and we have been so close to fulfilling various plans Jenred has been working toward for, in some cases, three RL years.
That time is now out. So, I will be writing a short RP explaining what is happening to Jenred, and then pausing. I am pausing, because I know full well that if I just tried to step back, it wouldn't work. Everyone would talk to Jenred anyway, and I'd get drawn back in.
That said, I do expect this to be a pause, not a slide to auto-deletion. Once I get various things in RL taken care of, I fully intend to jump back in to Battlemaster (and will probably hop on the forums every so often as well).
Thank you to everyone, it's been a blast, and I'm very much looking forward to have the time to devote to Battlemaster again. If you need to get ahold of me, shoot me a PM via the forums, I have it set up to shoot me an e-mail so I'll certainly see it. May take me up to a week to respond (for the reasons why I'm pausing), but I'll get to it.
Please not, as this is worth repeating...This has nothing to do with the current protests. Ordinarily I'd enjoy that, as it's been far too long since Jenred has had any serious internal dissension. But...When I logged in and say almost two hundred messages, I nearly had a heart attack, worrying about how long it would take to answer all of them and whether I would be able to get more than six hours of sleep tonight because of that...And I just can't do that anymore.
So, have fun, please try not to blow up Arcaea (shaped charges and planned demolition notwithstanding, hehe), and I'll be interested to see how things go.
