Hey friends,

Many of you have used MOBAFire blogs in the past to share a personal story, talk about goals they wanted to achieve in life and, in some cases, how League (or gaming in general) has stopped them from doing what they really should be doing. Today, it's my turn.

Those of you who know me well probably know that I've studied Game Technology at the Utrecht University for almost four years now, a study which should normally only take three years to complete. One would expect me to be close to being done by now, but I'm afraid the truth is far from it. In fact, the reality of the matter is that after four years I'm only getting close to passing the amount of courses a "normal student" would pass in roughly half the amount of time.

Though there are many reasons I could think of which have led to this happening, ultimately the harsh reality is that I simply haven't done enough for far too long now, I haven't taken my responsibilities and/or shown the level of discipline one would expect a 24 year old student to have.

Because both of my parents know very little about computers and gaming, it was somewhat easy for me to tell them things were going ok and confuse them with fancy words whenever they pressed the issue. Even worse, I stubbornly convinced myself that everything was ok, too. After all, there really was no reason for me to be failing, so "one day everything will fix itself", "one day it'll pass", right?

In reality, I spent more and more time avoiding the problem by focusing on areas of my life which brought me joy / which I was proud of, areas in which I knew I was appreciated, such as my work here on MOBAFire. The longer this went on and the more I kept all university-related issues I was facing to myself, the more I slowly descended down a downward spiral with no way out. I realised of course that at some point my "luck" would run out, but as much as I tried I couldn't force myself to have the conversation I knew one day would come.

Today is that day. I suppose it should go without saying my parents are disappointed and mad at me for not telling them sooner - after all, I blatantly abused the trust they placed in me, and they don't deserve that. However, they were also supportive, and assured me they will do whatever they can to help me out.

Having that conversation was a big first step in the right direction for me, as I can honestly say it already feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. However, I also know that alone won't be enough, which is why mere minutes ago I followed that up with another measure of my own. As much as I'd like to deny it, I've spent way too much time gaming in the past four years, and I can't allow myself to keep doing that while also trying to balance time to study, work and play table tennis (competitively).

That, of course, leads me to the announcement you've all been waiting for: after five and a half years of playing, I've once and for all uninstalled League of Legends.

I know this may come as a surprise to some of you and I'm sorry to those who were looking forward to seeing me feed on the Rift, but trust me when I say I needed to do this in order to move forward. As for my work on the site / across the network, I had already discussed plans with Mowen which should see me move to a more general, network-wide role within the MFN team, while Psiguard will be the main admin for you guys to talk to whenever there are issues. As such, this decision won't influence my work rate / level of activity on MF one bit, I'll still be lurking around and helping out whenever necessary :)

Finally, a quick thanks to everyone I've had the pleasure of playing with over the years, hope you guys won't miss me too much. also enjoy dynamic queue :^)