Yo,

Firstly, I want to say that this isn't an announcement or any sort of important message. I only wish to pass on a few words for no particular reason but my own. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown, welcome to this post.

I've been playing on the server alone past these few weeks from time to time, surfing through the map and admiring how it evolved since it all started. And I must say the Arena is the greatest piece of work to ever exist on a TF2 map. There was a time not too long ago when playing here alone was almost impossible. Whatever the reasons that this no longer happens is not important to me, what is important is that it happened.

I recall too well the times of Surfburken, the previous community me and Dangeh have been involved with, and his jet fighter pilot pyro set for some reason. I think that in time we stole a considerable chunk of players after their 10x reloaded server closed and we rolled out our own with a goal to fill in the blank. The decision to fund it ourselves and have no ads or extra annoying downloads is the best decision we've made. Still, barely anybody was playing when we started out, save for our friends. But after 6 months of owning a mostly empty server I randomly look at the player count and BAM, every slot taken (24 at the time). It seems like with most things you just can't see any fruit of your labor for the longest time, but then out of sudden it clicks all at once.

From there, new people came, some stayed for longer. The longer they stayed the stronger the friendships. Stronger friendships turned to regulars or admins. The more regulars and admins the more people came and stayed. It's like a machine, and it runs as long as there is fresh meat joining the server.

From my perspective, a kid who had way too much time on his hands, this server was like a canvas. Working on programming projects is my passion, but with all of you as test subjects for our plugins, these projects were on a whole another level. I started messing around with SourceMod plugins and Hammer mapping for hours a day and night, experimenting and making dumber things. Catching deadlines with new versions of the map, filling them with fun stuff through plugins, surprising you with these releases, organizing events. This was all a total bliss to experience, and it couldn't have gone better for me, and I'm willing to bet for Dangeh as well.

I loved making ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ plugins and giving these powers to admins to play with, who in turn were entertaining the players. I believe that it's this which sparked interest of many newcomers who then decided to stay. That's who I attribute the success of our server to -- the regulars.

Over time, I learned that it's super easy to get caught up on numbers, after all, a thousand players can roll though the server a day. However, the small number of them, who stayed a long time and were having fun, is whom I cherish the most. These are the people I was thinking of when working on new map features or plugins. That is the sole reason which had driven me to sleepless nights working on the server, just to see how you will react and have fun with the new stuff. The kind of motivation which makes you drop everything and start working on something is exceedingly difficult to come by, and I had it all too often. There were times when I was literally running home from school because a cool idea popped into my head. Although I want to thank everyone for even hitting the connect button, my main focus were the friends of Surreal, and there were many.

Thank you everyone for teaching me a lot and giving me so much joy to serve you as an admin.

And thank you Dangeh for being a true friend and the best person to co-own Surreal with.

But, there is something more amazing that came out of this whole endeavor, which I don't think will ever cease to surprise me. To this day it happens, that once in a blue moon, me or Dangeh get approached by a complete rando in an unrelated server. They then ask us whether we are the owners of Surreal, and tell us how much fun they had and, most importantly, that they made friends there. I even had some guy pinging me about this on a Jerma stream.
This is ultimately the goal of all this -- having a positive impact on someone's life. And it's not me or Dangeh who attained it, it's all of us.

So here we are, a sleepless night for me with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of work laid out for the very next week. But my mind still decides to drag me back to the Surreal times and beg me to put them to words it can share. And believe me, there are a book worth of words to share. So I'm writing this letter, planning which hour would be the best to post it while wondering how dumb this will read when my mind is busy with waking tasks. My eyes will be closed while I hit the publish button.

Love, Phil