Quote Originally Posted by NaoSen View Post
Friends:
There are multiple mechanisms in place to build friendships in the game, be it through Free Companies, Social Venues (RP Cafe's, Clubs, Bars), Communities (Eureka, Deep Dungeons, Gposing), to leave is to neglect/lose at the same time you cannot force people to stay so you are at a situation where you stay and others leave due to content who don't mind tie cutting / maintain friendship out of game or you leave and the same thing. Yes, discord exists, yes other games exist, however "Games we both enjoy that also facilitate the same atmosphere" is not exactly the same. Some are desperately lonely in real life and just cannot make friends there, I know multiple people like this and FF is basically their only social outlet.
It’s 2024, a lot of people don’t want friends anymore. They just hop around between different flavors-of-the-month games and the going cope is “just hit the bar if you want friends lol”. And they want to drag everyone else down with this vain cope. More and more I hear the line of “MMOs are dead, multiplayer games are dead” in FFXIV spaces. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. Doomers with low attention span are intentionally crashing this game and they don’t care if we lose friends in the process, because they have none to begin with.