When Your Family Figured Out You Play XI Too Much

Just remembering my FFXI lifetime, and some funny moments from it, and I got thinking- "who else had a moment with FFXI where the rest of your family (parents, spouse, kids, whatever) realized just how addicted you were?"

For me, there is no debate. January 2007. 8 month old first child at home, definitely not sleeping well. So in between our daughter waking up every 30 minutes or so, I was camping Mysticmaker Profblix- the Moldavite Earring NM (pardon any misspelling).

Well, I kinda lost track of the time once my daughter finally crashed for the night around 3:30am. All of a sudden (to me), my wife walked into our office and saw me still camping...at which point she says "you do know its 8am and you're late for work, right?"

I was heavily pregnant and helping friends farm Briarius helms. The judging I got from my husband (who also plays) when I muted my mic on skype, threw up in a trashcan next to my desk, unmuted and kept going without missing a beat was fun. We were like 48/50, no time for afk!

I used to fill alot of pee bottles camping Sandworm and DI. Lord knows if you afk and didn't widescan every 10 seconds and lost claim LS leader would have yo ***!

Also waking up at all hours of the night to camp Kings. Idk how many days at work I was not "all there" cuz of no sleep lol.

When my mom had to ask my older brother if I started using drugs cause I would stay up for 2-3 days at a time farming/camping NM's.


Trying to get the ToD for a King without another LS/person seeing you get it and then going to camp it the next open without people realizing there is a whole LS in the zone. Having to have a party in King Ranperre's tomb at zone waiting to rush in and get KA after the PH were killed. Good times.

I still cannot believe we all camped these NMS for 6 hours a day, with literal widescan spamming the whole time.

At least on kings they had proper windows and you could do other stuff for most of the camp time.

Best thing was when you did this for the full 6 hours and it still didn't pop, or popped and despawned in some out of the place spot.

My high school days were rife with days playing until the wee hours. I'd often go to bed around the time my dad would be waking up for work, especially on weekends.

It was never really a secret how addicted I was. I think the only reason my parents put up with it was at least I wasn't addicted to drugs or anything. And $13/mo has always been cheaper than buying a new game every few weeks.

Though in my defense, my parents sent me to a private school on the other side of the city, in which I had no existing friends nor means to make new ones.

So many terribly sleepless nights spent in the Valley of (Literal) Sorrows or Dragon's Aery, but mostly in Attohwa Chasm killing that stupid dragon overnight without a proper setup for 8 hours. The lack of sleep was also partially caused by a bad work schedule and tons of homework while I put myself through college, but Tiamat specifically was the bane of my existence for such a long while.

Family? Dom.meme

but ya, lol, only friends have ever bothered to take an interest in WHAT I'm playing, it's whatever.

For me it was around 2003-2004 whenever RSE we finally got to level 32 or so start RSE. All of my friends were Elvaan, we'd call each other 24/7 so go farm keys and open RSE chests together.

My PC was unfortunately in the living room growing up and my grandma was always asking me why I was chasing yellow chickens.

Jokes on her. I was riding it.

RIP grandma. ; ;

Well my friends would ask me to come sleepover and stuff, which was always good cause they had games like Halo or KOTOR, and I didn't. But I'd put off going over as long as possible to play more FFXI. And whenever I did go off to play at friend's for the day, when I got back home I'd immediately get on FFXI, because I NEEDED to get on.

Sometimes my friends would come over instead, and I'd be playing it while they played something else. They'd be like, "Hey, you've been playing that for 3 hours, wanna do something else?" - "No, there's 2 more hours on this NM's window." - "Uh... ok..."

My family didn't draw a distinction between MMO play and regular video games. I did get my PS2 taken away in 2005 though, due to flaunting my bedtime(many nights stayed up to 4am which is when my dad got up for work, I used to get a stern talking to for it) and hogging the TV up from my brother.

It wouldn't be for quite a few years, not until Heroes of Abyssea, wherein my parents would realize I'd been playing the same game for nearly 6~7 years. My brother knew pretty early on, but didn't realize it was MMO addiction until he tried WoW for a few months with a friend at college. He said his addiction scared him, so he uninstalled it, and busted up his copy. He said after that, he suddenly realized why I'd been so hostile about playing FFXI so many times when we were younger(we'd fight over the single TV a lot during my early mid-teens). He told me he doesn't understand how I can live like that, heh. (In summer 2007 he witnessed me staying awake 20+ hours at a time, only sleeping 3~4 almost the entire summer).

When I would fall asleep at my desk at work. Short story - I didn't last very long at the job. Lol.

I remember like it was yesterday, on a cold day in december, it might even been Christmas eve.

Wearing only my underwear, sitting in my hernia inducing office chair, staring at my dodeca hexa boxing ffxi setup.

After a year of farming, mercing, crafting, duping, market manipulating and hq crafting.

Looking at all my chars just have reached max gil.

Leaning back with my arms behind my head and thinking what i just achieved..

And then, looking up and suddenly seeing the power getting cut off and hearing all my machines spin down.

All screens turned black...

Then after a few minutes of just have been staring blankly the memories rushed in from the last 6 months.

The screaming that we need to pay they bills (we have all the gil in the world woman!)
The children crying because of the lack of food (i'll craft some mithkabob tonight for everyone)
Dept collectors at the door and hiding below my desk.
Weighing only 100 pounds
The obsessive need for dopamine from doing the next thing

After what could have been hours, laying on the floor, i picked myself up.
Walked to the library and put all my accounts up for auction.
Sold them off and called my wife.

"It's over, they are gone"

We met in the park and cried about the last year and I told her I was sorry and will never touch the game again.
Shortly after that I got a new job and we bough a new house and we were happy again.

6 months passed and SE introduced the mog bonanza and a friend of mine told me about it.

I convinced myself i'd just check it out.

Currently i'm in the basement of my grandparents and haven't spoken to my wife and 9 kids for 4 years.

Holy crap O.O;

Ksoze "wins" the thread

livin the dream

Worst I did was camp yinyang robe when it came out for a week with nearly no sleep, I did get it on my first claim haha that was a nightmare. Never again XD

Is there a certain progression in your avatar pics or are they just random pics, because i'm curious where it ends.

MMORPG "addiction" is a really interesting thing to me psychologically. I should look into studies.

I've always been a very obsessive person when it comes to the things I like. When I like them, I like them a lot. I usually try to figure out what it is subconsciously that makes me like it so much.

To this day, FFXI is the only MMO to keep my interest for more than a few weeks. I've tried at least a couple dozen games ranging from popular games like WoW, XIV, and GW2 to lesser-known ones like DDS:SMT:I:O. None of them had the discovery I craved.

I think a lot of the "addiction" comes from fear of missing out. And I think it exists in a lot of games wherein things may be collected, even in games like shooters. But it's made worse in online games because it makes you want to keep up with your friends. And it's made 100x worse in an MMORPG because the content virtually never ends. Play as many games as you want, but none of them really matter because FFXI maintains your progress and lets you do more things the further you've gotten. Collecting those Fuma Kyahan is such an important objective because it means you can cast Utsusemi more often on your Ninja, making you more valuable than most other Ninja out there. And you know it's not hard to do, it's just time-consuming. Every time you'd do it, you'd be pulling the handle on the slot machine. But unlike the loot boxes of today, you're not paying with your wallet, you're paying with your time...

I once caught myself small talking to an old lady (someone who obviously didn’t give a ***) about the game because I had nothing else going on in my life to mention. Subsequently I quit for 7-8 years and only came back about two years ago as a multi-boxing casual with no friends. It was fun at the time but I can never go back to the way it was.

That's definitely been the most painful part is not having people in real life to talk to about the game.

Great thread lol. A few favourites for me:

It must have been 2003/2004, myself and both my brothers (Liam and Gryphon in game) were all at home at the time. We had been camping the notorious Valkurm Emperor. Maybe it was for days.. weeks? In game we were on Pld, Mnk, Blm; no one had thief to jump on (in those days a second job was rare) but it was probably subbed for th1. In real life we were in three separate rooms of the same house. I think Liam Chi blasted it for the claim and we got the hairpin to drop! We were all so excited we were shouting to each other from our rooms. Mum ran up the stairs thinking something serious had happened by the shouting, then we had to explain what was going on.. she realized we were addicts! But I guess she thought three teenage lads could be addicted to worse things.

Fast forward a few years, my PLD is 75 (first 75 job) and I managed to get the TOD for Charybdis! Of course, the window opens up about 4.30am... Of course, Gryphon and I set our alarms and wake up in the middle of the night. We camped it for what felt like hours, half asleep. The little cave this thing pops in was crowded! Must have been 30+ players in there. It finally popped and Gryphon stun claimed it! I tanked it whilst he DoT'd it up and nuked it down. By the time I got my Joyeuse the rest of the family were starting their day, but Gryphon and I went back to bed until the afternoon despite the disapproval (believe "never gets up early for school but for this!" was mentioned in some form). I remember falling back to sleep in a good mood knowing the sword was mine! 16 years or so later I still have it.

Years on, I was a postgrad student living with a few house mates. Liam and I were camping Dragua (maybe for Liam's Verethragna?). We got into it and like a few other stories it was suddenly morning. My house mates both got up to start the day and saw me fighting a dragon in a desert.. "You woke up early to play?" *Takes a look at me "Oh you havent slept!". The house mate still loves to tell the story and use it to explain why he cant believe I managed to get a PhD lol.

You know I ignored this when I saw it the other day but I have to ask: Why do you think this is acceptable?

A. It's "a lot"
B. Go to the bathroom. (Actual point).

Something wrong with ya'll.

Gatorade bottles mate (wider top and grip on the sides), I had em lined up camping Argus back in the day when i went 2/7 against bots n' shady qhunts.

2004-2005 living with the 'rents and traded a bunch of games and old systems for a copy of ffxi, the worthless fkn guide, and some ps2 tranformers game. Had to sell off some of my collectible games (Lunar Silver Star StoryPS1 , SNES Ogre Battle, etc.. ) in order to buy a new hard drive, sound card, and Hercules 3dProphet III Video Card (I think!?). My neighbor was into IT and hooked me up with a 4 port hub and some ethernet cables so I could mooch off my pops imternet.

Installed the game, Mithra check, Bastok check, South FKN GUSTABERG CHECK.

I would play that game for 48 hours and barely move but to eat drink piss. For the next year straight it was 20 hours on 6 off, and though my folks knew I had checked out into the Matrix, the're just happy I wasn't crashing and burning in other ways (that was to be for other times).

I was addicted to treasure hunter I LIVED BREATHED AND SHAT LOOT FROM ALL THE FKN NM'S I KILLED. . . nuff said.

I remember my dad watching me do something, I think I was taking an airship between cities, literally just sitting there waiting for arrival. He told me I've got waaaaaay too much patience.

6 hours is a long time when you are drinking a ***ton of coffee and endless cans of monster. There was no time to go to the bathroom during those windows.... true dedication!

Man, 9 kids?! When did you have time to make kids? During maintenance? XD