Hey all!
Not sure when someone will see this, but I typed in the letter "P" in my browser bar and looked away for a second to grab something, and when I turned back the first suggestion that Firefox was proposing was this site! Just goes to show that taking a moment every now and then can be rewarding in unexpected ways!
Unrelatedly, I had taken a moment a few days ago (while I'm on break) to reflect on things that I've spent time on and invested in over my adult life, and I didn't get too far into that process before I thought of SWTOR and Pax Republica. It's been a couple years since I've spent any real substantial time playing the game, but from launch through 2016 or so it was probably the thing outside of my various work gigs that I spent the greatest number of hours on. Even outside of the game itself, the time spent planning, theorycrafting, researching, and just agonizing over whatever form of incremental progress happened to be available.
I dearly treasure the time that I spent with all of you - from Nwahs and Celick taking a chance on a very green sage without any real raiding experience through many many many nights with our good friend Kephess in all of his various forms. It's because of all of you here that I really ended up spending so much time in the game over the years, which made it feel more like an investment than anything else. Without Satiata, Soulless, Mazi, Tasty, Swishiest, Blasthardcheese, Dordrac, Emp, Fossh, Frost, Gluefoot, Kayllek, Bantha, Wylan, Polish, Pretz, Scuba, Tiffs, Waars... I'm sure that I'm forgetting people... it just wouldn't have been the same at all.
It's just like I tell my own students (I'm still teaching, although I moved to the Austin, TX area a year and a half ago): the journey is its own reward, and the true treasure is the people that you share your struggles and overcoming them with along the way. I'd like to think that I was a halfway-decent healer or tank, that as a raid leader I helped a few new people to fall in love with raiding just as I had in my turn, but that pales in comparison to just recognizing that, even if it were 3 in the morning and we'd been at something for hours without any tangible progress, we were all there for each other as much as for the pixels and lightsabers and command crates and all such.
And to think, it all started with a advertisement on fleet chat to help people get the fleet +10 datacrons ("back in my day, datacrons didn't unlock legacy-wide! We had to clamber through ventilation ducts on the fleet, uphill both ways through miles of snow and architecturally-dubious bottomless pits...")
Anywho, I've gone on too long here. If you've made it this far, my deepest thanks for whatever part you played in making me and others feel welcome and appreciated. Keep fighting the good fight.
-SCP