Clash of Clans Update - What could have been...

This week Clash of Clans has been releasing "Sneak Peeks" for an update that will likely be released next week.  I have a lot of different views on these.

• Sneak Peek #1 - General balancing - a laundry list of new levels, cost and power adjustments, and changes in how defenses will interact with attacking troops.  A couple of interesting changes include PEKKAs not taking 2x damage from teslas and no more extra damage to Hogs from giant bombs.  Not sure I like all of this but maybe it will get a few of the hangers on for TH9 will get it in gear and hit the button for TH10
• Sneak Peek #2 - Army Training Revamp & Quick Train - I see this as a largely cosmetic change, but I like the ability to train to full armies and the "saved armies" feature.
• Sneak Peek #3 - Bomb tower - I hope everyone enjoys high HP troops.  You're gonna need them.
• Sneak Peek #4 - Friendly Wars...sigh...

10/7/2016 - This is the day that that 99% of the people I know in Clash have been waiting for for months, maybe years.  We now have the ability to war with our friends, against our friends and even little 5 on 5 squad wars.  

At least some of you do.  I do not.  

I want to start this by saying at least 90% of the blame for me being in the situation is my own fault. I was in a clan family that was started when myself and 3 of my best friends, in and out of Clash, started a podcast in June of last year.  We (amicably) left a group of clans we were with a few months prior and took out on our own, using Kent Farmhouse as our base of operations.  During this time I was moving from Philadelphia to the San Fransico Bay area, by myself, with my wife and 3 children staying in Philly for a full 5 months before joining me in California.  From March to the beginning of June my schedule was:

1. Work
2. Eat
3. Clash
4. Sleep (maybe)

Super fun.  I remember hours and hours of chat, some more appropriate than others, with Natalia, Ranc1dm3at, Halligan, Fawkes, and many others.  I would chat way longer than I should, greeting the European players in our clan just before going to sleep.  It really made moving without family a lot easier.  Maybe too easy.

To call me an introvert is a gross understatement.  I do not make friends easily.  I have two close friends, one was made in 1988.  The other was made in 2008.  OK, you can count my wife, so three.

With all my Clash friends, I could easy avoid making IRL friends.  Again, my fault. 

The Clash Files, our podcast launched in late June, and due to a lot of factors (thanks Scotty827) we were popular fast.  That popularity coupled with the recruitment machine that comes with a podcast; led to the CFF, a family of clans that grew to KFarmhouse 2.0, Noble Hero, and others.  With that growth, rules needed to be put in place.  One of those was we were going to be Fairplay, no 3rd party software allowed.  I was behind that, completely.  100% support.  

A year went by.  I advanced to TH11 and maxed my defense.  After hearing about a thing called botting and rationalizing it my head, I downloaded the software.  Half because I was just interested in how it worked and half because I rationalized the "OK-ness" with it because it would free up time to spend with my family.  Read that sentence, this handheld game was interfering with my time spent with my small children.  But, I did this knowing I was breaking the family rules and my friends' trust.

I downloaded the app and within 10 days I had decided either botting didn't work at TH11 or I wasn't smart enough to figure it out.  I deleted the software and moved on.

Then April 26th happened.  I was banned for 2 weeks.  In a war, in a family clan.  By some stroke of luck, I was given a pass.  I put someone I respected in a horrible position.  They made a bad decision (in hindsight) that benefitted me and I allowed it to happen.  This was selfish. Again - my fault.

Time passed and I found a groove in Noble Hero.  I consider trying to get back into the podcast game (I had "retired" in January due to work) because my life had slowed down and I was achieving a good family/clash balance.  The show had also been on a summer hiatus due to real life goings on for the remaining hosts.

I'm a cheap guy.  I love winning stuff.  I won a $400 Lego Batmobile a couple of years ago and you'd have thought I won the lottery.  I was listening to a couple other podcasts and one of them was giving away a $50 iTunes gift card.  Part of it was posting why you like the show.  I made what I thought was a funny tweet ribbing a couple of shows.  I say I thought it was funny, but in retrospect, it was thoughtless.  It criticized some folks that weren't able to do something I'm sure they wanted to do, because of circumstances that were completely out of their control and painful.  When I told my wife about it, she seriously said, "Maybe you have Aspergers.   How can you not see that that would hurt feelings?"

It did and that, coupled with other stuff I'm not aware of, but definitely including my botting led to my ouster from the CFF.  

I was mad, hurt, and sad.  Here's what I was thinking:

• Why can't they give me another chance?
• This was 6 months ago!
• I helped build this family!
• I'm going to try to burn this place to the ground!

Who thinks like this?  Not a reasonable adult.  Not anyone that is a good friend.

So I took a bad situation and made it 10x worse but vomiting all over Twitter for about 6 hours on a Saturday morning.  You cannot go back and enjoy it because I deleted all my twitter posts, but trust me, I looked like a vindic(k)tive crazy person.

So that's it.  Why I can't enjoy Friendly Wars with years-long friends.  I have to get over it.  I have to hope that I can somehow find a path back.  For the final time I want to apologize to Rancid, Halligan, Fawkes, Jezza, Vodka Soda, Omega, bones, Gobslayer (you finally got your arranged wars!) Slim, Ubiquitus, Loblaw, Woody, Insom, Suz, Saruk0, DRJam, chuck, Farmer Ben, Blu, The Future, riv, heisler, wucka, turtle, and countless others.  I'm sorry and I hope to play with you again someday.