Stepping down from Viva - Retrospective a year later

So I wanted to type this out, because it's been on my mind lately.

Viva Eorzea Group Picture - 2016

It's been about a year since I stepped down from leading Viva Eorzea, one of the free companies (or in other MMOs known as guilds) in Final Fantasy XIV. I stepped down after leading it for a little over 6 years. (September 2010 to December 2016. I ended up making the decision to step down a few weeks before, but I've contemplated stepping down since 2014.

In 2014, we formed a static to tackle the hardest raid at the time, the Coil of Bahamut. The original static disbanded during Twintania (we couldn't make it past the snakes/twisters phase at a rate people were comfortable) and we reformed and got to Turn 7 and Ramuh. At the same time, I was balancing FFXIV leadership duties, running the video game studio, and took an offer for a full-time job that was a 2 1/2 hour drive one way. I was frustrated and exhausted every night by the time we would run (I think we went 3 days a week? Pretty crazy.) - It all came to a head when we were walling on the last phase of Ramuh, when in a mix of all of my emotions I let out all my anger and steam on the Scholar who messed up on one mechanic and made her cry. We disbanded the static the day after largely due to my outbursts and very poor attitude, which I regret. In fact, I consider it to be one of my biggest regrets in my gaming history. I vowed to never get that angry at another player or at a game ever again. I was directing the wrong feelings at the wrong time and exploded in a fit of rage.

At that point, I felt changes had to be made. I stopped desiring to be a hardcore player after that point, I figured as long as I do the new content at all (and preferably while it's somewhat recent and relevant), I'll be happy. I was stressing myself too much and didn't have the time and patience to be able to do things that way again if I wanted to keep my sanity. Part of this was wanting to step down from Viva Eorzea leadership which I announced to the group at the very first Fan Festival in Las Vegas.

After some compromise from the officers at the time to be able to shoulder some of the responsibility, I agreed to stay on board as leader for the Heavensward expansion. Fast forward another year or two, one of my longtime XIV friends from 1.0 comes back to the game and we form a new group called Zaelen's Revenge in order to tackle the newest raid and primal at a very midcore pace. I was happy again, being able to do some of the new content at a reasonable pace that is befitting of my lifestyle. I will say it took some time to find like-minded players. On Hyperion, at least, most players are either very hardcore or very casual and it's hard to find players in the middle. Some of this extended to the FC, it was very hard to come up with events people would attend and are interested in due to this range of playstyle preferences. Events started to be cancelled, people left for more active groups, and I found myself neglecting my personal projects on weekday nights to try and prioritize events that would never come to fruition.

Ultimately, in December, I took a work trip and some people took my week absence from the game as me leaving or quitting and we lost a lot of members that week. One week of me gone. By this point, due to unrelated issues with their static, some of my longtime XI friends who were officers had either quit the game or moved to other servers to play more hardcore. Who was I leading Viva for? A bunch of people I no longer really knew. That's when I made the decision to step down. I spent a week or two thinking of who would best be able to take over. I didn't want to throw away members' efforts who put money into the bank for our free company assets, house, and ships, to someone who would abuse it. I also didn't want to leave the free company either, so I didn't want to make the decision lightly. I chose Azu La to be the one to take over, because like me, he attended the Fan Festivals, was a dedicated member to the FC, and he helped run the events to get us our free company base and airships funded. He is and was the best person to take Viva Eorzea forward, and he still runs things to this day.

Now a year later, I have an officer title but I feel it's only honorary at this point, I don't really do any running of Viva any more other than posting news articles about XIV on the group.

What was the point of saying all of this? I miss leading Viva Eorzea, but running something like that requires a lot of thankless responsibility, and a lot of management behind the scenes is involved if you want to stay active and engaged with the FC. People will leave or get disinterested or start getting the feeling that "it's not the same" if you let up even a little bit from what is considered the norm. It's not easy, and at times feels like a full-time job. I'm really thankful for the opportunity for leading a great group for that amount of time, but I don't think it'll be something I do again, for this game or another one.