It all began in I believe 2014. My coworker and his son were playing on this server and it had somehow come up at work. After some shenanigans that involved freaking out his kid for my own amusement I began to play on the server. This was my first serious server (had played one a small server with friends before) and I quickly realized how much better of a game minecraft could be when played in a community. Eventually my friend and his son stopped playing on AEM for one reason or another, but I stayed on. My interest however was off and on, and occasionally I would go on long leave before returning to AEM. Always to the questions of "Who is the new guy with Extreme?" and a gaggle of fresh faces when I finally made my way back. As the years went on though the groups I would come back to became smaller and smaller with the community becoming less interesting the fewer people there were to interact with. Thinking that this might just be a problem with Survival, I tried my hand at Skyblocks. While it was interesting and I both spent some time there as well as picking up another rank, in the long run it was the same problem. The community was dying, the server was becoming stagnant. This cycle continued until I suppose just today, when the inevitable conclusion of AEM's demise was the subject of an interesting plot twist. AEM had been absorbed by another network ECC. While at first this struck me as a potential improvement, I suppose this isn't actually the case. The message about the takeover, as well as the server conducting it were both very interesting. The server owner talks about how he wants the players investments in AEM to carry over, a smart move on his part to try to expand his own player base. Let me get a bit off topic and onto my opinion of this merger for a second, because it applies to the overall message of this thread. Like I said, the idea of carrying over the investments of the previous AEM players is a fantastic idea for a server owner, especially one who's server is also suffering from a dwindling population. He provides an equivalent product to the one's purchased by the customers of the absorbed network (at no out of pocket cost because both sets of products were digital) and in return receives a new customer base who is grateful for the potential rebirth of their dying server and who I might add, also have a wide variety of new products to shop for on their new server. The problem however comes in the implementation of this. The players from most servers will be given an equivalent rank in the modes that are being taken from AEM once these are implemented. The players from survival (this most similar game mode to ECC) will have nothing transfer and upon further inquiry (I checked with the developer in game) will receive no equivalent for their AEM purchases. So while I suppose if any enduring friendships were created within AEM those might live on, that will however be it's only legacy. So with my rant about business practices over I would like to come to my point. AEM has been a fun experience, I've made friends who much like me left after a time. I've gotten to see this community in many different incarnation over the years and that was a worthwhile experience in and of itself. I however no longer have any stake in "AEM" and as such would rather find a new server on my own than to be handed off to the friend of my former servers owner. Anyways if any of you are still around from any of my stints here, it was nice knowing you and maybe I'll catch you in another server. Goodbye. -Tyrius
