Why is it so hard to make close friends in this game? lol

[Moqi]

Well if we're playing the blame game I blame the grind and having to run the same instance so many times that people just want to stay in the dungeon as little as possible. If we didn't have to run them so many times we wouldn't mind spending 10 minutes more inside, take things slow and chat. I've had a lot of pleasant, non silent runs back when I started and people weren't spamming low level dungones for the relic/cards.

OP, join a social linkshell and throw yourself at whatever people are talking about, something will stick. If you don't make the initial effort you'll never meet people, there are just too many to notice if you don't put yourself out there to be noticed. When I left my first FC I was pretty much alone, but I joined a couple of LS. Not all of them worked but I did meet some people I have been playing with for months now. Joining a static helps too, although that depends on what you wanna do in game.

[Jamillion]

I met my girlfriend playing this game, join a good FC and anything could happen.

[Red_Wolf]

We do have a general chat,though. "Say" "Yell" "Shout" and "Alliance".

God forbid we ever get a server chat. Those are basically 24/7 barrens chat rooms. No thank you.

Zone chat's and raid chat are not even close to general chat.

Well I'm not forcing you to read it... LOL. But if you want community then that is the biggest piece I know that is missing from these servers.

[Mugiawara]

I met my girlfriend playing this game, join a good FC and anything could happen.

That's so adorable.
To OP: Jamillion reminds me of something.
Back in Phase3/4 forums people had a realtionship forum and one couple met in FFXI and ACTUALLY met in rl, and one couple had like 3 kids and got married in rl one day.
Very sweet story. But yeah...take the first step to chat also!

[Gillionaire]

I blame the /busy status I have to maintain to keep RMT from stealing my sanity. Without which, we might even be close in-game friends.

I agree that RMT spams are a motivation in setting status to busy, but it's SE's downright crappy UI that makes people weigh the options and resort to that.
Even without RMT, you can't receive tells in duty, check friends list, check linkshells... You pretty much can't do ANYTHING social while in duty finder. I don't understand why such a limitation exists but the mindset I get from it is.. If I'm in duty, I already miss out on all the /tells and invites etc, so people have found ways to circumvent the problem (unfortunately, ls/fc chat is about the only way) and rarely even use /tells.
That's why people don't mind setting status to busy.

I don't even have whispered messages on my chat log since nobody I know would send me a /tell anyway. Or if they had to, they'll find another way to contact me etc.
UI in this game needs a rehaul badly.

Why can't I invite people to a linkshell because I'm kneeling down and crafting?
Why can't I accept a freaking party invite because I'm crafting?
So many stupid restrictions it's not even funny.

Also, the 1000 character limit on this forum... Come on, why's that necessary? We can already circumvent it with reposting... tsk tsk

We do have a general chat,though. "Say" "Yell" "Shout" and "Alliance".

God forbid we ever get a server chat. Those are basically 24/7 barrens chat rooms. No thank you.

We could just do away with linkshells and simply make free to open chat channels that people can join at will. With moderators of course. That way we can have a channel such as /hunts and use that as a consolidated source of hunt callouts instead of having to join 3-4 different hunting ls. I don't understand why SE is trying to save so much damn resource on chat.. Does it really put that much strain on their servers? I don't think so.

[Dawning-Blue]

Want to make friends learn a new language. A whole new world will open up to you