It was a pretty fun ride. I leave these messages so that anyone who comes here will know what I love about this community and my experience overall.

You could say I enjoyed this game. It's one of those "childhood" games people have when they're young. I grow up not having many game consoles. The only ones were cheap Tetris handheld in the 90's and a 3rd Gen PSP back in 2007. Then I got my first laptop, a 2010 MacBook Unibody, not even the Pro version. I loved the thing. I did so much on it. I did everything on it. I was browsing Facebook in an anime group when a guy posted a clip of this game. I was intrigued, how couldn't I be? Rhythm game based on anime songs? Hell yeah! What I did next was to download osu!.

At first, like many others, I didn't know you could use z and x to click circles. I didn't even know about other mods. I jumped in right away trying to play Insane maps. We all know how that turned out, haha. Start by going for "Beginner" difficulties. Then I ran into my first problem, Beginner diffs doesn't really feature anything that goes along with the beats. There are simply not enough circles to do so. I struggled, badly. Got frustrated and stopped playing for a whole year.

Fast forward when I got bored again, I decided to give it another go. I closed DOTA and fired up osu! once more. It was running even better than before since I figured out how to overclock my screen to 144Hz back in 2012. Yes, MacBook White 2010 with 144Hz screen. It was bliss. This is of course on Windows, I have given up on Mac shortly after it lost it's wow factor. With renewed determination, I downloaded one of Mirai Nikki's songs, Beloved Child. Then some more. Then some Nightcores. Lots and lots of Nightcores. I became a Nightcore fan for a short while after that. Thank you Andrea. Anyways, the 2.4k S ranks on my profile says it all. I binge those maps so hard. I was having so much fun!

But something was amiss. I was stuck at #17k. So I figured that Christmas I would get myself a tablet. And I did. Boy oh boy did I have to relearn everything. But it's the one thing that unlocked the ceiling I had with my mouse. For me at least. I progressed and progressed. I feel I wasn't worthy of my rank, and I was right. The pp system wasn't as sophisticated back then, but ppv2 soon made its way over and I'm stuck once again. This time at #2k.

After that it was on and off for me. Play once every three days. I can't progress. My fingers aren't fast enough to stream. I can't do fast maps. I can't read nomod, only HD. I can't read AR10 but I can read AR9.7. I can't do many things. Once again I got frustrated, and no gear in the world will save me like last time.

And here we are. I'm now too busy with real life, I don't have much time to play anymore. I've met so many people, though I've never seen their faces. I've talked to so many, befriended lots more...but I also said goodbye to just as many. People move on, and if you're reading this, one day you will too. It has been a great journey for me. A grand 5-year-long journey that I will not forget. When I retire from my work at the old age of 65 in the future I will remember playing some games when I was younger, about some circles and music that fuelled the competitiveness in me. Or I might forget about it, but I will at least remember that I had a blast.

There were times when I got so frustrated I smashed onto my keyboard. Sad times when my parents barge into my room and made me broke my 2.5k combo right before FC'ing The Near Distance Future (which I have FC'd four times since with PB 99.70% HD). Times I was so happy with my first 200pp score, FC'ing Remote Control with nomod after tryharding for more than 70 retries in a row. That said, most of the time I will play a song, enjoy it, then move on. Not one song have I played for more than 200 times. I was enjoying the game. Even my top most played, the pp map No Title I FC'd it using HD getting only 2x100 when I had 100 plays on it. I have truly experienced this game to my fullest and I thank all of those who have made these magical, and dare I say, worthwhile experiences possible for me.

Before a final goodbye, I'd like to shed tears and RIP 2012 mapping. It has been a fun time. No doubt I will come by once in a long while to see what's up and perhaps play a game of my favourite songs or two, but one thing that is certain, I have utterly, truly, with my honest feelings, graduated from osu!.

I wish you all the best in your career in this game, no matter what that may be. No matter how high your rank is. You're one of the players, one of the community, one of us. It's fine to aim for the best, but consider others while doing so. Don't only make memories. Make good memories. Be a player.

Sincerely,
NeVMiku