I cannot stay silent anymore. I want to share with you all some painful experiences of interacting with certain people in this game. As per posting rules, I will omit player names and even server names.

Those people are what you can call abusive manipulators. While they play videogames, they are constantly looking for potential targets, with the intent of gaining their trust and consequently using those people for, as one of them called it, "mental abuse". There are highly dangerous people among them, who are actively trying to harm their victims, as happened with myself, acting in such a way as to conceal the intent and consequences of their influence from their target.

I know that presence of abusive and manipulative people on the internet is not news by itself. At least it shouldn't be, I know that it's easy to forget how dangerous internet really is. I've been approached and attacked by those people numerous times over the years, and as a result, learned a lot about their methods and practices. I firmly believe that everyone should be informed about such dangers.

I got into hospital after last encounter with those people this February, and I'm still recovering from it. I know that I'm not in any way special, neither the first, nor the last victim, just one of many, which was repeatedly confirmed by those people themselves. Judging by how honed their techniques are, how readily and ruthlessly do they employ them, and how convinced they are that they won't be caught or punished because "you cannot prove anything" and "noone will believe you", they've been getting away with it for a while.

I want to underline that I'm not trying to cast a shade on Square Enix in any way, I am a big fan of FF14 myself. Manipulators play a variety of videogames, MMOs just inherently present one of the more convenient spaces to scout for, and approach their victims, due to this genre's underlying social nature. I know for a fact that they have the same presence in WoW as well.