Why is AFKing so popular in FFXIV?

[Gothicshark]

I'm seriously not being snide - more just curious what the motivation is. I know that the game not forcing you to log off is a big part of it, but there has to be more to it than that. I like playing dress-up probably more than most people; I like showing off. But when I am not actively doing something, I tend to shut off the client simply because I am a) going to walk away and do something else non-PC related, or b) am going to play another game, in which case I'd rather not divert memory resources to something I'm not actively playing.

This isn't to say that I never AFK myself - far from it. But there are a lot of times when I will visit, say, Ul'dah, and see a person doing some emote or something, and then come back 3 or 4 hours later, and they're still there, doing the exact same thing. Hell, on Balmung, there's a person who somehow manages to kill their character in the Ul'dah aetheryte room (not the feign death emote - I mean actually a dead character), and just leaves it there for like 8-10 hours straight (a group of us have taken to calling her the 'resident dead prostitute'). Another guy in Limsa Lominsa has attained minor fame for wearing a giant mog suit and then using a double and doing the vanu vanu dance for something like 18-20 hours a day - as far as most of us can tell, it is the singular function of his account.

Again, these people aren't hurting anyone, etc., and I'm not here to excoriate them. But, rather, I just want to know: why? Why don't you just turn the game off?

I dislike the login. I know typing a password shouldn't be an issue. But seriously, the combo of max sized Password, and one-time password to keep my account safe, means it's a pain in the *** to type it in more than once a day. So if I leave to do something, I just leave the client running the game. Now I do power down my system when I sleep after all my home office is in my bedroom, and frankly, my system can get loud, and the flashing pink lights can keep me up. But during the day, I log in first thing when I power it up. When I break from work I play.

[foussi]

I go mostly afk when I play on my phone, toilet, eating, my parents need me or when napping. There are times when I am afk for like 5 hours.
Pc is getting shut down when I go to work or sleep, I am confused tho why people let their game run for days without end and afk for days, especially during summer.

[Puremallace]

I know one guy right this minute that is a Dragoon on Siren/Aether that will AFK literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week who is geared to the teeth with a sweet glamour and you know why? It is the same reason people used to AFk for days from top guilds in WoW back when they had BIS and extremely exclusive mounts.

Sometimes you just want to floss and show off your accomplishments.

[TroySoFab]

Some people just don't turn their game/pc off when they leave, I guess just to have everything up for when they return. Not very efficient, but to each their own. Also some people may log in early for raid or other group functions, and just afk to do something else while they wait on everyone else.

There is also some notoriety that you alluded to which could also be one reason for it. The guy who always dances by the summoning bell, the lalafell who is humming on a storage crate, etc.

AFK'ing is the true endgame.

Also this.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I AFK in the Gold Saucer right in front of the attendant. I alt tab back into the game and click on her to check what the next GATE would be (If the Slice is Right is really fun. Cliffhanger is fast and easy MGP. I sometimes do the jumping puzzle if I'm in the mood for it. I never do the shooting minigame). I think half of my character's time played is from sitting in the Gold Saucer.

[Eris4494]

I think they do it just to make it harder on others to login and make it so they do have to.

[Titania40]

If the reason someone is AFKing for hours at a time is "I don't want to wait in a login queue"... Then congratulations, you are part of the reason there is a login queue. If you're done playing, log out. Should even 50 people who AFK 24/7 to avoid login queues do that, it's possible there wont be any login queues because the servers aren't kept full due to people who aren't actually playing.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I don't really do it so much in this game but I was notorious for staying logged in when not playing on FFXI. About the only times I logged in on that game was when the actual servers went down for maintenance. Hence why my play time was measured in years during the Vana'diel census. XD

I'd usually do it someplace where I wasn't likely to get chat from other ppl such as my mog room with /anon turned on then review the chat log when I got back to see if I'd gotten any direct messages from LS mates asking about things.

As far as the excuses in here about login queue or it being too hard to type their password...

The activity just makes the login queue problem worse if your complaint is the login queue. It's like those people complaining about traffic jams on freeways and roads in larger cities making it take too long to get where they want to go. So they drive like an self entitled ass and cause another traffic jam making the problem worse.

As for too hard to type your password... That is literally just an excuse for laziness and nothing more.

[Titania40]

I haven't typed passwords in over a decade. I copy/paste the password from a textfile that is kept on a usb stick I don't leave plugged in. I started doing that after my SOE account got hacked once, prompting me to start changing passwords weekly to something completely random I'll never remember. These days, I generate passwords by typing randomly into that text file and deleting to fit and captializing randomly picked letters.

Need to set up a new authentication app still. I had to remove it before due to my old tablet dying, thus getting locked out of my FFXI account at the time.

[Holystyle]

For me personally for some MAGICAL reason in FFXIV i have to RETYPE password each time i want to log in and i got Jebaited one time password meant I TYPE IT ONCE AND NEVER again noono nono i have to TYPE IT EACH TIME i want to play which is literally annoying when i play other game i just hit PLAY button/click once and i am on my character screen and just pick character to play.

So coming from that to have to retype 2 passwords gets annoying a lot so i think that is main reason.
and for second i even need to get phone and get app to give me password.
YUP ANNOYING.