you know what grinds my gears?

[Rau]

the only thing that really bothers me is social link shells that refuse to invite new players because in the event they quit, no one can kick them. Its an understandable policy, but it is literally killing the game for new players.

also, OP; u mad?

[Aldora]

the only thing that really bothers me is social link shells that refuse to invite new players because in the event they quit, no one can kick them. Its an understandable policy, but it is literally killing the game for new players.

Look at it from a different perspective... I'm the owner of the linkshell called "The Dragons Aery" on Sargatanas. I initially created the Linkshell so that friends from Final Fantasy XI could join and see familiar faces when they log into the game. The Linkshell was meant to be a social Linkshell where people could do anything they want to do, without any strict rules or scheduled events. I only had one wish, which was for people to have fun. In any way possible.

Since I like helping people out, explaining how the game works, helping them out with quests, farming for specific items and participate in events/grinding parties, i decided to "announce" that "The Dragons Aery" would welcome anybody who wanted to join (no matter their timezone or their experience).

In a matter of weeks i managed to invite 120 people to my Linkshell and in no time, the Linkshell was full and could not invite more players to it. How ever, during that same time period, more then 70% of the people in the linkshell didn't log in anymore. So, from all the members of my linkshell, only 30 people (tops) were logging in regularly. Since we don't have the ability to kick people who are offline at the time and haven't logged in for over severeal months, we would have to drop the linkshell and re-create it again. By doing so, you have to give everyone a new pearl once the linkshell has been re-created (which is rather tough if you create an "international" Linkshell), but also all the info you've entered into the Linkshell forum (on Lodestone) would be lost.

That's basically the other side of the story.

I still feel that i was doing "the right thing" with my Linkshell. But it will only work if its members would actively participate within the Linkshell. Surely, i imagine that most of the people who are currently not active within the Linkshell might return once 2.0 gets closer. That is why i haven't broken the Linkshell yet.

For now i've transfered all the active members to a temporary linkshell. Once 2.0 is released, and we can kick people from the linkshell while being offline, then i can take my broom and swipe the Linkshell until its clean and tidy. Once that's done and all my linkshell members have been transfered back to the Dragons Aery Linkshell, then i can open up the linkshell for new players again.

But still, i would like to run the Linkshell the same way i've done over the course of these past 6 to 7 months. Only this time, i hope that i will find more people who would like to take on a more active role in the Linkshell for the long run. Only then can a linkshell like mine "blossom".