People Going Homeless Playing FFXI

Chain smokers also eat and sleep, are they not addicted?

Translating this back to FFXI context I'd argue it hardly was a conscious decision because most people who started in the early 2000s had no clue what they were getting into, while someone who starts meth probably knows what he's signing up for.
Even today I doubt the awareness of potential consequences caused by games with predatory design philosophies is anywhere close to where it is for substance abuse or gambling.

The only people who can't become an investor are people with absolutely 0 saving per month, therefore no money to invest. Such people exists, for sure. Poverty is a very real thing.

For anyone else that can save at least $1 or something per month, put that money in an investment account and they are technically an investor.

Whether an investor can become rich or not is a whole different story though.

If you invest money and don't get the result as others because of a disparity in wealth, then are you actually investing or just being told that you are?

Just because you're not at the bottom doesn't mean you got anywhere significant with investing. If you spent your life and resources on the idea of wealth but you just participated for the benefit of others and were placated in the process then you were the one that was tricked.

We all know making numbers going up makes people happy.
More $$ =/= more happiness unless it actually does. But you sure can chase it until you're old enough for your life to be functionally over and you were robbed by the illusion of making smart decisions. Look at all that self-esteem and worth that they sold you. Lol make some goals and self help seminar talk, while you're out here selling investing like they are looseys.

If society collapses
Blame FFXI

When it collapses, not if, it will be directly because of onlyclams, fansly, instaclam, pedotok etc

There are some dark things that have happened as a result of MMO addiction. If you look deep enough here even, you'll see links to criminal cases and news reports as a result of some of them....

I don't know that XI had the widespread addictive appeal that WoW did, though, it seems like I knew a lot more people who had RL struggles due to their addiction to WoW. Likely because it appealed to a more casual crowd, but people with addictive personalities can easily be sucked in and do some very dangerous/bad things as a result of their inability to moderate.

This is just hamstering away responsibility.

The formula for success is well known and not magic, continuously applied effort over time. The biggest investment anyone can make is in themselves, knowledge is power and understanding how things work allows someone to use that knowledge to create wealth. Mechanically this means starting a business and working for yourself. In that scenario you assume all the profit of your work but also assume all the risk too. Most people are very risk adverse and dominated by that instant reward system I mentioned earlier. This results in them taking jobs as an employee where they exchange risk and time for money. This isn't always a bad idea, if part of that compensation is then either reinvested into themselves or somewhere else with a plan to eventually not be making someone else wealth.

As for investments, it's a public market, everyone gets the exact same output for input. The only distinguisher is knowledge, which is the result of self investment. I don't mean predicting the future, only fools time the market, instead basic principles like P/E ratios, NAV, and to never invest into anything you don't understand.

Here is a basic rule that I wish someone had taught me when I was in my 20's. Buy panic, sell hysteria.

You're not the boss of me! I'm going to name my first son, Felgar Luigi Thorny Saevel Eiryl Jr. ...but we'll just call him, Junior, for short....for the rest of his miserable existence.

Very dark things indeed. Breaking our own reward system can cause all sorts of bad behavioral problems to arise.

Here is the thing though, addiction is generally a form of self-medication. If you were to remove the substance in question, say video games, then the individual would just seek out another substance to replace it with, meth, fentanyl, gambling, orgies, alcohol, the list goes on. You can go around stamping out addictive substances until there is zero fun left in life and we all walk around like Puritans, but people with mental disorders are still going to find something to medicate with. All you've done is drove the problem underground and made it worse.

Identify the issue causing the self medication, treat that issue and the addictive behavior disappears on it's own. Usually it's depression caused by feelings of inadequacy, lack of genuine social relationships and close family bonds, lack of genuine accomplishments and other character growth, self-confidence boosting events.

I say genuine because just giving someone a trophy doesn't help, they need to have faced adversity and then overcome that adversity to have achieved a goal. We have generations of parents who thought it was a good idea to remove all barriers and adversity to their children's lives, causing stunted character growth and poor mental self images. That's on top of the usual domestic abuse situations.

It depends on what "significant" means.

I would say most people who invest using the reliable method (only buy index, buy and hold and don't sell even during correction) can "move up a tier" in terms of social hierarchy after 20-30 years of doing it. It's just math and power of compound interest.

So if you are a middle class, putting a thousand dollars into S&P 500 every month for 8% gain per year, after 30 years it'll be 1.4m.

If you don't invest at all, after 30 years of saving $1000 per month you'll get 360k.

Having 360k when you retire probably make you a middle class. Having 1.4m is on the tier of upper middle class.

Personally, I would say the difference is quite significant for middle class or higher. It's just math.

That being said, it's also true that if someone has way below average income, it's harder to "get rich" by only investing due to the lack of capital. Because it is easy to save $1000 per month if you make $5000 per month, it's harder if you only make $1500 per month.

There are always story about people who bought Bitcoin in 2013 and now a billionaire, or people who bought large amount of Nvidia stocks at $100 and become rich when it's $1000+. But they are in the minority statistically speaking. Most reliable investment method for majority of people can't magically make poor people rich. It can only help them "move up a tier" if they invest for long enough.

Therefore, if someone is poor, their first priority is increase their income/salary so they can save more, then they'll get the most benefit from investing.

I wouldn't say investing isn't significant though. It absolutely is for middle class people with a decent paying job and savings every month.

Absolutely hilarious.


There are no laws written for insider trading. You don't need to respond back anymore. Trick or treat

It's only page 2 ...how did we deviate so far off the thread's topic? >_>;

Perhaps we need a sticky thread on how to keep our collective autistic tendencies in check ...because they clearly do not always mix well with each other.

Well the most important trait for being successful is delayed gratification. Which is also the trait most developed from resisting our natural addictive urges. It's other name is "self discipline". Being able to tell yourself "no" is an incredibly powerful ability to have.

As for ole boy up top, I'm living breathing proof he is just playing victim as a form of self justification. I'm far from the only person to have figured out how to be successful and move into the capital class. I just happen to want to share the information with other people so they can do the same, instead of victimizing themselves and killing their own futures.

There's a lot of people who just flat out don't believe when you explain to them lawmakers in the US who know what bills are up for voting and how their party will vote can buy or short stocks that are effected by those bill: IE They can short tropicana if a bills about to pass that bans oranges forever. Completely legal.

The poster also probably didn't pay attention to a good example of public vs insiders: public trading program robin hood 'cheated' and stopped accepting trades when reddit created a grassroots gamestop price surge against an investment corp shorting the stock because the real investors would have basically lost something like 50 billion dollars buying back shares. They covered the big companies *** and cheated thousands of investors out of making tens of thousands of dollars each.

I don't think koala man's ideas are bad - about understanding wants and thinking about which ones benefit you and which ones are 'cupcake good', he's right about needing to save money and that stocks and investment funds are better than letting it sit in a student checking account, but when you see an investor get hit by goblin rush and he doesn't move back an inch, it isn't because he's studied goblins harder then the other guy.

on topic: FFXI both *** up my life (depressed MMO addict the semester in college I flunked out) but also helped me tremendously dig my own *** out (developed discipline in making goals and sticking with them, running an endgame LS eventually gave me confidence and examples of project management and helped me nail an interview, + learning to tell people 'no' and when to quit something you don't like that isn't providing value to you).

Politicians doing insider trading is extremely minor in the grand scheme of things, yes it's wrong and technically illegal, though good luck proving anything.


If you knew how brokerages work you would know why they had to stop trading. The NYSE would of done the same and it's not for the benefit of evil hedge funds, though they are slimy as hell. There is now regulation to prevent sudden market crash's like the previous ones that have happened from automatic computer based trading. When any stock experiences that kind of insane surge in a 24hr period, it's frozen for a short period of time. Game stops price was going to go down regardless and many of those reddit trolls lost a ton of money, though if you took time to do research you'd realize the ones doing the initial buying frenzy sold their holdings when the rush happened and made a ton of money.

This adage holds true


Most of you are pigs, you are looking for a sure-thing get-rich-quick scheme for instant gratification. You want zero-risk, fast reward, and if you don't get it then "the games rigged". There is a legion of people who prey on your mentality and will gladly sell you a dream, make money off you, then laugh as they walk away.

Instead take a longer outlook, stop trying to get rich right now and realize that most of what you see is just an illusion fueled by credit, an illusion that ends badly for most, not that you see it. Starting a business is the best way to generate wealth, assuming you can't do that, then the next best is slow gradual investing over long periods of time.

https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator

Here is a stock pick for you, the S and P 500. It has a pretty consistent 10% average return over it's lifetime and is essentially investing in the entire economy. There are better strategies to make money, but that one is probably the lowest risk possible.

As I said before, if poor trailer trash like me can make it to the capital investor class, then able bodied person can. I didn't even really start until my mid 30's and had to start over from scratch twice. My only wish is that I would of listened to others in my early 20's instead of having the same mentality you do.

more common I have issues getting people to play longer rather than play too often

when there's good exploits or gimmicks it brings players back
hakuryu easyfarm etc


making the game hard work makes the players hard people and usually they don't get broken
for what i'm working with gil is harder to make now than ever
maybe not day one lvl 5 but in any of the years
you never needed as much to get nice things
price of mats and slow sales from everyone having their stuff already usually only buying for mules

from my point of view they are really working to get rid of the weak people because you have to be tough to make it in this game in its current state
no one wants to undercut everyone wants their crafted gear to sell high yet you have to undercut to sell anything at all

when adoulin was released and delve got big I basically got kicked out of the door to having groups to do content with
soloed all my master job points soloed all my gil soloed everything
delve omen odyssey sortie all basically impossible to do

I guess my point is it's going to depend on the person
if you are weak and holding on to life playing the game
if you are weak and spend too much time in game
anything bad can happen to you it's an accident walking or not

the way the game is currently set up there's nothing easy about it so I don't see people that are on the wrong side of life doing too well
I think most people that play have it together

I remember before I ever played online games horror stories of EQ people suiciding themself from losing their online gf
then thinking people playing too often losing their job or family college or homeless
personally I think that comes down to the person

I would say that XI is honestly one of the best games a kid or teenager can play, the number of life lessons it can teach is pretty insane if you think about it.

The way the economy is setup, it teaches all kinds of lessons about supply and demand, inflation and a mindset to make money in a living economy. It also teaches you to be careful, since it's so easy to overbid or mess up and lose a load of gil.

It teaches you how to interact with people, how to setup groups or even fill a leadership role etc. The lack of any real party finder, means you have to talk to people and are expected to understand how the thing you're building a group for works.

It teaches you people are not always to be trusted, and to not take things at face value. I remember being ripped off with an item in a bazaar and paying millions over the top and being furious about it as a teenager. It's nice to lean that lesson in a game, and not irl.

To stick with tasks that may seem long winded or impossible, delay gratification, set goals, follow complex guides, think out of the box.

The windower / addon community adds a quickly rewarded desire to learn coding, lots of really successful people may never have moved into the professions they have now if not for windower / xi.

What XI offers is pretty unique these days in terms of teaching kids life lessons, most modern games shield the player from these kinds of things. What does Fortnite teach kids? I can't think of anything honestly. It's just a waste of time and money on skins.

You just have to make sure they do their school work, and move on when the time comes.

Stainslav is a pretty good example, from a hardcore XI player running a HNMLS to the billionaire owner of Discord. Even the software he created came from a desire to make a communication platform for XI players (guildwork and then onto discord)

You haven't used AH in 4-5 years. What gives?

That was me installing the game again when they did the free login for like 2 weeks. I came back like 3 times for the free login and did the same thing each time:
Go to South San'doria AH and sell some stuff in storage >
go to The Boyahda Tree and fight crabs and stuff >
go back to San'doria in my mog house >
look at my items and stuff >
quit the game again

lol @ this being me subbing to 14 again for a month.

One time i was banging this girl i was with while on duty to camp tiamat that day as tank. It popped and i hopped off her to go tank it.... She hated that game forever and we didnt last long after lol...

On a serious note there was a very young couple who neglected their baby so bad i think they lost it or it was taken away in the early 2000's. Every time i see that warning before playing i think of that baby...

XI took aur jaaabs.

This is what I was hinting at when I posted earlier. One of my friends was in a LS with her. She was convicted and released a few years ago IIRC.

I don't think it was a couple, IIRC she was single. It seemed to be a pretty clear cut case of mental illness and XI happened to be the outlet. The rest is honestly just disturbing, but if you find her username on here there is a link to the news article. I've since lost it and it's one of those things I just wish I could forget about.

Me too man...

Lets just stop and think about this one, anyone who worked on, with or around the guildwork app might actually now know a billionaire. Not just any billionaire but the guy who started the absolute biggest gaming communication / social media platform.

That's wild.

I bet he invested in a generic index fund and waited around to pretending his life was going to get better while deriving self esteem off being an investor

I know people got a hold of that guy and asked if they could get permission to update the guildwork, and he told them that he would update it himself and then never did, was like 2 years ago

I know some people get jealous to see others do well, I think it's awesome. I love to know XI players got good jobs, made good investments, created something cool or whatever else and made lots of money. Maybe I have a weird mindset, and that I played XI too much as a teenager but I see XI players as my group or whatever and seeing them do well is awesome.

Stainslav was one of us and as deep into XI as you can possibly get, and he made it to the highest levels you can in life, that's pretty cool honestly.

I can't agree with this more. I love it when ppl on TV/news mention "facebook/X/discord", mainly because *** anything and everything META, but I get a kick knowing that a guy from FFXI created Discord. But it brings up a point that I think players have come to take for granted.

FFXIAH, Windower, addons/plugins, are crafted used to make QoL better in a game we love. This is EXACTLY how I finally quit a couple years ago. SE does *** for FFXI, the very minimum. Anyway I'm ranting.

I too am extremely proud of Stanislav and look forward to who's gonna be next in the FFXI legacy so I can support them :)