I was going to wait until the servers were down to post all this, but then I got impatient. This is my farewell to Stormblood! I loved this expansion so much.

Looking around my social circles I’ve learned that’s a minority opinion. For a few days I’ve let that really bum me out. It’s like I can’t turn anywhere without seeing Heavensward nostalgia or bashing Stormblood. I let it get to me and I sat and internally argued all of these surely elaborate defenses of Stormblood. Then I realized that’s Stupid ™.

People like what they like and there’s no reason for me to fight about it. Instead I just want to look at what made the expansion special to me. Because that’s really what this is about. I tore myself up over whether or not this was objective. As if which expansion is better could be. The only experience I can have is mine. So that’s what I’m going to talk about and cherish.

I remember I had the privilege of joining this game into one of the largest FCs on the Excalibur server. DGKK is like #3 or something outrageous. Despite that, I still felt pretty alone. I have this really dumb insecurity. I have a hard time believing anybody likes me. Long time friends, romantic interests, family. I don’t even understand how to articulate it because it’s so dumb. I’ve always had a supportive family. I’ve always had friends. Hell, I won one of those “Most Likely to ____” in my senior year of high school.

But if there’s one thing I’ve struggled to build in my life, it’s self-confidence, and steps backward in my life often go back to that insecurity. So yeah I may have run some content with people or posted in the SA thread, but I never felt like part of this community. So I decided to change.

I guess I realized that maybe you receive the energy you put out. So I tried really really hard to just be kinder. To show more respect and be more talkative and actively nurture the relationships in my life. And all that started when Stormblood launched. I was inspired to start a picture diary to help me remember the journey. I never expected to have such a fun time I wouldn’t need it.

It’s an interesting process. Trying to be I dunno, better? Nicer? Cause you work on yourself and then you just kinda hope it’s working out? Nobody tells you “Hey, we like you now.” But in the last two years I can safely say Things Got Better.

I got some of my friends into the game. I have so many memories of laughing and staying up way later than we should have. I got into raiding. I never got to try any of the savage content in HW, because I was convinced I wasn’t good enough. Now after Stormblood I’m looking forward to raiding in 5.0 more than almost anything else.

I’d say things really exploded for me in the last 6 months. In the last 6 months I’ve been the happiest I’ve been in my life for a long time. I started taking pictures daily. This creative outlet put me in a pattern of doing something every day that made me feel good about myself. Good picture, bad picture, whatever. It was something to look forward to every day. To the point where now I don’t feel good if I miss a day.

Then other people started to notice and encourage me to keep going. That made me feel more comfortable talking and sharing and joking around. I felt myself go from a person who also plays Final Fantasy XIV to a member of a community. And more importantly, a member of the community that other people might actually like and want to talk to.

Around that time is when I met @CherryBellossom and we started hanging out. Then we started taking pictures together, because the best thing that can happen to a hobby is for other people to take an interest in it with you. Hence MMO I guess. My friends got in on it and it just became this great group activity.

And everything really crystallized 4/6/2019 at my Eternal Bonding. My silly character, his anime virtual wife, and like 100 people who showed up to waste an hour or so with us. That memory is what keeps me going even on the rough days.

I wanted to get to a place where people cared about me and I felt like I deserved that feeling enough to believe them. I looked myself in the mirror and I endeavored to do better. I put in the work and it feels like I’ve spent all of 2019 seeing how much better my life can be if I’m willing to work for it.

Woo, that kinda got away from me. Anyway, that’s Stormblood. The expansion where I made new friends, felt like I matured as a person, and also got anime catgirl married. There were some sick trials and I still think even the worst SB1 dungeon is solid and they did some real QoL changes, but that’s not important anymore. I’m just excited to see where I end up next.

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