With the announcement that Final Fantasy XIV is to be another online game, the major question among FFXI players is “Do I leave all the work behind and move on to the new game?” I am certain that a lot of forum posts will occur when the new game comes out that such-and-such LS leader quits for new game, such-and-such LS moves to new game, etc etc. But the real question in this entire bombshell announcement is, “What does your linkshell mean to you?”
At the end of the day, most FFXI players are a member of at least one linkshell. Be it a social, event, or endgame shell, every linkshell member has an in-game “family” that hopefully helps its members out.
In my case, my primary linkshell these days is a social linkshell that just happens to do endgame stuff. Members overlap into my Dynamis and Sky linkshells, and the Salvage linkshell I’m an erstwhile member of. Would I want to move on to FFXIV with these people? Certainly.
I’ve been playing FFXI for just over 5 years now, and gone through several linkshells. When I started, my friends and I all decided that once one of us got the 8000 gil to buy the linkshell, they would. Thus began our small LS for us to chat on. Eventually we joined a larger LS and its immediate successor, and that’s where I stayed for the next year and a half. Once I hit 70, I decided to join up with the endgame shell a bunch of my friends from my social joined up in. I enjoyed it but burned out quickly, so I quit for a while.
Suddenly one day I decided to return to Vana’diel, so I joined yet another social LS, then kinda meandered around, quit for a month, then came back and joined yet another endgame shell that folded soon after I joined. That’s about the time I transferred to Seraph from Ragnarok. I stayed there for a while in a social, joined an endgame shell then almost immediately quit. I was kinda fed up with endgame attitudes by that point, heh.
Then in the beginning of ’08, an old RL friend convinced me to transfer to Phoenix, where I plan to stay til the servers are shut down. Why is this? While I’ve all but left the social I joined upon arriving on the server, the shell I’m in now truly means a lot to me.
And why is this? Is it the people? Is it the attitudes? Is it the “do endgame stuff for fun” situation we do? The answer to all of these is a resounding “Yes!” I have never been in a linkshell like this before. We do not have drama, thankfully, everyone in the LS is very very competent, and we seem to think we can do anything if we put our minds to it. That sort of ambition is such a relief after being in linkshells before that kinda were “eh” about most things.
When your social LS kills Kirins on a regular basis in addition to doing Sea Gods, it puts a very warm feeling in your heart. Not to mention doing Limbus (including Ultima and Omega) a couple times a week, making up a large portion of a highly successful Dynamis linkshell, and seeding a new Sky linkshell that is doing very well!
In the end, though, what my linkshell means to me may be different from the next person, but when you would want to move onto the next game with this same group of people solely based on the fact that the linkshell truly is family, I believe that you’ve found a keeper. And that I would not trade anything for.
So, what does your linkshell mean to you?
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