About three weeks ago, I signed into Final Fantasy XIV. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t really be noteworthy—except that it was the first time in a while that I did.
Surprisingly little had changed; my house was still there, my FC was still there, and—yet again—I was the only one online.
That was why I’d taken a break in the first place, and it was kind of hard for me to face again.
Why I quit FFXIV
When I started my FC back in August, I’d had this brilliant vision of creating the next big thing. I had a plan for promotions, I knew what I wanted from members, and I had all kinds of ideas for building community and creating lasting friendships.
It went really well for a couple of weeks, until one member went ballistic on me in the public Discord channel and basically ripped me apart for reasons that I still don’t understand, because every time I tried to solve an issue, they’d switch the subject to something else. Even if they hadn’t left of their own volition, they would have been gone.
After that, people stopped being social. I know more than a few of them thought it was my fault that person left. But it got to the point where Shane and I were the only ones doing anything helpful for the FC, and everyone else would just ask us for more.
That’s when I quit FFXIV.
Why I started playing again
I’m not going to lie, it was kind of nice to take a break from the game. It had become such a big thing for me when I was unemployed that it was hard to adjust to playing while I was working, and I found I had so much more spare time.
But now, I’ve had enough time to start missing the game. And with the Shadowbringers expansion coming up, and because it is a game I genuinely enjoy playing, I decided to log in again.
The game had one more little slap for me for being gone so long, though. When I logged in, I found that folks had been abandoning the FC left and right. Even one of my dearest friends waited for me to log back in, and left the next day. It wasn’t easy to see that happen.
So I came up with a plan.
Shane and I have been having issues finding a good community on our server for a while now, which is actually why we decided to try to build our own. And with everything that’s happened, we’re going to try and move to a more active server. All of our friends have left, and it’s a good day on Famfrit when there’s a handful of people logged in.
So I’m going to liquidate as much of my poor little FC as I can, pass off the house and its airships to another FC that needs a home, and we’re going to move.
I’m pretty nervous about it, but excited too. I hope we’ll be able to find another group of friends to play with, and maybe even find a new housing plot I can decorate!
YOUR TURN
One thought on “Why I took a break from FFXIV”
Excalibur server here. I think at this point getting an active and social FC is definitely a work of effort, loneliness, and sometimes frustration. The game has been around many years, and people alternate content binge/dry spells. I came back to FFXIV after many years of being away (life stuff) and there is a *ton* for me to do since I have whole expansions and jobs to catch up. But for the long-termers…. the motivation seems to be the people. As it was in FFXI. And it definitely requires a lot of heartbreaking effort at this point.