Your FFXI Stories.

Before I go and have some much needed sleep, I was thinking about the stories that we have lived through in this game. I was talking to someone just now, and he reminded me of my old mentor Seiya. The guy was legendary, and I would like to share that story sometime, but what I am more interested in, is to hear if other people have stories to tell.

In this game, specially nowadays, it is so easy to get into the grind of accomplishing our latest goal, that we tend to be anti-social. Back in the older days of FFXI, it was very commonplace for people to just sit around and chat. It was also common to make friends in EXP parties, and you would share your life with them. The older times, specially for me, had people who were a lot more willing to talk and be friendly with each other. They would go out and help somebody just to make them happy, and expect nothing in return, they would invite you into their linkshell and you would make more friends. I have a lot of stories I can tell from my time in FFXI, and in this roleplaying game, it is pretty unreal just how much our characters, and ourselves, have been through.

Have you experienced moments that made you laugh uncontrollably?
What about those anxious times? What about the moments you wish you could forget?
How about the times were you cried? Are you brave enough to admit that you may have shed a tear for a fellow player in the game?

I am sure, that after over ten years of Final Fantasy XI, there have been some pretty legendary stories. Will you share them? And will you respect those people who decide to share? After all, this is just a game, we all know it isn't real, but does it hurt to get sucked into it, even for a brief time? I would love to read some real FFXI stories. The longer and more detailed the better!

Well, one time a looong time ago in our LS chat, one of the times I laughed the most would be a cosplay discussions in chat. Our fearless leader Orophinn, had the best idea ever:

I'm going to go to a cosplay with a big *** yellow hoop and walk around. When someone asks me what I am doing, I'm going to just throw the *** hoop at them, then go STUN ***. I'm a DARK."

Some of the other chat amusements come from the people that COULDN'T join our LS. I think the record was like 3 minutes for one guy b/c his children watched him play and I think someone was talking about pinksocks right as he came in. HI! BYE! Oh you silly Tribe people.

My eldest daughter is 16 in a couple of months. And she used to play a character on her own account at aged 9. With the wife on another account also back then.
They both tired of this game waaay before me lol.

My best anecdote and lol moment that still gives me a chuckle thinking about it, was leveling my WAR for the second time after restarting.

- In the dunes and accept an invite. (on WAR/MNK) Level 12+ I'm assuming due to what happened next.
- I say to the Taru leader "So I guess I'm tanking...?"
He looked me as straight in the eye as you could in a video game being a 1/3 of my size, and said "NO! I shall tank.. I am a NIN!"
- Then gave us the battle plan. "Frank.. when I say "casting shadows.." (or whatever) you shall do VOKE!"
(me) "yeah yeah whatever.."

- Anyway.. First battle went ok so he pulled a gob for second battle. We were in the crab camp in the trees.
10 seconds in and I must have been looking somewhere else for like 5 seconds TOPS..
I looked back to see he had shouted to voke. Taken two hits in the face and was lying face down in the sand.
He didn't say a word. Home pointed. Passed me leader and disbanded himself from the party lol.

- And as you can guess, the rest of the afternoon went off without a hitch with my Elvaan WAR/MNK happily tanking 2 mobs at once if need be.
As geared up to the eyeballs as you could be back then at those levels. When people actually cared.
I still say it didn't matter as much as people made out. But it made it look like you were trying.

4 days trying to add crysta to my damn account , tried like all different payment methods . this is my story.

One of my FFXI dreams came true. I got to meet friends I made in game in real life. It was great to see that the wonderful personalities they exude in game are even better when you are actually together. Anyways, headed to a bar and after a few drinks we realized we were calling each other by our game names.

My favourite stories which everyone's experienced pre-Abyssea is in the Dunes.. Wiping to lizards or gobs and /sh for raises lmao.

The amount of people calling Garlaige shitadel and crawlers nest the hanging ballsack place.

Being told I couldn't pull in a merit party on Brd, urge them to come Brd and show me how. They sub whm and get killed on way back by a bird on first pull. HP then disband talking in chat like I couldn't sleep it that's all your fault. This party is full of scrubs lmfao

I remember the day, almost 5 or 6 years ago, I met Kylos, the OP, on a bird party in Wajaom on Hades server. I had been on a german/dutch LS for the past 3 months since I started the game, and since they were all into getting their Salvage/Dalmatica pieces, I was a complete noob that had absolutely no friends whatsoever since they all spoke dutch on the LS and gave no attention to me.

Then Kylos offered me a pearl to his LS, a social blue pearl called MarleyMessenjas, and helped me get my RDM AF on Castle Oztroja. Was fun times, you remember that Kylos? After a few years the LS disbanded on the Cerberus merge but I still bump into him around after all these years! I like how he is nostalgic and is one of the few ppl that really cling to that adventurous spirt that made me get so hooked up to the game in the first place.

the most prominent memory i recall is back when i was on the alexander server. i joined a random group for the airship fight in the promathia misstions. i was on my 64 blm back then and the fight was still capped at 60. we got through the first fight with the mammets w/o issue, and omega went down with a little bit more effort.

then we tackled ultima, and the fight was goin good till about the last 10% and ppl started droppin. he drops all the the DDs at 2% hp left and i had just enough for one more tier 3 spell and everyone is screamin at me to kill it. i cast aero 3 just as i take a missile to the face dropping me down to 8 hp and managed to kill it with that last nuke getting us all the win :D

everyone was pretty stoked that we won cause we totally didn't expect to and it was just in general an overall fun time, even with complete strangers.

I remember tanking byakko on nin and my HP being knocked down to double digits. Get utsu Ni up which is imediately diagaed off and I guess our whms were being slow, hit utsu ichi but in my head I'm thinking "Well good luck Paladin".

Byakko attacks, I get 3 parry skill ups and utsu goes off a second later followed by a cure 5.

This is the reason I will never ever win anything worthwhile in the mog bonanza.

When I was in college my sister, myself, my roommate, and a friend of ours all played. In our linkshell was a paladin named Gungrave who lived about four hours from us and about twenty minutes from my sister.

He took a week off of work over our summer break, and came up with my sister. We set up a computer lab in our basement and for a week solid we didn't log off except for the one two-hour emergency maintenance. We would play all together when we could, and nap/cook/eat in shifts - at the low times there were two of us managing five characters. Our setup was BLM BLM PLD RDM DRK.

We were in the 60s, partying on Catobalas (or however it's spelled) in bibiki bay. The best part - we picked up a tarutaru DRG named Junirol and promptly forgot he existed because all five of us were in the same room until at one point we realized he had been with us for close to 48 hours. One of the BLMs and the DRK have quit long ago now, but my sister, her now husband Gungrave, and I still play in the same shell.

Another time, I set up a party in Mount Zahlyom on those incinerate crawlers as my rdm and made two SMN cry because I wanted them to DD and not heal. SMN SMN NIN SAM SAM RDM and the fastest exp I'd ever gotten pre-merit bird camps.

When I think back, I don't think of one event in time, but more of like moments of memory that have always stuck with me.. For now, let's start with old school player's favorite place.

The Many Glorious Moments of Valkrum Dunes:

Level 10, Windurst Nation, super excited to go to Dunes for your first party. You pay that measly fee to get on the boat, and as you burst through the doors as the boat sets sail, you are greeted by the wrath of Sea Horror, and all your dreams are crushed as your face gets friendly with the deck.
...Or you get raped by pirates :|

Hauling *** through that tunnel from Konschtat's zone and hoping to sweet baby jesus those bats don't aggro you

Near death experience every lizard pull and looking over in a moment of ungodly lag as some pour soul trains 49824698246494389 lizards across the damn map

Having that one party member die without reraise, and having a member having to walk aaaaaaaall the way to their home nation (either the lovely walk to Sandy/Basty, or the always interesting boat ride to Mhaura) change jobs, come back, raise the poor ***, go BACK to their nation, and then come back to dunes to resume said party roughly two hours later, of which disbands 10 minutes later.

Valkrum Emperor... Nuff' said.

I didn't expect people to mention me in their stories! :) Yes I do remember it.
I have helped countless amounts of people, specially back in the day when I was the leader of MarleysMessenjas, it was my duty, and an honour to put smiles on faces.

I keep expecting to see one "Well there was this HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE manthra..."

During a CoP promy run someone tried to argue with me whether I was a man or woman. Apparently my choice of face/hair and that I was playing smn meant I was lying about being a man XD

I wrote an FF story once!

Oh wait, this is for memories. In that case...

I aggrod an NM while on a chocobo once. I don't know how.

That is like my dads character Quilly. He plays as a female hume, and if they want to think he is a girl, he just rolls with it :p

I may begin telling the story of seiya soon, but the story is pretty long and detailed (I wrote it back in the day to encourage linkshell members to help others) so I may have to write in in parts lol.

Trying to make conversation with a fishbot on my first day of playing.

One day I was in the lovely hot sun of Valkurm Dunes, wearing the chunkiest armour around, and was lending my services to PL a friend. Out of nowhere, this goblin started to attack my friend and killed him while I was distracted, and then aggroed me. The funny thing was, was that this goblin was claimed!

There was nobody around fighting the goblin, but it kept attacking me, so I kited it around. I began running towards Selbina and thought Ok, I will zone out and it will be fine.
The goblin thought.. screw you, I have seen this EXP party halfway across the zone, I want to kill them! So I turn around and run after this goblin, and watch as it begins to wreck havoc on this poor party down at the beach. People begin to die, and no one can kill it, and we have no idea why. I manage to cure one of the party members and it got interest in me again.

However, for no reason, it would bounce off me and the party, even though the party had done nothing to this goblin, it was that annoyed by their presence, it just wanted them dead. I told the party to zone out and it should come back onto me. So the party and I ran towards Selbina, and they all zoned out. By this time the goblin had got interest in me, and was still claimed, so I placed a GM call.



It was claimed for probably five to ten minutes, and just before the GM popped next to me, the Goblin became unclaimed, but continued to attack me. I informed the GM of my story, and they found it to be rather odd behaviour. She recorded all the data, and informed me that, "You may decimate the goblin now". It was the only time a GM has ordered me to kill something, and the rogue goblin was no more.

I remember this one time, i just started a lv10 whm in the dunes, and i told them i had cure protect and dia. This guy on a 13 MNK with a 75 whm PLer, was nice enough to give me some gil, of course being new i didnt have auto sort invintory on. His first trade attempt he put 1,708,199 gil in the trade box.
...man i remember the screenshot so well but i just recently lost it! :( really wish i could post it here lol

Second trade was only 1,000 tiny gilz

How'd you not get aggro in Beaucedine at that low of a level?

Aww. This story reminds me of a time which I totally forgot, where a leaving player was giving his stuff away, and he gave me 600k and a full set of Kampf! I was so stoked, I used it on my Warrior and Paladin very well in the jungle :) Sadly gear like that is mostly useless now.

man, the old days of FFXI where terror lurked around almost every corner.

the horror of levelling in the Dunes.

Eco Warrior shouts where half the alliance was naked save for a weapon/whatever they could scrounge together.

getting my Destroyers and the pride that came with finally having a Monk weapon that felt epic.

heart racing when I finally had enough points in the Sky LS to go all in and get my Byakko's Haidate.

farming Tigers in Batallia and Beaucedine for HOURS to buy my Snipers Ring and TM Hooks +2.

soloing my Gaudy Harness for BST, not to mention using it for whichever damned CoP mission it was where you had to kill that coarse.

what sticks out to me the most when it comes to people helping each other is waaaaay back in the day when I was trying to get my Monk AF from Castle Oz, we finally get to the hallway where you can pop the NM. it's me and two friends and despite our best efforts we're taken down one by one. apparently there was a pair duoing up there, probably for scrolls or whatever who snag the NM, tell me to disband, raise me, and get me my body piece.

nowadays it feels like that magic is gone, and that we just steamroll from one gear piece to the next. it's so weird thinking back to my original character on Asura and looking at how far I have come with my current after reactivating ~5 years ago.

Not too many stories, but have had some random moments happen back in my noob days, :P

(Don't mind the Comic Sans, these are old pictures!)



Happened while I was semi-afk LFG one day which I forget if it was pre-75 or not. Three random BSTs who came up to me, and this happened. Found it amusing really, :P



This was probably somewhere in Whitegate, one of the same Tarus was there, and probably an aquaintence of theirs as well. Think I just happened to either be walking by them, or afk-ing like usual.



Then a little something I made from a merit party out in Caederva Mire. Know how most of us always HATED imps.

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!

Most of all I see the shocking amount of bots in Beaucedine and it makes me sad.

However, the fishbot in question was in windurst woods pulling moats!

Another story I have is first going to the dunes.

Me and my buddy, had an escort a 75 BLM to the dunes. Everything was fine til we got to the ferry from Mhuaru to Selbina. Where, true to form, Sea Horror pops during a noob's first journey. The BLM said, 'no biggie, I can solo it.'
He got a couple of nukes off and died, and then so did me and buddy. I was thinking 'wow, that's one badass monster!'
A year later when I was about lvl 65-70 MNK I solo'd the thing, for revenge, no less.

Talking of trading gil, a dude shouted for help on Windy 9-2 last night so I ran Frank out (on BST) to bash the cards for him.
He said he had played for years but who knows with the question "can 2 of us do this battle?" lol

After the battle the sweetie tried to hand me 100k for helping.
I politely refused and showed him the 182 mill I was walking around on Frank with haha :)

Anyway yeah.. I forgot to mention my story of the night I paid 1 mill for a 10 hour FC in Mis I think it was.
Was just trying to cap a few 95-99's and merit whatever.
So after a couple of hours of doing this needed to go back home to [Job Change] again. Was drinking I suppose yeah.
> (me in thought bubble) "now I'm ***/WHM, what's the quickest way of getting home to change?... I know tele mea, then book repat..."
Yeah they kicked me from party for that. Remains of 1 mill down the drain. And I paid the dude who actually wasn't afk 250k for his wasted loss of lights lol.

Heres an interesting one. My second day of playing my self and a taru both ran at the same mandy (or it may have been a bee or bunny) with weapons out. I got the claim and he told me I stole his kill, I was all "... Team up?" and we ended up being friends for like 5 years.

I think that to this day my favorite times spent in game were the times I would team up with a group while camping King Arthro back in the 75 days. We would come out hours early and play all kinds of games, like name that movie. Sometimes we wouldn't get the claim or even come close and a couple of times we hung out after to finish up our games.