All my fishing gear is packed and it’s almost dawn. Time to head out to the fishing hole, but I couldn’t resist one last post to tie up a few loose ends.

First of all, the response to my last post has been personally overwhelming to me. So many supportive comments, and just knowing there are people who’ve been reading this blog. I know, that’s silly..I see the page stats and I know how many page views a post gets, but putting names on those numbers…that was pretty special. Thank you all for taking the time to comment and for all the kind words. I had no idea you were all out there. I feel truly honored that you’d take time out of your day to read this silly blog.

Second of all, I wanted to elaborate a bit on something I said. I was talking to someone whom I’ve locked horns with in the past today, and he said (and I paraphrase) “I hope I wasn’t one of the arrogant assholes that caused you to make this decision.” (He wasn’t, btw. Not in the least.) But I felt bad. I didn’t mean to call anyone an asshole. I said many bloggers are pompous, pig-headed and arrogant. I do still believe that, insofar as games are concerned. And I do very much include myself in that description. But not all bloggers, and most of us who are pompous, pig-headed & arrogant kind of phase in and out of this mind-state; we have our good days and our “Clearly I’m an expert in everything related to games” days. At least I know I have those days.

Third and last, I was (and this is probably obvious) really angry when I wrote that post last night. I’d had an all-day argument with another blogger (who was being EXTREMELY pp&a), and the frustration I was feeling at his — hell, I don’t know what he was doing; whether he was dense or just trying to spin me up (Angela looked at the comment thread and to her it just seemed like he was getting a kick out of frustrating me…it was her who finally talked me off the ledge — suffice to say that’s a blog I’ll never visit again) — whatever he was doing, it combined with my frustration at the Cryptic situation to just push me over the top. You might be surprised to learn that I actually dislike arguing. I know, I do it an awful lot for someone who dislikes it. I find the act of arguing to be personally destructive but justice is worth personal sacrifice to me. I’m pretty old school in that way. Anyway, I’m getting off-message and you don’t need any more convincing that I’m a bit off-kilter. The point I’m trying to get to is that I’d like to apologize for the acerbic tone of that last post. The tone was uncalled for even if the feelings in it were genuine.

Anyway, another wall of text. Thanks again for all the support. I’m pretty confident now that this is “So long for now” and not “Goodbye.” I need to find my inner Stargrace and learn to focus on the joy I’m taking away from the games I’m playing, and learn to focus my posts more on the positive aspects of games & gaming — it’s such a wonderful hobby and such an amazing time to be a gamer and there’s way too much negativity coming from the general press. I need to stop adding to the negativity, for my own sake. I also need, very, VERY badly, to stop taking things so seriously; they’re just games. (This rather obvious fact had to be pointed out to me by a few other bloggers today.)

I’ll be playing Champions Online, now that Cryptic re-opened their special deals (kudos to them for doing the right thing). And I’ll be hanging out on twitter at @pasmith — and I hope you’ll all still be around when Dragonchasers re-opens with a bright, shiny positive attitude… OK OK who am I kidding… with a moderately less snarky attitude!

I’m turning off comments on this post because I’ll never get out of here otherwise… it’s too easy to get caught up in talking to you fine people.

I’ll bring you all back some fresh trout.