So Just How Addicted To FFXI Were You?

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So just how addicted to FFXI were you?
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By Terrah Crystal 2015-10-05 13:20:22
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FFXI had me baaaaaaaaaaaad for years. I started in March of '06, at the time I had just lost one of my jobs (not due to XI mind you, I got fired a couple days prior to purchasing), it wasn't too bad for the first couple of months (where I was working 4 days a week (Thursday, Sat-Mon) until I got fired. I think I went hardcore after that for at least a couple of years, drained all of my unemployment benefits, no luck with jobs (I did leave the apartment quite a bit). Moved to where I am now in '08 and did something horrid to my PC that I was playing on (had no idea how to fix it) and bought a crap PC that didn't have Windows on it (so had to keep resorting to rebooting the damn thing every 30 days. Suffice to say, I got to know the music on POL quite a bit with the reinstalls, pretty much destroyed that computer with overclocking the processor to even run XI (this was an older Dell, maybe P3?) until my mom bought a new desktop, which then I applied for the XIV (1.0) beta and was back in college, which then I bought the laptop with loan money (still owe on that... ._.) I've been on hiatus from XI a few times now since 2012, but from mid '06-mid '11 I was on XI probably a good 10-12 hrs a day. Have over 2 years (RL time) of playtime on my main XI character as of the last free period they did for part 2 of Rhapsodies

To say I was addicted, is saying it lightly.
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2015-10-05 13:24:33
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ScaevolaBahamut said: »
Valefor.Sehachan said: »
ScaevolaBahamut said: »
it's harmless
It can be extremely unhealthy too.

People can waste time doing things they like at the expense of other things they ought to be doing. It doesn't make those things unhealthy.

I have a coworker who spends basically all of her free time reading. She doesn't get out, at all. Is reading unhealthy?
Done like that yes. For your life and your health(in this case the eyes).

Just like compulsory masturbation can be bad for your body(abrasions), for your sexual life(difficulty with feeling pleasure), psychological(guilt, self-loathing), and if that's all you do in your life, sure social too.
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By ScaevolaBahamut 2015-10-05 13:29:57
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Valefor.Sehachan said: »
ScaevolaBahamut said: »
Valefor.Sehachan said: »
ScaevolaBahamut said: »
it's harmless
It can be extremely unhealthy too.

People can waste time doing things they like at the expense of other things they ought to be doing. It doesn't make those things unhealthy.

I have a coworker who spends basically all of her free time reading. She doesn't get out, at all. Is reading unhealthy?
Done like that yes. For your life and your health(in this case the eyes).

Just like compulsory masturbation can be bad for your body(abrasions), for your sexual life(difficulty with feeling pleasure), psychological(guilt, self-loathing), and if that's all you do in your life, sure social too.

You're applying the logic of "unhealthy" so broadly as to strip it of all meaning. Do something more than you're physically capable of handling without injury and you'll get injured; blaming the activity and not your obsession is straight up dumb.

Walking is unhealthy.

Eating is unhealthy.

Sleeping is unhealthy.

Drinking water is unhealthy.

Being alive is unhealthy.
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2015-10-05 13:36:07
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ScaevolaBahamut said: »
blaming the activity and not your obsession is straight up dumb
Good thing I didn't.
I merely commented that even obsessive masturbation is not harmless.
 
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By 2015-10-05 13:40:31
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By ScaevolaBahamut 2015-10-05 13:53:56
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Because this is in the context of what constitutes an addiction, and why that matters.

If somebody's addicted to something, the only long-term solution is to stop it.

If somebody's obsessed with something, whether they keep doing it or not will not really affect their mental state. Obsession is what happens when you move beyond wanting something to want the wanting itself; if you don't wrestle with that, quitting FFXI won't stop you from, say, wasting time reading forums and patch notes years later.

Of course, again, none of this will matter a month from now when content updates stop and there ceases to be some unknown future goal to fantasize about.
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2015-10-05 13:58:09
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Cool. And that doesn't matter cause in the original context from where this conversation started: internet(and thus mmo) can be cause of serious addiction, like gambling or whatever.

Just cause you only know people obsessed with FFXI doesn't mean there aren't also some who might be addicted to it.
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By ScaevolaBahamut 2015-10-05 14:01:59
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I have never known anyone with no goals in an MMO, even if the goals they have* are wildly unrealistic. Also, a gambling addict loves the feeling they get when gambling, but five seconds on any MMO forum will reveal endless frustration with the actual game.



*and these are the people most, shall we say, "at risk"
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By Rooks 2015-10-05 14:02:05
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Do we need another thread, about people addicted to pointless arguments?

Stay on topic. (And by topic I mean, discussion about ridiculous "dedication" as Byrth put it, to FFXI. You two can bicker about the nature of addiction in PMs if you want to so badly).
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By 2015-10-05 14:03:28
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By Rooks 2015-10-05 14:05:15
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Asura.Floppyseconds said: »
Rooks said: »
Do we need another thread, about people addicted to pointless arguments?

Stay on topic.

Isn't the topic addiction? Specifically addiction to FFXI, but talking about addiction itself is the obvious and likely outcome for moments in a thread like this.

Yeah, I edited it after I posted to clarify.

If said conversation was anything other than a psych 101 wank festival I'd let it go, but it's not, so knock it off. This was mostly a light hearted little romp down memory lane, so let's get back to that.
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By ScaevolaBahamut 2015-10-05 14:14:07
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Asura.Floppyseconds said: »
ScaevolaBahamut said: »
Obsession is what happens when you move beyond wanting something to want the wanting itself;

What is this? First year psych for some credits?

People are obsessed with things because the crave, covet, desire, etc. No one is obsessed because they desire wanting. They desire the thing itself.


(Sorry, Rooks, but I kind of have to address this)

Not....really? This was Lacan's whole thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objet_petit_a

Pretty interesting stuff, and really influential in psychoanalysis! Desire exists not to be fulfilled by a defined object, but to exist in itself, giving the desiring person a sense of purpose and fulfillment. He said the best way to address it in its pathological form is to give the desire form, that can either be attained (and inevitably leave you disappointed, training you to resist the objet petit a in the future and mature) or rejected.

This is why we'll all probably lose interest in 11 after November: the desire will at last be given form. There will be no more speculation about some difficult hardcore content that will justify slaving away over mythics or abjuration gear or JP or what have you.
 
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By 2015-10-05 14:34:17
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By Lakshmi.Sparthosx 2015-10-05 14:38:18
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For some anecdotal lulz, I've known people in XI who lost their job by skipping out to camp XYZ. So much for listening to our 'Word to the players' prompt before logging in!

People who let their marriage go to ***thanks to one too many hours in Vana'diel.

Another who compulsively drank through Dynamis, which is probably worse than having to actually do Dynamis.

Another who slipped nudes to a sackholder (pun intended) to try moving up the DKP totem pole.

And the murky feeling around what happened when you HNM'd too much. It stopped being fun and it turned even keeled people into robots camping cycles and generally becoming a bit too obsessed with hurting other people. I can attest to being far more 'on edge' whenever something regarding endgame popped up and losing claim went from 'oh well' to being pissed for the rest of the day.

There's one thing to get claims on rare mobs and another to intentionally move monsters on top of people to cause deaths. Train monsters to get people wiped. Curespam on the tail to cause an arena flail. Get people breathed with AOE. Holding wyrms for hours just to spite. And on and on and on.

FFXI was definitely an addiction for many endgamers. It follows the cycle of being at first something amazing and quickly devolved into doing anything to get the next 'fix', which in this case was a claim, a rare drop or whatever sacrificing RL obligations for a THE MOTHERFUCKING ADABERK.
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By Aeyela 2015-10-05 14:38:19
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Rooks said: »
If said conversation was anything other than a psych 101 wank festival I'd let it go, but it's not, so knock it off.

Two people comparing e-peens over something trivial really does take me back to the glory days of HNM, though.
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2015-10-05 14:42:45
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There's no epeening? I only wanted to point out that a mmo can cause addiction. And that is a fact.
 
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By 2015-10-05 14:53:33
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By ScaevolaBahamut 2015-10-05 14:55:59
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Asura.Floppyseconds said: »
*looks at the ceiling*

It's only fair I should mention this is pretty much exactly my reaction whenever somebody mentions Lacan.
 
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By 2015-10-05 17:31:54
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By Asura.Hoturi 2015-10-05 17:37:04
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When I thought that camping Fafnir/Aspid/KB was fun.

That was about addicted as I got, albeit I quit for a girlfriend - so I guess I was a normie regardless of what content I was doing or how much time I put into the game.
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By Valefor.Esdain 2015-10-05 17:46:07
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I didn't read everyone's posts, but I'm sure something could be said for the people that continue to come to post on these forums after having quit playing.

One of us.
One of us.
One of us.
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By 2015-10-05 17:53:12
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By Sylph.Kakashiiix 2015-10-05 18:37:48
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quit during first month of soa expansion release. came back 4 months 5 months later and told myself to get a mythic. Now I have 3. no lyfe.
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By Odin.Godofgods 2015-10-05 18:44:00
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Someone should mail him a copy of 14...
 
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By Sylph.Hyunkyl 2015-10-06 09:28:35
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Where's the 4th one Kaka? :P
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By Bahamut.Vette 2015-10-06 10:51:07
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I first saw ffXi was back in 2002 when a couple of my friends were playing. It got me curious but couldn't afford to buy a ps2. So for 4 yrs. The game title and gameplay was stuck in the back of my mind.

In 2004 I met my future wife. I worked as an over the road truck driver at the time. So I was gone for 30 to 45 days at a time. So the nights were the cellphone calls to each other. After awhile, it wasn't working to we'll being in the long distance relationship.

Ended up being in engaged and married in 2005, hoping this will work. We tried it for a year. Also only took 30 days away from home because of her daughter at the time. She was only 5. I wanted to be there for them more often.

In Sept 26th, 2006, I bought an unopened ffxi box set with a new 1st Gen ps2. Also had a laptop I used for work. Still driving truck cross country. I started playing on my down time at home. My wife was interested in the CS at first, then let her play with the charater. I got her hooked. I also found that AT&T had an "air card" for the laptop. Grabbed that and a pc version of ffxi.

Since then, we played together instead of the phone calls. Every night on my down time.

In 2009, my wife ended up disabled and had 2 corrective brain serguries. So I quit my trucking and came home.

Now, I've worked locally for the last 5 years at a government facility. She has been retraining her brain during that time starting with solitaire and mojiong. Also managed to pick up the controller to play ffxi.

We celebrated our 10th anniversary recently and my daughter is now in HS. We are still playing. We tried ffxiv arr. It didn't last.

So if anyone e thanks this game will kill the relationship and the job. This was the opposite.

This game was part of our connection to keep our marrage alive!!!

Thank you SE for keeping ffxi around for all these years.
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By Siren.Kiyara 2015-10-07 04:00:46
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I started back in 2004 and didn't really quit until 2014 so 10 years I was into this game. I play still occasionally when it's free but the magic isn't there anymore as all my friends quit and it's pretty much just me and a very few amount of people. FFXIV didn't do much for me either. The feeling only lasted 8 months sadly. Still beautiful memories as this MMORPG was my first.
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By Bismarck.Lucried 2015-10-07 06:08:34
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i have to say. my story is very much like the the guy's in the OP's video. i had never played an MMO at that point. my soon to be roommate at the time was showing the game off to me. it looked amazing for its time. i remembered being very wowed at how good it looked. however i was a cheap *** hahah. i did not see the point in buying a game for $50.00 and paying to play it every month. the whole idea behind it seemed very dumb to me at the time. my roommate had imported it from japan and had been playing it for quite some time before he talked me into buying it myself. when i started COP had just hit the shelves. all it took was a couple days and i was hooked. i loved meeting the new people. doing the quests and missions, joining experience parties, and most of all camping nm's. i met a lot of really great people during that time. i met a lot of really bad people to. but that had been part of the thrill. i had been playing every spare moment i could find. my social life had really suffered. and to an extend it is still recovering. now i had always prioritized my job over the game. but friends and family had quickly fell behind. i didn't have my first level 75 job until TOAU had come out. although nearly every job was at level 70 at the time. linkshell members were always messing with me telling me to get my Maat's cap already. mind you it was no easy task at the time. as i mentioned before i really loved camping nms. particularly when i actually had competition. i still recall the rush of an 18hour sozu rogberry camp session and finally winning a claim. i spent a good solid five or six months on that nm alone. and when i finally got the drop... that is a feeling i have yet to experience again in this game. i remember just staring at the screen for what had to have been 15-20mins looking in my inventory in disbelief. during that time i had been in a lot of great linkshells and even now i still miss all of those people. i still play ffxi. however not nearly as much as i used to. alot of my friends moved on. either in life or to other MMO's. i enjoy doing content with my current linkshell but my work schedule just doesn't match up anymore. to an extent i guess i could still say im addicted to the game. but not nearly like i was 4-5 years ago.
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