Etiquette of FFXI

How people act in mmorpgs is the same as people would act in real life.

Imagine old FFXI like living in the middle of nowhere in a hut, you need other people. Even if you're an introvert, you need other people or you'll die, so the neighbour that lives a mile away...you know that person really well. This is what old ffxi was, you could do nothing alone so it forced people to build communities. Introverts often built strong friendships with one other person, something you don't really see anymore because now introverts that used to do this can just...remain introverts.

Modern MMORPGs are like living in a major town in 2020, you can live your life and need nobody. Supermarkets, internet, paid travel etc It's not uncommon for these people to not even really know their neighbors at all. In modern mmorpgs you can level alone, you can do endgame alone, craft alone.

If you played ffxi back in the day you would get to level 13 and that was it, now you had to "join the community". If you refused to do that you had to quit, those were your only two options.

If you play FFXIV, you can play the game for years and never make a single friend and be successful doing it that way. The game rewards you for being anti-social, so most are. They level to cap alone, they use dungeon finders to group up with randoms and never talk, when it's over they leave and queue again.

When there is an option, there is no community to speak of.

/r/ffxi Thread