Linkshell Drama

Recently I’ve had to deal with a situation that has saddened me a bit. I had to remove a long term member of the shell for essentially being a bit stupid. It’s the side of being a shell leader which is hard to deal with.

The story is that we had to close main lotting on RDM and BLM armour in Dynamis because we’ve had an overwhelming number of members wanting to lot these. Having recently dinged 75 RDM , D wanted to change his main lot to RDM. He has SAM, SMN and NIN.

As the only RDM relic that has fallen like rain is the body, we simply couldn’t do it right now and had already posted before he hit 75 that RDM lotting was closed until someone changed/moved on. He and I agreed to put him on a waiting list so that when something changed he could change to RDM main.

We only need 2 more RDM bodies and we’re done with them right now (seen 5 drop in about the same number of runs) so that may have even come up for open lotting before a slot freed up.

I then had some text conversations with him about the possibility of him upgrading his Great Katana. We made a tough decision at the start of the shell not to upgrade weapons and to distribute profits. So in order to move to upgrading a weapon we’d have to deprive people of all or some of their ability to make gil from the event to benefit one person. That would be pretty tough to do and the whole shell would have to be behind the upgrader.

We’d also have to be pretty sure they could finish it. 157 million gil at today’s prices is not an easy amount to raise. I was confident he could get to stage 3 with little hassle but I’ve seen a lot of upgraders fail after this point as the reality hits them. You really have to have a clear idea of what’s involved and the backing of a shell that runs more than once a week. I decided against upgrading gjallerhorn because much as I enjoy BRD, the stress of the process and the fact that really it’s WHM I love meant it wasn’t worth it to me.

With no tangible plan and no real funds I had to say the chances of us supporting his upgrade were very low.

I can understand why at this point someone might feel thwarted.

Having just gotten RDM to 75, I can understand wanting the relic, but I don’t want to deprive our long term RDM players of it for something I will dabble with*. I am in no way an experienced RDM, and I’d rather see them well rewarded than deprive them of gear for my ePeen and I hoped this was something Dz empathised with too, dinging RDM only a week or two before me. It’s easy to level jobs, it’s not easy to excel at them and gear does not make you a better player. It supports a good player but cannot cover up the faults of a poor one or be a substitute for experience.

Through a series of random clicks on FFXIAH I end up looking at the wanted lists for Alexander. I noticed Dz was wanting something and I clicked on his profile. Only to see him advertising he was looking for a new Dynamis shell. Whilst having the audacity to place ours in his profile. He didn’t tell me he was going to do this or was unhappy that he couldn’t lot RDM for a few weeks, he seemed happy to be put on the waiting list.

I’d have understood it if he’d come to me and said it was a dealbreaker for him, that or the relic weapon. But of course, then we’d have had to discuss the situation and it would have been awkward. He didn’t. He decided to cover his own back and continue attending Nova runs whilst looking for a new shell, and eventually ditch us in favour of them.

I couldn’t allow him to continue to benefit from Nova, especially as we were going to do Xarc and he wanted SMN horn. It’s not a piece we have seen yet and we have at least one more SMN who is waiting on it and a lot of 75 SMN players who work hard and would love to see it on open lot. So to see it go to him as points leader and then have him leave with it to join another shell would have been a big kick in the teeth. He was also a sackholder for our dynamis shell which presented other challenges and I was going away.

Having removed him from Nova, it then became apparent we were forced to remove him from Serendipity. Nova isn’t a completely separate shell but even if it were, if you don’t trust someone’s actions in one environment, why would you do so in another? The matter was discussed and he was removed. Unfortunately this wasn’t the only run-in over gear he’d had with people. Two years of membership washed away in one act of blatant stupidity. I’m not happy about it, but frankly we’ve seen enough idiots come and go, once someone breaks trust, things become incredibly uncomfortable for everyone.

I’ve been texted, messaged on FFXIAH, other members have been bombarded with messages and tells; and bugged to tell him what I’ve said. I’ve not said that much because the whole thing has just been horrible. I decided to post up on our forum the screenshot of the text on his profile on FFXIAH, once it became apparent that Chinese whispers were rife, stated what had happened and closed the thread.

Stuff like this can get to you, point is though nothing in FFXI is done in isolation, if you don’t remember the others around you who are there for you as much as you for them, eventually you’re going to trip up.

*I will probably change to SCH main lot once my BLM hat drops.