Reflections on friendships

[VayleAkashi]

I don't know how everyone spent their last evening on FFXIV as we know it but; as part of my last day on FFXIV, before the final save, I decided to take a few moments with some of my closest friends. I am concerned that the transition to 2.0 will cause some to stop playing or will result in us ending up on different servers. As such, I asked them each to accompany me on a field trip and I took us to the places we met. While there we discussed how we met and some of our fun memories as friends. We also took a screenshot with a final 1.0 /goodbye to commit this moment to history. Below are the screenshots as well as a description of my friendship with each of them.

Antanias Lebanon:

I met Ant over a year ago in a random party while I was leveling up my Warrior. I don't remember much about the party but I think we were getting rather good exp for the time outside of Zahar'ak. As often happens in fast exp parties, Ant and I died. Now that would not have been significant, however, when we died Ant's character looked like he was grabbing on to Vayle's boob. Ant mentioned something about his death in party and I made a comment along the lines of "I am sure Ant doesn't mind being dead since he is /boobgrab on Vayle". This then started uproarious laughter from the party and sealed the deal on my new friend. Antanias and I quickly became close friends, duoing leves and joining exp parties together to level up our Warrior and Dragoon. Ant has always been around to greet me with a hug and plenty of cookies and I am grateful for our unlikely death positioning to have brought us together. Though we have had too many fun memories to count; my favorite Ant memory would have to be how we met. I don't think any other story will ever top that.


Reimi Saionjo:

I met Reimi in Ul'dah over the course of a few weeks over a year ago. Reimi is a rerolled character and I will not share his original name to protect the innocent. However, I did not know that Reimi was a rerolled character when I first met him, all I knew was that some random gentleman kept trolling me in Ul'dah and doing emotes at me. When I finally got it out of him who he was, it turned out that we were previously in the same ls. Reimi is such a wonderful and funny guy; I have busted out laughing over so many of his comments. Reimi is also, almost always, pants-less. And he has a fine set of legs... My favorite Reimi memory is when we went to help a ls mate out with her Ifrit easy fight. Now, Ifrit easy is well, super easy. And Reimi decides to take that to the extreme and fight with a reindeer hat and no pants. It is awfully hard to take a flaming beast seriously when your ls mate is a pants-less reindeer.... LOL!


Jiradovia Noveno:

I met Jira at Camp Bloodshore about a year ago when he was leveling up his first job, Paladin. I was in the area headed to kill a lower level nm with a group of friends for a quest. For some reason one of my friends at the time mentioned Jira standing there, and we asked him to join our group and did a few leves. Jira had a friendly vibe about him and he didn't have a linkshell so I started chatting with him a bit in /tell. Jira indeed proved to be a friendly gentleman and he joined our linkshell. Jira and I have been close ever since, always getting into crazy battles or just goofing off in town. My favorite Jira memory is around the time we first met, we roamed all over Eorzea to kill NM's to get his Paladin gear. It was a great bonding time and allowed us to get to know one another better.


Nopax Nopax:

I met Nopax Nopax about 6 months ago in a pick up group for Ifrit hard. I was on my warrior out to get my ever elusive axe and Nopax was on his White Mage (as usual). I had never tanked Ifrit before but I had fought him plenty so I thought it would be no big deal. However, Nopax had to kindly remind me on several occasions to move the flaming beast lest I mpk him, my White Mage. Nopax seemed to be a pretty ok guy and seemed to know his stuff so I sent him a couple of /tells over the course of the evening asking him silly questions about the fight. I added him to my friends list and we ended up being in several more Ifrit groups together and I have spent nearly every night since then in some sort of adventure with him. One of the things I love about Nopax (and also hate sometimes when I know I failed lol) is his honesty. He will always tell me how to improve or do something better. In addition our ever present /tell banter during big battles has always made me laugh. My favorite Nopax memory actually occurred on several occasions. He has convinced countless people that doing different emotes in Hamlet will cause us to lose 25pts per emote. This has resulted in some hilarious reactions from people when we start spamming /cheer or /disappointed etc.


Kres Leschae:

Wow, what can I say about my Kresy dear... It seems like I have known him forever, probably because I have and anyone that knows me, knows that he is totally my favorite person ever. He has been my constant throughout my FFXIV career. I met Kres when I first started playing FFXIV more seriously. I was a very shy gal that didn't speak unless spoken to. Kres was in my linkshell and he just seemed super nice so I would ask his advice on gear or how to play a job on occasion. The first time I ever saw Kres's character though, was at Camp Blackbrush. I was crafting and thinking about rerolling on a different server because I just couldn't seem to make any friends when Kresy came to turn in a leve. He saw me and started crafting with me and thus a friendly conversation ensued. During our conversation we decided that we should level up a job together and so it was. We were Gladiator and Conjurer and we were AWESOME! We duo'd our way to the 40's on leves and grinding mobs. In addition to grinding we also killed nearly every free roaming mid-range NM duo. This was quite the feat back then for a level 30~something Conjurer and Gladiator. Since this time we have spent countless hours killing random mobs, participating in battles or wasting time in Ul'dah. Kres will forever be my favorite person to just waste time with. My favorite Kres memory is killing Cactuar Jack back in the day as level 30~something Gladiator and Conjurer. Back then you either solo'd Jack very slowly as Thaumaturge or you took a couple parties to absorb his needles. As we were duo'ing him for the Elmo for Kres we had an audience of people on several occasions cheering us on in disbelief. (p.s. I think Kresy went like 1/50 on that darn Elmo but it was worth it when it dropped.)


The reason I have kept playing FFXIV for so long is because of the people I have met and the friendships formed. This list is just a sampling of my closest friends, however there have been many more that have either stopped playing, have transferred to other servers or we have grown apart. I have so many screenshots and memories that it is impossible to list all of them, however, I hold them all dear.

I know that by this point very few people are reading my ramblings. However, it has been a joy to write and I hope that it brings back memories for other people of how they met their closest friends, and possibly share them.

I look forward to continuing friendships and creating new ones in A Real Reborn.

Love,
Vayle~

[Mikita]

Vayle,

Thank you for sharing your stories! I read all of them. ^^

More than anything else, the friendships and shared experiences are reason why I look forward to spending time playing FFXIV every day.

The person I have to thank most is (I hope she doesn't mind my sharing this!)

Milicent Odin



I first met Mili, as we call her, about a month after FFXIV started. I was browsing her personal bazaar while she was standingin Ul'dah, and wanted to buy some dyes that she was offering for sale -- but she ran off before I could complete the purchase. I sent her a /tell asking if I could find her and buy the items... but no response came for a few minutes. I had already given up before her reply finally came. It turns out she had never spoken to anyone before and had frantically pulled out the instruction manual trying to figure out how to respond!

A few days later I ran into Mili again at Skull Valley. I bought some more dye from her, and we talked a bit before I invited her into our Linkshell... and we have been great friends ever since.

Mili is always cheerful. Always willing to put down what she is doing to help a friend. She has a very level head and forever has a positive outlook on things, which nicely balances out for my sometimes moody and uncertain moments. ^^;

We have been playing together practically every day for close to 2 years now. We have been through thick and thin. Good times and some not so good ones. But her friendship has been unwavering.

One of our most memorable moments together is from the end of summer 2011, after she offered to help me scout out a location for a summer fireworks party. Just a quiet moment where we stopped to watch the sunset from Limsa Lominsa.

[fusional]

nice thread

[Suraj]

Good thread, was nice to read your stories

I really will miss 1.0 for as weird as it sounds, and although very hard I hope most of my friends don't segregate as some are from Japan.

[AntonyB]

Great thread, was really nice to read! Sounds like you met some great people!

[darkstarpoet1]

great thread. i'd just like to say goodbye to a few of the people i have gotten to know pretty well over the last 2 years that i will probably lose contact with after arr launches because of the regional issues.

Jam Bacchi - i'll miss you even though you are from god forsaken gridania, but now i can burn it down without you stopping me.

Star Killer - I'll create a char on whatever server you wind up on just to /em stabs <t> in the back.

Cena Nana - i'll miss your awesomeness and my favorite crafting buddy. i don't know that i would have ever capped all my crafts without our 18 hour grind sessions and chatting back and forth the whole time.

there's many others i will miss once arr launches again, but felt these 3 needed special shout outs because we will probably be separated after the launch due to regional servers. i'll miss you guys. if i didn't list you and we get separated don't think you will be forgotten, but there's so many great friends i've made over the last 2 years it's impossible to list them all. please, don't feel overlooked because each of the friends i have made over the last 2 years made the game very enjoyable.

[Rau]

nice thread

I met verily because he joined my ls for 3 days before Al-qaeda kidnapped and brainwashed him.

[Reika]

I have too many SS to post in here....

[Siegtaru]

I was glad to make a few good and worthwhile friends in my time playing XIV on Sargatanas, and I'm sure if said people read my post they would definitely know who they are. Unfortunately, the majority of the people that I've encountered on this server are the most unfriendly, traitorous and abhorrent people I've ever had the misfortune of wasting my time playing with in an MMORPG, and I'm sure if those people read my post, they would also know who they are. ^^

I'm looking forward to moving to a server as far away as possible from the degenerate populace of the current Sargatanas. Hopefully I'll see the handful of decent people that made the game worth playing on this server on a new and better one in ARR.

[Antanias]

About the whole boob-grabbing thing...it was an accident xD