1751: Speaking in Tongues

My Final Fantasy XIV Free Company was afflicted with something that seems to come to all MMORPG guilds at one point or another recently: that which is colloquially referred to as “drama”.

Ultimately, the drama itself wasn’t particularly serious — no-one was hurt and no damage was done, though arguably an ill-thought-out prank by an outgoing member was not the best means of handling the situation — but what I found interesting was the discussions that followed it up.

Essentially, the conclusion that many of us came to is that communication is important. It may sound like a simple piece of advice — common sense, obvious, even — but it’s so easy to forget, even in an inherently social situation like a massively multiplayer online game. In a Free Company the size of ours, it’s inevitable that cliques form, friendships blossom and smaller subgroups start doing things together. That’s the natural way of things, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. That is, until it starts having a negative impact on the group as a whole for whatever reason — perhaps some members see these smaller subgroups as somewhat exclusionary; perhaps the subgroups find it difficult to relate to other people; perhaps everyone could just stand to be a bit more open and honest with one another.

There were a number of contributing factors in this instance that I won’t bore you with now, but suffice to say that a lack of communication was the root cause of the issues we suffered. And, positively, said lack of communication was correctly identified quickly as the root cause of these issues, and people have been making determined efforts to try and make things right. Although the initial “drama” wasn’t particularly pleasant or fun to witness, it turns out it ultimately had a positive impact; people are talking more, cooperating more and doing more things together. Plans have been put in place for more organised cooperation on the more difficult things the game has to offer, and people are just generally being more helpful and pleasant towards one another.

It’s testament to the overall quality of people we have in the Free Company as a whole that the active members — many of whom could be argued to be implicated in the whole exclusivity/lack of communication thing — have taken this stuff happening on the chin, haven’t got angry and upset and have done something positive from it: they’ve learned from it, identified things that we can do better and differently for one another, and ultimately the Free Company will hopefully be a far more pleasant place overall as a result.

Me, I’m mostly just glad it all seems to be over and done with for now. I hate to see friends fighting with one another, or — in this case — just misunderstanding one another. It’s a great pity that the situation led us to lose a few Free Company members who had been with us since the beginning — and people I enjoyed playing with, moreover — but these things happen, and ultimately we’ll be a stronger group as a result.

Now let’s all just enjoy the game!