For ARI

Dearest Guild that I Love so Much,

I am writing to inform you as to why I have stepped down as recruitment officer by my own volition, and to offer advice to this burgeoning guild moving forward.

It has been the honor of my gaming life to be recruitment officer for you. It’s something I truly enjoy doing, believe it or not. It’s fun for me to add new, stronger players to our family.

But now that we’re pretty much full and a completely different, stronger guild at nearly 1.8 billion influence than we were, with our top 5 future secured for a long time, I am taking a break from recruiting and will become more of a casual player.

It is my goal to play no more than an hour a day and only while multitasking something productive in real life such as riding the bike at the gym, waiting for a food delivery that will make me money, or taking a shit that will cleanse demons from my body. I will try to be on for important events like Guild Boss and Ancient Battlefield to use my hour in a way that most benefits the guild.

I enjoyed the game and this guild and alliance so much that it was messing with my relationship with my fiance who I am trying to start a family with. Everything that wasn’t the dopamine frontal lobe satisfaction of the game was becoming a frustrating distraction from it.

It’s also important that I stop spending money on the game as that was affecting my life financially. I am working class and have lost two important jobs over the last year. So I am in between jobs and the game has been distracting me from the reality that I need to reinvent myself once more.

I have dealt with video game addiction most of my life. My parents used Nintendo as my babysitter and put me in front of it and left me alone. At one point I would become highly addicted to online PC gaming in my twenties and wasted a lot of the best part of my life there.

As I quit and recovered and as a born again Christian I would live by the mantra of “Idle Hands are the Devil’s Workshop.” And then here I was playing these more advanced cell phone games again. The people who make these games are part of an evil, fascist corporate infrastructure that pervades the entire world who distract us from revolting against our financial enslavers and an unfair system with anything that takes our time and money. You see in the dice game how a 666 gets you the best prize? They blatantly throw in clues and hints - often in the gaming company names - that they have all sold their soul to the evil one. But that’s a long story…

If I could give some advice to anyone who might be over indulging in the game it would be to set a timer on the game with a password that someone else knows to force yourself to limit your time on it. You can Google how to do that on your respective phone or device etc. I would also say, evening and morning rituals are important.

Don’t make the game the last thing you do before you go to bed or the first thing you do in the morning. If you do, it has become your religion. If it’s the last thing you’re doing before you fall asleep it will be the first thing on your mind in the morning. I recommend showering before bed, getting clothes ready for the gym or the day ahead, reading, journaling and praying for a half hour to an hour. In the morning I recommend waking up as close to sunrise as possible, and first going outside, grounding your feet to the earth while facing the sun, doing deep breathing meditation and simply focus on your breath and stillness, nothing else. This is mind training that will lead to you having control over your own mind again. Then I recommend exercise, perhaps yoga, tai chi or otherwise to respond to what your body needs from you as the mind and body are so connected. It will also get your blood flowing and ready to do whatever creative works you received in meditation.

I used to do all this and began a spiritual journey that I want to write books about. That’s why I’m becoming a casual player. I need to finish the novels, songs and more I have inside of me. My music as a songwriter is really my passion and joy. And losing the jobs I did broke the final straw that led me to losing that joy.

Never let anything take your shine and joy, but sometimes, when the world sees that you are a beacon of light, dark forces will knock you down enough to do just that. When the evil one sees you have chosen to work for Christ and Love itself, and you do so effectively, you can be attacked so much it begins to feel like your life is cursed.

But you have to keep fighting.

And that’s what I want this guild to do. I am so thrilled we are now full of good players I cannot tell you how much I put into making this happen. And everything I ever did was for this guild and our alliance.

Most games are ruined by whales now. When I was a kid, you got hit by one bullet in Contra, you died. You had to get good, sometimes to a psychotic level of hand-eye coordination that no child should have. So it bothered me to see this trend in gaming where all they want is your money.

Then I was heartened to see we were in this multi-guild alliance, where entire other guilds had our back against the whales. That was such a unique aspect of the game that I truly appreciated and kept me interested. I would notice during cross-server guild events like Arms Race, that we were getting matched with guilds who have whales and despite our top players keeping up with them without being whales, we would lose because our bottom players did not even participate.

So it became my obsessive goal to lose the scrubs and gain the pros. And as soon as I was given the reigns as recruitment officer I did just that.

First of all, when I started we were close to PIE in influence at around 1 billion each. So the #1 propriety was to secure the 5 spot for the level 5 ruin for us and the alliance that PIE was not in at the time.

I did so through daily ads, and even more importantly, individual messages to people on the server that matched a certain standard. We’re talking about messaging any and everyone that was eligible to be received by us on the server. Not once. Once a week. Then I would respond to messages as they came in. I was also obsessed with guild mergers and kept up with small guild leaders about bringing their best into our guild. The merger of Lechia into the guild was an early success there.

Eventually, you realize there are only so many players on the server and most are somewhere they want to stay. So progress comes to a halt. I was truly hoping and praying that medium sized guilds like LAT or JPN would merge into us and that would give us the new group of strong players we were looking for. If you saw the detailed merger proposal that I wrote up in 8 messages (because text in game is limited per message) and sent to every high level member of LAT it would make your head spin.

But they respected how much I passionately tried to get them to merge and considered it for a week or so. Then they finally decided not to merge but we built a friendship and respect, and opted for an alliance instead.

I will at some point make a group chat with their leader and JPNs leaders that we also have an alliance with, in case we ever need to call for backup. I would ask we also defend them as well.

In the aftermath of this, I remember realizing that my goals as a recruitment officer to make this guild stronger and “complete,” were becoming obsessive and affecting my personal life. During this time I prayed for a solution that would release me from this to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Then the KRI collapse happened. And I am still not sure why it happened other than “a series of unforeseen dominoes fell in succession.” But here we had the #1 guild on the server steadily falling to now the #11 spot or so.

I was never anything but supportive of KRI when players like Drew or other small guild leaders made negative comments about their leadership. I was thankful players from their guild not only would save us from whales attacking us but help us accomplish massive server vs. server achievements like taking the Royal Castle or World Tree.

The whole game leads up to castle warfare and these great battles that I highly recommend anyone reading this get involved in because they are extremely fun to be a part of. On a side note - and not to prop up my ego - but I was the first one to suggest after losing our Royal Castle awhile back, that we assign each guild in the alliance to a given tower on the next attack and helped in a group called SIC led by Drew to push them to figure out a plan that eventually worked. Guilds like One and Toz helped more than QRI at the time but I mention this to illustrate the growing sense of teamwork that was building up on our server and the real results that were coming from it.

So KRI falls and I do nothing for several days as the chips fall where they may. I wanted to mention that One somehow passed KRI on the Guild List prior to their downfall. All I know from the recruitment guy in One who made that happen is that he was “working very hard.” I’m pretty sure he literally messaged everyone on the server, so if I am ever criticized know there are other recruitment officers who have done worse. And what he offered in those messages I have no idea. Finally, if you think recruitment doesn’t matter, look what happened the day One passed KRI In influence. The next day they are handed the World Tree, no questions asked. I believe KRI legitimately believed they would just take it “temporarily…”

Now I don’t know much about One. But the entire time we are in the RIP alliance that I promoted so much, I am thinking we are basically all one guild and stronger than any single guild. I actually suggested to family leaders that we make a statement that even though you have gained the #1 spot, we are stronger than you as an alliance and you don’t just get the World Tree. Even if it led to war because we would have easily won.

It just felt like something that should be earned, or else join our alliance. Ideally, you want every guild in the server to be in alliance with each other. I understand we don’t want to waste all our resources battling for it but the idea that it would be handed over “temporarily,” was a mistake.

As soon as One got the World Tree, key whales who only care about status flocked to their guild to continue full growth and benefits at the highest level. Maybe they didn’t like KRI leadership and that’s fine. Maybe some KRI loyal to the alliance went to WRI.

So the chips fell where they may and suddenly KRI was half its size. Days had passed and suddenly ARI was #4 on their server and the only guild with any real room.

I worked hard to make room for those who woke up with half a guild. In my mind we were still in an alliance with KRI and always will be. I got a message from someone in KRI who said he goes to do a basic rally and no one is online to join it.

I commend the guild for completing the Greater Guild trait to open us up to 95 possible players as quickly as we did. This newfound space made me consider getting KRI, now UNI to merge into us.

So I spoke with Fairy, who had taken up the difficult job of trying to rebuild a dying guild, which is completely commendable, but in the end she didn’t want to merge.

In the end it’s good because I received word a lot of the players left in the guild are alts or inactive anyway. So that’s not what you want in a guild. You don’t want to be top heavy with whales who may or may not make leadership decisions but actually hold all the power, might not have loyalty, and have infinite money to go use on another guild.

During the time trying to get KRI to merge I got WRI and family leaders involved to try to see what they thought. After a passionate plea, Fairy not only said I write too much - she’s clearly right - but also that maybe we should merge into KRI.

This felt disrespectful to ARI and simply not the way gaming works. Later, in family leader chat, Ami from PIE questioned my allegiance to our alliance by saying I tried to recruit her players when they were in alliance with us.

Now keep in mind, at this point, PIE is the newest large guild in the RIP alliance. When they joined they changed their name to PRI, as was customary to do. To me this means something when you’re willing to change your name to show how strongly you believe in the alliance. But when you change your name, people get confused and there’s going to be some mythic carriage attacks. Let’s say there were a few against them. Instead of dealing with each attack, getting compensation and communicating regularly to the server about the name change until people got it, she decided to change the name back to PIE after only being PRI a few days. The day that happened I thought they left the alliance and messaged really only three players about recruitment. The rest are Vietnamese players. And you’re not going to get Vietnamese players to leave an all Vietnamese guild, nor French players to leave an all French guild (FRA), nor Italian players to leave an all Italian guild (ITA). Don’t even waste your time with them. Particularly FRA. They find your DMs rude. But any time I messaged anyone, the secret to not getting another message each week was to simply respond and say you weren’t interested. As soon as I got a response from you I stopped bothering you, otherwise it’s a numbers game and I have spots to fill. Try dating in New York City where I lived for ten years and not asking out 25 women just to get one date. It’s a numbers game.

But Ami doing this erratic name change back to PIE rather than playing the long game of dealing with attacks and communicating about the name change was the start of me questioning her leadership. And you can do whatever you want with your guild but I prefer to be in the beautiful collection of people in ARI from all around the globe. To each their own.

But her accusation led to once again asking for a merger from KRI/UNI into ARI where I said I will not message one person for a year if we just get this done. That’s when another person, this time Dark Path from WRI also suggested ARI merge into KRI/UNI so now it was twice I felt ARI was disrespected.

Then it was unearthed by Dario in WRI that they want to preserve the traits tree in KRI/Uni that some whales pumped a ton of diamond money to create that he described as “by far further along than any guild on this server.”

I immediately stuck up for ARI saying, “Well, where are those whales now that pumped so much money into that? Are they in KRI/UNI?” No, they’re not. So if they don’t care about it, why do we? I asked to know how much further along theirs is than ARIs and never got that info. I said we could easily catch up to them over time.

Days later, a member of ARI who was in KRI said our guild traits tree was much further along than KRIs. I never got Fairy to send me screenshots of theirs so I dont have proof of this but if it’s true, it proves that slow and steady wins the race. It proves activity is everything. I told them when Family leaders mentioned this that this is why we have loyalty in ARI. Instead of being spoiled by some whales, we have worked hard on the traits trees over time. It’s part of why I never left ARI when I got offered and never will leave ARI because I had contributed so much. Every time I’m on the traits tree I don’t even think about also hitting the 10 diamond button, the “no don’t ask me again today” button, and then the 100 diamond button. If I win a lot of diamonds and we are close to completing something a trait I will hit that thousand button. It all gives guild points. Take this example to heart.

By the way, someone talk to Eboli who joined recently and doesn’t even have 10m influence total but somehow passed me on the overall contributions ranking?! That’s so commendable because I don’t think he’s a whale because his influence is so low. We might want to get him to put more into himself than our guild and it’s such a blessing to have people in your guild like that where that’s even an issue you have to work out!

So the day after realizing the merger isn’t happening, I’m cleaning my entire house because we rescued a cat that has fleas, we thought we got rid of them, we didn’t, and now we’re going to fight this battle holistically (without flea bombing) and it’s going to possibly take months. So I lift up this couch cushion to vacuum under it and find my fiancés engagement ring she had been missing since December. We thought we lost it when she was in a wheelchair after breaking her leg in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene that befell us here. It’s been a rough year.

This happened while REM’s “Great Beyond” played in the background, where Stipe sings “I’m looking for answers from the Great Beyond.” Keep in mind I was praying for something to end this recruitment obsession and we were also trying to start a family. We are getting older and at that moment we even thought she might be done even being able to get pregnant. She swears we both looked in the couch so for it to appear was some kind to magic. The ring itself is a custom ring I designed using a jeweler in NYC who does 3D Modeling to do such things. It uses an upper case L shape in gold over a black opal that is this perfect stone, blue green in color that changes many colors in the light. It’s loosely based on the Blue Ring In the original Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo that was my babysitter, and to me magically wrapped her in the Holy Armor of the Love that is God…

So anyway, we took it as a sign we were meant to find the ring at that time, she took a test and it turned out she was ovulating. So we may have also created a child that day, we’ll see. This all led to me not caring about the merger anymore and starting to realign my brain back to the love I have for her and connection with that Great Beyond.

I also knew we are the #4 guild on the server and had open spots so we were going to fill up no matter what. We also have a great reputation and rightfully so. We gained one great new player Reenatsu because his former KRI guildmate Nori - now in WRI and known as one of the strongest players on the server - suggested it as a good place to go and we’re so thankful for that.

So then we did fill up. After a little lull we got five new members yesterday and I knew we would be full by the end of the night.

By the way, we got the 30m LadyBeck who was trying to run her guild BUN but we have to take away the 10m requirement away to get her new player husband BentBeck in as part of that deal. Thats very important. You don’t want to lose 30m players who you can tell are good people. Sin from UNI might also still join and she’s also good people, so keep a spot or make room for her also if she does want to.

You have to understand as recruitment officer part of my job is judging the character of people. You want to improve your guild, not make it worse. The same is to be said for your alliance.

And that leads me to yesterday. I had decided in the beginning of the day yesterday that we would be full by the end of the night and I would be announcing that I’m going to be a more casual player, use less money and just enjoy being a part of what is now an unbelievably strong and active guild, that will be for a long time to come.

It’s funny how the Love that is God works though. See, Love itself knew my plan as part of what was not just a prayer, but a promise, as I begged for relief from this obsession. I promised to take this break from the game I’ll be taking now. And it’s proof that the Love that is God exists with the unforeseen downfall of KRI leading to my prayer being answered.

So before it could all be complete, as I’m out there doing deliveries for that rent and daily top-up money, I get a message from Blood, the leader of LAT, about logging on and finding one his guilds ruins taken without warning to him.

I had gone from trying to get KRI/UNI to merge into us to trying to get LAT to merge into them with the promise of a stronger guild traits tree as the asset that might make them do it. This was after a WRI leader suggested them specifically as a guild that would be ideal to merge into KRI.

I had formed an alliance between LAT and ARI so I suggested it to them. Though they did not yet respond to that, here was this leader messaging me about having his ruin taken because I had built TRUST with them and respected them as really one of the strongest medium guilds, doing more with less people than most. The alliance led to LAT being there with three members (due to short notice of a confirmed set arrival time by our RIP alliance leaders) on the World Tree battlefield that we were able to win in what was a close battle. This was about the same amount of castles I was able to find from PIE (PRI) at the time present at that battle.

Personally I took 53 battles on, using an entire Arms Race worth of speedups on healing as many soldiers as possible over and over to simply be able to take more hits or do more damage. I ended up with about an even split of 25 wins 25 losses. The green potions helped recover a lot which is why I encourage you to participate in these epic battles the entire game leads up to, but just use healing speed ups not universal ones. I still lost thousands of troops that I won’t get back though, that would’ve led to medals as an upgrade that other selfish players on our server would rather have than helping in a group effort that gets every single player on the server more rewards.

So yesterday, Blood, whose guild comes on late near reset, comes on and wants to know why Fairy from UNI took his ruin without warning. He shows me a screenshot showing she tried to communicate with him about it but it proved she went ahead before he responded.

It turns out this isn’t her fault though. She is also good people and she’s taking on a lot trying to salvage her guild, which at this moment is #11 over LATs #12.

I’m doing deliveries last night and all of a sudden Barney from Toz is messaging me saying I have to release a lv4 ruin and take a different one and they want to do theirs at the same time to not lose points. This is because PIE rushed into moving theirs around and it was very unexpected at a time when ARI doesn’t have a lot of people online. We also had to wait to reset anyway, because we made a previous ruin change in the last 24 hours. If PIE had communicated they would’ve learned this. This was all part of moving ruins around in the downfall of KRI/Uni.

So I’m driving and working and thinking of trying to pull this off but I don’t wanna make the wrong move and I want to double check everything so I’m giving it some time. I did ask Barney, “Is this something where PIE Is going to be mad if we take too long?” and he said maybe in a few hours Ami might say something in world chat. So I sent a message on our Discord, and I’m not sure if that made Deneb come online but he did and took care of everything because he’s a great leader, the reason I’ve done all I have for this guild and you should be thankful for him.

So I ask in the family leader chat about LATs ruin being taken and Fairy says that even though she hadn’t heard back from Blood, she was told by Ami had that Ami had talked to him and it would be fine. She posted a screenshot showing this.

But Ami had not talked to him. She was just rushing and she lied. He showed me a screenshot where he had talked to Ami about carriage attacks, but not this ruin being taken. So I mention all this in family leader chat because no guild deserves to just have their ruin taken. The leaders began to say that I need handle things differently and more diplomatically, but as I told them multiple times, the only thing that makes an alliance an alliance at all is TRUST. And if you can’t trust someone, they shouldn’t be in your alliance. And the only statement I made that was at all subjective was that “Ami cannot be trusted.”

Plus, you pissed off LAT that is your best hope for a guild to merge into UNI - which they probably won’t do, but still, it was an effort we were working on for the benefit of the alliance. LAT is also upset by carriage attacks from GOD and TOZ by the way. So theyre not happy with our server right now and these things cause wars to break out, which we don’t want.

Ami soon came on while I was working and couldn’t respond only to say, “This is too much,” and she left the family leader chat. Another immature and erratic decision. When I came on I stuck by my decision because with all that’s going on, I felt this was meant to happen on the last day I’m a recruitment officer as a warning to this alliance about her.

I got so much criticism about how I handled it from WRI rather than what I expected to happen, which would be criticizing Ami. So there is a softness with them when there should be a toughness. Half the game is toughness, half the game is softness. If you have a soft alliance, it will crumble faster than KRI did. If you have one bad apple it spoils the bunch. If you have one person leading erratically who you can’t trust, and you don’t tell her she needs to change, then you cannot trust anyone.

They are new to our alliance also. They also got Ruin levels 4,4,3,2 all season, when we had 5,4,3,2. So her selfishness seems like the reason we were the only top 5 guild without two level 4 ruins all season.

I know I did nothing wrong and stand by everything I did and said the last week in the Family Leader chat I am no longer in, because I believe it brought more of the respect to ARI that we deserve.

And they said PIE has helped with all these things and all these disputes. The goal is not having disputes. We don’t want to waste our time because you attacked a carriage you’re supposed to. So I said tell me what she’s done to be so helpful because I’m not seeing it. I was never given that information that might change my opinion about her.

This is more than two passionate players butting heads. This is about character. And I believe everyone can evolve and change for the better. This game has actually taught me lessons in that regard in terms of how to deal with people internationally in particular. My father was into HAM radio and talking to people around the world and I have relished in the chance to do so as well through this game.

I simply question if Ami’s character lines up with the virtues of our alliance. Where she seems immature, selfish and irresponsible, our leader Deneb is mature, unselfish and a responsible adult. When you’re used to this all the time and a leader of a guild joins your alliance with the opposite it is natural to react how I did.

I want ARI to go on with the virtues Deneb and others have set. Laughter, Slaughter, Quarter was a motto I jokingly set for the guild - “quarter” meaning mercy. I see ARI as a working class guild that became upper middle class and I’m so proud of being a part of that. At no time in my gaming life have I been in such a great group from all around the world, nor a unique situation where you are both a social guild that helps each other and doesn’t take the game too seriously, and also an elite guild with all the benefits and strength that come with being so.

Remain that social democracy rather than a dictatorship. This is what makes you the greatest guild in the world. Greatness is not about being #1. It’s about being unable to be ignored and also how many people you have affected emotionally. So the more fun you’re having, the better. Make the top guilds jealous that you’re having more fun. Remember what I always said, “You will never be the strongest player in the world, but you CAN be in the strongest guild in the world.”

Because you have more active players than other guilds you should reach 2 billion in no time and maybe even pass the guild above you. It doesn’t matter, and being #1 isn’t necessarily a good thing as we saw with KRI. What matters is that you fill every member of your ranks with people who are professional, communicative, unselfish, active, fun and trustworthy.

The recruitment process is never over until this is complete. Though I am happy to now leave you in a situation where you can recruit one new all-star at a time. You can require each new player to have 20m influence now if you want to, to replace a low inactive player who doesn’t communicate. You want to get rid of those players simply taking up space and filling up your influence that KRI had so many of. We have many factors we take into account when removing people.

But you should communicate with people you are thinking of removing and see if they have a desire to play more or get stronger. You should help all those you have with their queues as much as possible as well as give advice on how to play F2P better etc. Not every player has the knowledge or resources you do. This will further limit how much you have to recruit.

But otherwise, I would put up one world chat ad calling for one player at a time - to denote exclusivity - at reset time, and maybe one at 12:00 the next day.

Players will continue to want to join you, so you want to remain on top of keeping one spot open for potential applications. If you need help with who to get rid of as you go I can help.

It’s not about beating the next guild boss tomorrow. It’s not about rushing. It’s about being a part of a journey with a great group of people over time. Life is a journey, not a destination. So make the journey great.

I am so excited for both the new chapter in my life to begin and the new chapter in the guild to start with all these great new players.

I write all this to break the spell I was under in the name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

All I ask is that you make me an Honorary Member of the guild who can never be removed. For all I have contributed to it. If I take a a week-long screen time hiatus, you keep me in the guild. I will still be here playing casually, don’t worry. I clearly love this game and everyone in this guild very much.

Remember that Love is real. That you are all Love. And may Love be with you, always.

But remember that you can never have Love without TRUST.

Now someone tell Pantera to talk a little less in Guild Chat.

Love,

Silver Baxe

The Vanilla Gorilla

🦍