Goodbye Tongnian!

You joined the guild at level 2 or 3, like most people did then.

You rose up the list pretty fast. You moved past longer term players.

You didn't say anything, but the guild was much quieter then, so that wasn't unusual.

I made you an officer and when I said "Congrats Tongnian on becoming an Officer!" and you tried to tell me something:

I was stumped. I couldn't read Chinese. In the end, I took a photo using my phone of the ipad (confession: I don't know how to take screenshots on an ipad) and emailed it to a friend who was born in Hong Kong to see if he could tell me what you were trying to tell me.

My friend replied "Sorry boss i understand chinese and not english ;)" which made sense in the context. You obviously knew more English than I knew Chinese, but that wasn't getting us anywhere.

I tried to work out how I might communicate with you. In the end, I worked out I could use Google Translate to translate my English into Chinese and you realised you could reply in the same way.

It was a bit of a hit and miss affair using Google translate to communicate. After about six months, you realised I might be female and asked if I was your sister. You told me you were a 21 year old vagrant (which I took to be Google translate's attempt at unemployed). You had recently finished university and lived in Beijing.

WZ obviously filled up a lot of your life. It was great to have someone else who could help with the bigger raids (which, in those days were LA tier 3 and Honolulu tier 3). 

You started to buy packs - lots of them. That *was* unusual. Especially for a vagrant ;-)!. You had legendaries and mythics in abundant supply. You would lend me your doomsday, and I began to really rely on having him for the big raids. You were conscious of the others in the guild and wanting them to develop and grow. You told me not to give you any epic packs for coming second in the big raids and to leave you out of competitions so others could benefit, which showed me your kindness and generosity of spirit.

You also had a sense of humour that *might not* have been accurately rendered by Google Translate. After I had kicked some inactive recruits, you posted "Goodbye, foreign fiends! Go and get a map!"

Anyway, something has happened and you have left WZ as of yesterday. You told me you had a decision to make and I hope whatever you chose is something positive for you.

Thank you for buying the guild three pallets of guild bars before you left. Thank you for letting me know you were going - I always find it hard to kick long term players - and would have procrastinated for a very long time with you if you had just stopped playing. All the best, my friend. I will miss you!