Well as a handful of you know, my raiding time is coming to an end on May 9th aka (May 10th 11:44 AM).

I will start off by saying that none of this has to do with family or job related issues what so ever.  Over the last few months I have been putting a lot of thought into my life and how I need to organize it.  At the moment I own my own successful business and I get the luxury of working from home and hardly leave the house.  I also raid 5 nights a week, meaning I almost never leave the house at all.  I am constantly making excuses to family that I have stuff I need to do tonight, sorry I can't stay for dinner.  My wife and I have not gone to the movies or out to a nice restaurant in quite a while and I really miss that.  Like I said earlier none of this has made my family or my wife mad, they know what I am doing and they know I won't do it forever.

Personally I need to retire from WoW.  I have stopped enjoying raiding and feel as if the game is more of a job than a game to play and relax.  I do like playing with you all though, that is still fun and I am really going to miss the humorous conversations in Ventrilo.  These feelings I have do not have anything to do with anyone in the guild.  To be completely honest, this has been the best, most friendly and helpful guild I have ever been in with one of the greatest and cohesive online communities I have ever seen.  I truly do not hate anyone in guild which is actually a rare thing in most guilds these days; there is always some sort of ridiculous drama.  In Downfall though, I have not really witnesses much or any at all, which makes the guild life in Downfall the way it is.

Basically what I feel I need in life again is more flexibility and freedom to be able to do what I need to and what I want to do at any random time during the day, a lot of that falls on raid times for me.  I want to accept my parent’s invitation to dinner; I want to take my wife to a movie or to dinner at the spur of the moment just to get out of the house.  I need to focus more on spending some quality time with my son, most of the times I have him to myself is during raid and I feel bad for letting him sit and play behind me alone instead of me playing with him.

I am also 5.5 months away from completing a piece of software that will compete with Microsoft Team Suite, which in simple terms in a time tracking, bug tracking, feature tracking, customer portal, etc. piece of software that is directed at developers to help the "team" know who is doing what and what needs to be done or fixed and track their time against it.  It will also give their client a portal to look at their project, what is going on, what phase it is on and how many hours have been spent on it etc.

At the least, I am spending 20 hours a week playing WoW and as you can see I have a lot of priorities that I have that I really want to complete and maintain.  20 hours a week is a part time job alone, not saying I did not have fun, but I am taking a different look at life and grasping what I think is more important.  With these 20 extra hours a week I feel that I can spend my time better accomplishing real life endeavors and be able to get out more.

All and all I will miss every one of you.  I will come to the forums as much as possible and keep in touch and give updates as to how I am doing or just shoot the shit.  I truly apologize for putting you in a situation to have to replace me, I know it is hard to find ranged DPS, but as I said to some of the officers I will be here until you replace me up till May 9th.  If you don't invite me to raid it is ok, give the gear to the guy that is going to keep playing that is the fair and right thing to do.  If I do go to raid I will not be taking anymore gear either, as I would not feel it is right for me to take gear from those who will keep using it.

Well I have most likely rambled some and sorry for the long post.  If you want to keep in touch in more ways than just the site send me a PM on the site and we can exchange information.  I posted this on my birthday and it makes me sad :(.

Sincerely,

Knoppix

P.S This is not a break from WoW, I will not be returning anytime soon if at all, most likely the later.