Once I reached high level, some days when I would have nothing else to do on the game I would just sit in Jeuno listening for shouts of people needing help.
Even before having a proper LS and there being LS buddies to help, I enjoyed just helping randoms.
I actually
wanted to help people, I found it fun. And I remember when I was 'growing up' constantly shouting to form coffer key groups etc when I needed help and people helped me so I wanted to be a guy now that did that.
I would randomly tele people who were shouting for ports and when they went to trade the money I'd say free ^_^ and warp away. I genuinely liked trying to make the community a nicer place because I love my server! Leviathan 4 life!!! If even a handful of the people I helped/was nice too were inspired to be helpful to someone else down the line then I would be happy.
Yea there were shitty times too when things went wrong and I'd be frustrated at the game, but overall some of the nicest people I've met online were from random encounters on FFXI.
FFXIV I never felt like I was part of anything connected bar a few occasions. Beyond hardly even noticing chat now to just switching it off completely because of spam, or real life characters not even loading on my screen (lolPS3?) I usually just went about my business with no interaction.
I liked how you could meet people from other servers on the raid things, but for some reason 90% of them were dickheads and always felt like the group needed them more than they needed us.... I grew very tired of it very quickly.
Plus I felt the rewards were just meh. Where are my job specific items? Where is my TH+ item I could strive to be the best THF I could be type thing instead of oh joy here is some AGI+. Getting an extra tick of MP refresh gear felt like it made a difference. Nothing in FFXIV ever made me feel like I was progressing.
I love FFXI.
Don't stop it!!
I'm not ready!