I hadn't looked in several year, but this blog was started 14 years ago in May 2012. If you look at my introduction, you'll see I was looking for a way to play MMOs casually and I guess that is still true today. I started with the first Newbie Blogger initiative, initiated by Syp or Justin Olivetti of Massively and Bio Break. When I just went looking for the image above, Google first reference was at Tales of the Aggronaut from back in 2012 when Belghast posted about it. That seems meaningful in this year we are celebrating Belghast and Blaugust, Belghast's initiate to fill some of the role that the NBI played back in 2012-2013 among other goals when he started it in 2014. I started playing MMOs with the World of Warcraft beta, joined a guild, and was there for go live in 2004. I never was as dedicated as some players and my time went up and down over the years, including some full stops, but at one point I decided I wanted to find a way to play casually that made me comfortable and I thought there were likely other MMOs that would meet that need better than WoW. I tried Star Wars the Old Republic when it came out in 2011 but I didn't play it for long. In 2012, when NBI start, I decided to use this blog to get some recommendations and document that experiment. What I have come to accept is that, at least for me, MMOs require a larger intial investment and, since I already made my investment in WoW, it works better for me to play it even though it does require a subscription. Now I just use my blog as a periodic journal of what I'm playing and my reactions to it. I'm not sure when I started reading Bio Break and Tales of the Aggronaut and TAGN and Inventory Full but I am pretty sure I have read every post they have made over the last 14 since I started blogging. It is something I enjoy for a few minutes every day. It is a one sided relationship, with me reading their writings, but their thoughts have become part of my day-to-day life and now part of that is missing with Belghast's departure. Belghast would talk about how sometimes he would post without publishing about them. As someone who read every post through subscription, I read them all. I haven't been publishing my posts for a while since I'm not posting often and they are generally just for myself now, but I do think I'll publish this one as a tribute to what I have gained through reading these bloggers and lost with Mark's absense.