Mister Dobalina here..

[Mister Dobalina]

I wanted to wait to do this until I knew I'd likely end up sticking with the servers for a while, and after 8 months and 1,200 hours, I guess it might be time to do that.

I started playing Rust after building my PC about 3.5 years ago for the sole purpose of playing this game. I dove right in and immediately got hooked, since at the time, I was working 2nd shift and usually had quite a bit of time before and after work to play. I started playing on low X modded servers so I wouldn't have to grind as much, until I found my self on a 1000x server that was actually pretty decently balanced(hard to imagine, I know). I found myself a pretty good team on there and we played together as top clan on the server for just over a year before making the venture over to the official Facepunch servers. Once there we were able to adapt pretty quickly for going from 1000x to straight vanilla and we ended up being pretty successful for a couple wipes. We ended up running a massive clan compound like somewhat of a hotel for PVP'ers, at one point having 4 separate dominant PVP teams living inside of our china walls. What we didn't realize, was that one of those teams was made up entirely of cheaters, and one of the other teams was in close personal contact with the Rust dev team. They found out about each other, and we were told to either boot them out, or get reported along with them. Not wanting the cheaters to turn on us, we declined to kick them out, and as a result,  we all ended up with bans from all official Facepunch servers. Seeing that ban message kind of made me step back and think about what point I had gotten myself to in the game, and what kind of player I was becoming in the game, and I hit quit and uninstalled immediately. After a few months, I decided to re-install and give it another shot. I rejoined that same 1000x server that I spent over 2,300 hours on, and after 30 minutes or so I realized that I no longer had any interest in being that typical toxic PVP'er that I had found myself turning in to, so I left. I played a couple of solo/duo servers for a month or so, and then somehow found myself joining US Scourge.

Honestly, at first, the change felt really weird. My first instinct every time I saw someone was to shoot and loot(I'd still like to be able to shoot some of these people), but I quickly adapted to the PVE lifestyle. I was able to fully indulge in all the things I really enjoyed doing in the game without having to worry that I'd log in to find my farm decayed after being raided, or getting countered on oil while waiting for the timer to finally hit 00:00. It was all of the fun, and none of the stress. On top of that, the server had one of the best communities I've come across in all of gaming, let alone Rust. That's the reason I've kept coming back, is the community. I've met so many awesome and kind people on here, and I'm thankful to now be a part of the community that got me hooked on the server in the first place.

Outside of playing Rust, I like playing CS:GO, Splitgate, Halo, Forza, Among Us(yes, still), and I even have an embarrassingly high amount of hours in Car Mechanic Simulator. I've worked from home since the start of the pandemic, so my job affords me a lot of opportunity to get gaming time in. Outside of work hours, I spend the majority of time hanging out with my wife and son, playing D&D, or indulging in whatever obsession I've recently picked up.

I'm not really sure what to say besides all of that, except thank you. Thank you to Death for creating this place, the staff for helping to keep this place together, and the community for making it what it is. You are all really fuckin cool, and I appreciate you for being here.

[TiffDust]

Whoa that's an interesting backstory, thank you for sharing
Glad you've found your happy place here.