The Return of Friends

When friends leave FFXI, more often times than not, it's going to result in one of three things happening:

1. Stay in touch via methods like other games, IM software, phone etc.
2. Never speak to them again.
3. Take over their account, turn it into an AH mule, feather mule, PL'ing mule etc.

Normally, in the third case, this is done in hopes that one day the real owner of the account says "My account is still active...I think I'll give FFXI another try" and comes back.

That or you just like having a a second account to do shit with so that you don't have to level an entirely new one to get around.

Anyway, the past month and a half or so has seen the return of several of my old friends. Some weren't gone as long as others, but it didn't necessarily reflect any more or less impact on my clique of friend's activities.

When I log in to play FFXI, I don't log in to make new friends to spend time with. I've found over the years that friendships develop on their own and trying to force friendships to happen usually results in drama. I get it when people want to keep their real and cyber lives separate, I'm generally the same way. I have no issue telling someone what I do for a living, what I look like, etc because it's just simple truth and that is just me.

There's usually a natural order to how things play out in the development of a friendship though. Obviously, first thing you do is interact with someone within the game itself. It's generally a safe thing to say that within the first 2-3 interactions (XP party, LS Event, etc), you have a decent idea if said person is just going to annoy the piss out of you or if they're generally someone decent.

The next logical step is usually something along the lines of an IM Client or another game interface once you feel like you can trust someone enough outside of FFXI. It's also perhaps mixed in with some form of internet voice communication like Skpye, Vent, Teamspeak, etc.

After a while, if you start running around with said person quite a bit and come to rely on them for various events (say co-leading a linkshell, doing missions, etc), phone numbers are exchanged. From there, you've inadvertently managed to cultivate your friendship beyond the limitations of the cyber world. Don't get me wrong, you can still have friendships that go beyond the cyber world as long as both parties are being completely truthful, but generally speaking...this point doesn't happen w/o some form of a real life interaction.

This would be the case with the series of friends who have returned to FFXI the past couple months. Name by name:

Kaelis/Erimentha

I like to refer to them as Mr. and Mrs. Pun or Mr. and Mrs Kaelis. This is due to the fact that when I first met Eri online, I could never remember her name, so I just made something up that was convenient for me to remember. Kaelis was a co-sack in Obsidian back in the shell's early days. I knew him well before I knew Eri. Hell, I don't even think I knew Eri played FFXI until about 2 years after I started hanging out with Kaelis...

The friendships transcended FFXI upon the creation of a linkshell BBQ. The idea was for a number of us to gather together at Kaelis' house who were in GTC/SSI. The original 6 of us that attended (despite more invites being sent) were Kaylea, Sirinity, Looco Mr. and Mrs. Kaelis and myself. The first one was in 2007.

Anyway, about a year ago, real life intervened and they had to drop FFXI. Eri wasn't really into playing FFXI too much and generally logged in while she did her crafts at home. Kaelis, on the other hand, is someone who was running around with our clique doing missions and whatnot whenever he could. He was caught up on everything at the time that he quit, but as everyone knows...a lot has changed in FFXI over the past year.

Suraph

King Cranky and I go way back to FFXI's near infant days. He's never been one that dumped a crapload of time into the game each night, but the time he did spend early on was effective and very goal oriented. He was one of the original sackholders for Obsidian and the developer of our original bidding system and website. At it's peak (and back then it was pretty much necessary...), Suraph helmed website demands for nearly 300 members Obsidian had active. This would be where he earned the moniker of "King Cranky" and the worldwide consumption of Advil tripled thanks to one small location in the eastern US.

Around 4ish years ago, he decided FFXI wasn't for him anymore and ended up leaving the game. Given that he and I were pretty much in the same linkshell the entire time that we were logged in, I'm lucky enough to have been counted among his friends. The tell-tale moment of our adventures together involve his level 65ish THF tanking Vouivre in Ifrit's Cauldron to get me a Gae Bolg. It wasn't a lance I was particularly after (and I still have it), but we were up there farming Opo-Crown items and he popped, so we said "we like dying, let's try to kill it." Also, upon his leaving, he sold all of his gear and gave me 30 million gil out of the blue to help fund Gungnir. 30 mil back then is pretty much like 4 mil or so now thanks to the inflation, but Suraph's niceness (despite his nickname) funded about 1/4 of my Dynamis Lance and bought me a Barone Corazza (back when they were 10 mil...) to help pimp out my Dragoon at the time. It makes it sound like he bought my friendship and I certainly don't mean to imply that he did, but that act of kindness is something a person doesn't forget.

Since he left, he's been an on/off again player. Mostly when he comes back, it's to try to get those blasted Monk AF2 pants that seem to elude him (even though his Monk wasn't even in equipping range when he started trying to collect the AF2 through open bids...). After a 1-2 year hiatus, the solo content that SE was implementing into the game lured him back to a bit more of a part time player as opposed to an on/off again player.

Lectrikelion

This one came as the biggest surprise to me. I knew Kaelis wanted to return (even though he hadn't vocalized it...his mannerisms were enough to tell me) and Suraph is who he is, but I hadn't spoken to Lect in nearly 2 years and he quit something like 3+ years ago. Obviously, if I had his account information to use his character as a mule, we already know that our friendship had transcended the game.

He called me up out of the blue a few days ago wanting to know if his account was still active, which it obviously was. Only huge problem was that I had linked it to my SE ID and apparently SE won't allow you to call in and verify in 40 different ways that you are who you say you are and unlink a POL ID from the SE ID.

And...Odin's still closed.

Lect being who he is (real life intervened on him too years ago and he had to leave), someone who probably had spent more time with me in-game than anyone else up to that point, I naturally will do what I can to help him return. Even though I hadn't talked to him in a long time, our friendship had trascended the game years before he left. Given some of the things he had to deal with at the time, I'm not going say "you should have kept in touch!" to him cause it's a two way street. We'd play phone tag for a week or so, but never could quite hook up to catch up on things.

He was lured back by the same content that lured Suraph back, but at the same time...he's missed a ton. Which is one of the bigger points of this post...

...I get to do CoP, ToAU and WotG missions again.

So I'm being a little more proactive this time around.

I'm using Dantess' account to go with them.

Cause at the rate I'm going, Dantess will show up out of the blue too and I'll just have to double back and bring him up to speed as well. We also need a dash of Mighty Midget Ruh and Theora.

I'm definitely glad they're back, but at the same time, it's a little bitter because a lot of the new, fun things in the game don't make much sense w/o a story to go with them (or in some cases actually being past a certain mission to access it). There's also the gear that's free and great like the CoP and ToAU rings and the expensive stuff that goes along with the Gobbiebag quests. It makes it difficult to do things with them when the missions are a bit of a cockblock.

Just like in the old days though, going through the game with old friends is the best thing you can do in this game.

Now to figure out what I can move around on my schedule to help them out as much as possible.

(...just don't expect me to do the fkn crawls through ACP again... :D)