Love letter to myself

This thread doesn't really have a point to make, I just felt like writing out some thoughts I'd had.

I've been playing this game since Season 2 and have at one point or another "mained" every major role. There were even times where I would exclusively play unconventional stuff like double jungle or kill lane bot but those never lasted very long.

To be frank I was a terrible player when I started. The closest thing I had to compare to League was 12 years of StarCraft and a little bit of tinkering in WarCraft 3. The items were overwhelming, AD and AP meant nothing to me, and every game I was faced with new OP champs who were nothing like the last few I'd seen.

I was pretty ready to give up early on, but I was younger than I am now with disposable income so I figured I'd buy a champ since it made sense that only the weak champions would be available for free. I distinctly remember going through the shop and looking at all the champ art. Some of them looked boring, others looked kind of interesting and eventually I made my way to near the bottom of the list. There I saw a picture of a grey girl holding a ball of flame with a dragon behind her. Stemming from a childhood love of dragons, I decided this would be the champion for me.

I bought her and picked up a skin for her, loaded up a game of 3v3 and took her to top lane. In short I crushed that game. I was unkillable. Everything I was bad at doing (farming, harassing) Shyv did with ease, no matter what items I bought on her. All I had to do was press W and right click on my enemies. But that would of been boring if that was it. No, the thing that made me fall in love with Shyv (the thing that kept me coming back to League in the beginning) was that first time I put a point into my ult and just pressed it to see what would happen.

Holy shit, I thought, I am playing a friggin dragon. It was incredible, I felt like I had gone super saiyan. I was doing more damage, taking more damage, felt like I was going faster, everyone would immediately run away when I turned into a dragon and I would chase them down. It is to this day, the closest any video game has come to making me understand the term "power fantasy".

Even still I consider myself a Shyv main, despite not playing her as much. Looking back on it all, there are a lot of things about this game I have enjoyed, but almost nothing comes even close to the elation I felt in those first few months whenever I would turn into a dragon.

The only two things I would consider even worthy of notice was those first few weeks of landing spot on knockups with RekSai tunnels and lately the feeling that I probably am scaring someone for life as I chase them down with the unkillable-Trinity-Tahm.

I'm genuinely saddened by how much the game frustrates me these days. I can't just relax and enjoy losses anymore. There aren't any more silly mistakes, only idiotic errors. The people I play with aren't enjoying a fun and new experience with other players, they're playing with others because the game is forcing them to, or they're trolling to entertain themselves at the expense of everyone else. I get so easily insulted by other players and rise to moment, spouting off at those players who annoy me. I've never been the type of person to tell someone to "get cancer and die" but I never use to be this angry or eager to deflect blame. And when Riot punishes me for the things I type I feel like I'm being punished by a crowd of self-entitled whiners. I doubt if I'll ever see Lyte as anything more than a far-left extremist with delusions of grandeur, who treats me like his personal guinea pig.

Just getting on this topic has already soured my mood and ruined the peaceful reflection I was enjoying. League has had a huge impact on my life. There are things I've experienced in this I couldn't have anywhere else. There are so many Rioters whose work I really respect. Chief among them are IronStylus and CertainlyT (I get why everyone has a bone to pick with him but he's also been the brain behind some of my favorite champions. I feel like he's constantly bringing new and interesting mechanics to League. I may not love everything you do sir but I respect you no less for it).

I originally came to League because it was becoming a common talking point in the StarCraft community, replacing Call of Duty as the home of casuals. I wanted to see what everyone was talking about. I didn't expect to get sucked into a new world for the next four years. When Legacy of the Void releases next month I think I'm going to take that opportunity to break away from League for a long while. I'm unsatisfied with the current state of Riot and this community. More than that I'm unsatisfied with the negative impacts this community has had on me as a person.

I doubt I'll be gone for good. I'll probably occasionally poke my head in if only to catch a wiff of that Shyvana high (I hope in the meantime we can get Tahm's Greyskin ability worked into Shyvana's passive. Actually just combine a lot of Tahm's kit into Shyvana, dragons shouldn't need swords to deal damage, they should do that already and just focus on being impossible to kill) I didn't even intend for this to be a farwell post but that's just the conclusion I came to as I wrote this. I think it'll be healthier for me as a person and maybe healthier for the community to have one less rager for a while.