My story is most intriguing and unique, one you may not be able to mirror unless you follow. Actually, it's not, but you may want to listen anyways. On my first day of ECC, I asked around, with only $100 in my balance, for a home. No one except one user, changed my life forever. After giving me a home, a job, and a free plot, I was hooked.. and now years have shown how long I've been on this server. I farmed wheat for 11 days and finally acquired 10,000 ECD. On the 12th day, killerpenguin0 happened to have a giveaway where the first builder to pm him wins 15,000 ECD. So I won, and applied for resident. After 2 months of occasionally playing minecraft, I decided to build homes in order to get money, because at the time the real estate market was booming. And I mean, booming. A regular 30x30 mansion sold for 40,000 ECD-50,000 ECD easily. So I took advantage of the market and after just building 2 homes and selling them for 40,000 and 50,000, I had 100,000 ECD in my balance. Finally, six figures in my balance. I was elated! Applied for mayor.. And then got hooked on ECC for now, 2 years. After summer break was coming to a close, I convinced my parents to let me donate for the Fly/Speed feature. After getting that, I decided I wanted to get President. So I asked a friendly EcoLeader, and one day I received a message in chat. "$179000 has been received from --". I was extremely ecstatic! I was now able to apply for president! So myself and avowin applied on the same day, and we were very happy. A couple weeks later and I decided to borrow a friend's melon sword. After using the melon sword for some time, I got several features and decided to get a melon sword of my own. A friend of mine was quitting ecc, so he gave me 130,000 to start me off. I mined for two months consecutively and diligently to acquire finally, 463,000 ECD. Along the way I won 70,000 ECD in crazy lotto, so that helped. After purchasing my first melon sword from OhMrsKittyKat, I was set to farm until I was EcoLeader. Stable income for ever. And that's when I trusted someone so much that I decided to give them my melon sword. They logged and bent the rules. Later I mined again for three months and got another melon sword from StoneIronZ. I sold it later and got an eff7. Along that way, I got ExtCmds+ for my birthday, and several features with ECD. Between myself making money and selling the melon sword, I spent 545 USD on features, and ranks by selling features. That's when I got EcoLeader, and thought it was time to retire. But every time I was brought back when staff applications were open. I was so determined to benefit the community at a Moderator position that I dedicated myself for 2 years to help the community. However, I'm not here to tell you that I created a builder town to help others, because that's what everyone does. All I did was make a difference in people's lives with a friendly welcome, few tools to help them get started, positive personality, and treating everyone the way they want to be treated. Yes, that does work. Try it some time. After selling the melon sword I bought an eff7 pickaxe. Then.. I sold it. It was now August 2014 and I decided to give all my money out for a loan. He returned.. with a PermaBan. I was never able to get my 700k back. But, I claimed a town and acquired a melon sword, and then sold it for features to get VIP+. I fooled around for a bit, played with friends, and in October Chundi_Jr was kind enough to lend me her star tools to borrow when needed. Then, September happened and the server was in turmoil. However, physicistsmom brought the community back together. I thank her for her help in keeping the server together. In November, another friend helped me out by lending his star tools as well. In December I simply enjoyed the holiday season, and from Jan. 16th I was able to buy a star tool from the star shop. But now, I have decided to take a break from playing long periods of time. This means I will play occasionally. I hope my story has inspired you, and I will be coming back fully active soon. I have been putting this off far too long, and a reminder is that this is not a goodbye thread, but rather some plans will be made to benefit the community even more, and myself and personal health. You will see future endeavors emerging. And I hope I find some new friends to make, because boy does it get boring when you're the only one active out of your group of friends. @Diamond396, you have changed my life as well. TL;DR there is no TL;DR. I suggest you read my story, get inspired to do new things, take a break once in a while, don't troll, and give the mods a break. Quite honestly, they're more lenient than I've ever seen in my time on ECC.
