I played a white mage in FF11. I have never been as popular as I was playing a WHM in that fuckin’ game.
I didn’t play for long, but I played a fuckin’ lot. Crammed as much as I could into those two months. It was me, in real life, feeling like I was going to die any day, healing other people in digital, and that’s one of the best things you can do aside from healing people in reality.
One of my favorite video game memories – scratch that, favorite memories – is from FF11. Like, me 1x years ago would have said “that is so pathetic, having a favorite memory that is related to a game” but nowadays I can accept that I enjoy video games and many of the people that play them. Nowadays I wouldn’t play a WHM though. That shit is a fuckin’ burden.
Anyway, I roped a friend into playing the game with me. And we both started out on one continent. I don’t remember the name. I’m in awe of people how remember names and dates and like, plots of movies and books and such. I can’t do that shit! But I can play video games, and make Bad Choices. And I remember we both thought “This continent we’re on…it fuckin’ sucks. We should go to that other continent, cuz there’s probably a party going on over there.” Grass is greener, etc.
But this was FF11, and going from one landmass to another was a fuckin’ nightmare. We were relatively low level. There was no fuckin’ way we could ever possibly get from the low-man starter towns to that other continent without dying a billion times. And when you died in FF11 back then (and maybe still?) you lost XP. You could fuckin’ level down in FF11. It was super brutal. I loved that so much. I also probably threw a bunch of shit and screamed all sorts of profanities after dying and leveling down more times than I can count, but shit, at least I cared about something.
Also I think you had to take a boat from one continent to the next and that shit cost a lotta money I didn’t have. We were pursuing an impossible dream.
We decided to hoof it to the port. We kept dying. It was awful. But eventually we ran into this Japanese dude. He was high level, cuz he was in Japan and they had that game way earlier than we did. And somehow we used a bunch of emotes and pre-programmed phrases to communicate to this guy that we wanted to go across the sea. In retrospect this seems really brazen, asking some stranger to waste his time helping out a bunch of foreign jerks, but I have to think he somehow noticed us having a hard time. Or maybe my friend is the one who bugged him. Cuz me, I’m shy. I’d never talk to a stranger. I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack right now, typing this shit! Believe it.
Anyway, this guy, he somehow got the point. He knew we didn’t belong there, in the desert, dying and dying and dying. He invited us to his party, and he killed all the tough monsters. He guided us to the port, and then he gave us some gil. He /waved goodbye, and we /waved goodbye, and I swear I got kinda choked up, cuz this stranger was so kind to us, and he didn’t have to be! I’d like to think he treasured that memory as much as I do. I wish I knew that guy’s name so I could send him a postcard saying “thank you”.
Of course I quit playing the game, like, 2 days later, cuz I couldn’t afford the $12 a month. And when I resubbed 6 months later I learned about the horrors of Japanese subscription services, and how they bill on the first of every month, so if you sign up on the 29th you’re paying fuckin’ $12 for 2 days of play time. They still do that shit, on the 15th anniversary of FF11’s launch. Someone should have a long talk with the people who run this shit in Japan. But the people who play those games, and help strangers? They’re good, and deserve better service than they’re getting.
So…thank you, Japanese stranger…wherever you are. You were way kinder than anyone I ever met playing WoW. Especially the WoW player I confided to about being borderline crippled. He had me join a guild and told the guildmaster that I was a wheelchair bound ex-stripper who was into that poly lifestyle. That guildmaster kept /whispering me about how I should get together with his wife and him and do some rude shit until I quit the game. Fuck Americans, man. Fuck Blizzard. Fuck taurens and orcs and especially elves. They’re way lamer than mithra or gelkans or blingglorps or whatever the fuck FF11 had.