ah man i have hundreds and hundreds of screenshots, it's just you and me dead on the ground in bastok dynamis - pretty boring other than your name on the screen. i'll find it if you really really want me to but it will take probably 30 minutes >_>
yeah i was in enfini, although i wouldn't have remembered the name without you reminding me. here's what i can remember:
ghetto ls - some random guy started a social LS, we were mostly lvl 15-40, it broke when a sackholder kicked me over a personal argument and people got annoyed. did a lot of early missions with them
lynsy's LS - i forget the name? varg, and a lot of rzero people were in it. we mostly did sky and a couple serket fights. we helped the top 10 or so people get well equipped, then they all left with the loot we got for them and made rzero. that was the first time i ever really felt betrayed in an LS, but i thought it wouldn't happen again. i should have realized how common it would be.
lynsy made a new ls called spirospero i think? and then perhaps a 3rd , i forget the name. at that point people were leaving and lynsy went to a different server (mid 2004)
i had been doing dynamis in a new LS with snickers and drew and we all decided to make an HNMLS together, Pandavas. snickers actually asked me if i wanted to create the LS and be the leader, but i didn't feel like i could handle the responsibility. i was in pandavas for a long time, maybe a year, and eventually i quit because the top people were getting all the loot and everyone else got nothing, plus snickers and i had had a lot of disagreements. he had been very nice and generous at first but over the months i guess the power and access to all the money changed him and he was turning into kind of an asshole, harsh with words and punishments, and pretty selfish about loot.
then porshia invited me to an HNMLS with rha and orage and some other nice people, i was in that for a long time. we had a lot of fun and they gave me my first ever item i had ever recieved from any LS a verm robe. not a big deal but at that point i had been in HNMLS for over a year with nothing to show for it but a genbu shield. so i was pretty happy there. then porshia just disappeared and someone with a sack, i dont even remember their name, secretly started recruiting people in the LS for another LS he was making. gradually we saw it coming - more and more people in our LS started doing stuff by themselves in their own little group. finally we (the remaining leaders of porshia's LS) confronted them and after weeks of lying denials they finally admitted it and left. that really bummed me out, maybe my low point during the whole time i played.
then rha, orage majhone and i and the few people left formed a new LS, maybe that was enfini? i don't remember. we had some fun but there was a lot of tension from the start and we were pretty small so we couldn't do a lot, and we had some really negative personalities involved, people whos main interest seemed to be insulting other people behind their backs. meanwhile i made a new Dynamis LS and we were doing that. however rha didn't like how i handled loot (anyone can lot, very generous rules, open to anyone) and he made his own dynamis LS. he kept all the currency and had very strict rules about who got what. i didn't feel like i could morally just abandon all the 40+ people on my dynamis LS, who had already spent lots of time working together and earning lotting rights, and i didn't like how rha was keeping all the currency so he could benefit himself with a relic katana (i was trying to get relic horn for my bard, which i thought would be much more beneficial for everyone, plus i let everyone lot on all currency, i didn't keep any more than my share). between the selfishness apparent in the dynamis LS rules and the backstabbing and shit going on in the main LS, i didn't really feel like i belong there anymore so i left, and shortly afterwards they reformed as Mattet.
early 2006 i joined another LS, i dont remember the name but they were very friendly, still mostly just doing sky with a little sea and ignoring HNM camps. everyone in the LS used speedrun hack - they used to get from jeuno to sky in about 1 minute - and after 3 years of watching cheaters go unpunished i assumed S-E would never deal with the cheating. so i asked the LS how to get the speedrun hack and they gave me a copy. that was the beginning of the end for grunion.
anyway we did sea and sky for a couple months but were very inactive, people were leaving and we were only doing 1 event a week at most. so i applied and was accepted to VS in april or may and i could immediately tell that was where i belonged. after 2+ years of disorganization, laziness, lack of leadership, selfishness, drama, betrayal, VS was the total opposite: excellent leaders, motivated members, challenging but reasonable goals (e.g. vrtra), lots of activity, lots of reward. i was constantly amazed every day at how well everyone got along, at how well the leaders organized events. i really regretted not joining them 2 years earlier. my time in FFXI would have been so much happier. in just the 1.5 months i was with them we did vrtra, dynamis-xarcabard, and a few other things i had always wanted to do but never been able to because i was in smaller, less active, less organized LS's. it was pretty great.
also because i have a sleep disorder i often played at night and had developed a lot of friends in JP LS's so i did a lot of events with them, so during the whole 3 years or so i was in NA HNMLS i was simultaneously in JP HNMLS doing stuff at 6am with them. they were less active (1-2 events per week) but always much friendlier and generous and more fun than most of the NA LS's i was in. i definitely treasure the time i spent with them.
anyway in june they did the very first mass banning and they banned grunion, i guess for the speedhacking i had done in the 2nd to last LS i was in. i never used a claiming bot or fishing bot or anything like that so that must be why. and to be honest i'm at least 75% glad it happened. i wish i had been in VS a lot sooner because they were so great, but most of my time in HNMLS's i was being ignored or taken advantage of, and by june 2006 i definitely was ready to move on to something new.
i never played an MMO before ffxi and never have since (although im 50/50 on trying XIV) and i feel like the time i spent there was a graduate course in gaming. every other MMO looks like bejeweled compared the complexity, tedium, and sense of accomplishment i felt sometimes in FFXI. it was at times a transcendent experience and left me with more questions than answers about human relationships in our time. i don't fully understand the ramifications of developing close personal, at times intimate friendships in FFXI - but it was all so fragile, taking place in one particular server in one game. i think that anytime you spend thousands of hours on something, you should make sure it can't all disappear just from uninstalling a program. the popularity of wow and the realization that tens of millions of people are spending their real lives developing their virtual, fictional identities, and that inevitably all of that will disappear completely, permanently, makes me think MMOs might be an enormous mistake.
anyway back to playing left 4 dead 2 lol
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