Eventually Haud decided that he was going to create a linkshell, which is the FFXI equivalent of a guild. Originally this linkshell was going to be, and I shit you not, a chocobo racing guild. For whatever reason he thought it would be awesome. Apparently so did square enix because eventually they made a mini-game in FFXI which was chocobo racing. So maybe Haud was just way ahead of his time. As with most guilds, things were slow to start and even I didn't spend much time with that lovely red pearl on. But time moved on, and one way or another the linkshell grew thanks to the recruitment tactics of the members (not me, I'm a jerk). The recruitment tactic basically being: recruit people who wanted to chill out and have fun. As the linkshell began to expand, and grow I took a leave of absence (regained my sanity temporarily and said "fuck this game"). But, there's an old saying: "Never uninstall FFXI, you'll be back" which held true for me, and I was back in the saddle again...This was roughly several months before the release of CoP, not to mention around the time when I would join with one of my partners in crime: Stultus.
Stultus and I were basically BFFs. While I was gone there began stirring rumors of my debauchery, which became legend. Apparently Stultus was very interested in the brand of humor I was selling, because we became fast friends (pictured above: Our "Friendship"). I gave away most of my items after quitting and thus needed help getting back on my feet, something Stultus was all too happy to give me hand with. We rode for King Ranperre's Tomb to hunt the spook. This leads us to another interesting (see: horribly fucking stupid) aspect of FFXI: Open world monster loot drops. That's right ladies and gentlemen, do you need to obtain the Dagger of fuck everything +1? Well, you have to compete against a 10 other guys who desperately need it, most of whom likely have some sort of monster claiming hack! Huzzah! Somehow, Stultus was the mac-fucking-daddy of claiming the spook, and we walked away with a healthy pile of traveler's mantles...Which also started a long tradition of camping NM's, and coming away oddly successful! And really this is where I find most of my fond memories about the game, just generally spending time with my friends and doing stupid shit.
Chains of Promathia was basically the epitome of the shitty-ness that was FFXI. Everything was too fucking hard, took too fucking long, and just basically sucked all the time. When a group of us from the linkshell decided that it'd be a fun thing to tackle the new missions almost immediately after release, we were in for an interesting experience. And by interesting, I of course mean shitty in the ass shit experience. It was almost impossible to get from one side of the map to the other without dying multiple times. These zones were also level capped, so it's not as though we could have gotten to a higher level to leverage some kind of advantage. Upon reaching the boss of these zones, you faced impossible odds....And I'm simply amazed we were ever able to actually beat any of them. A group in the linkshell actually went on to continue the missions of the expansion pack, with great success (Eldiablo even made some videos about it). That being said, something good came out of this era: The Humpathon!
This is the time where we took the taru's /welcome motion to a new level, and also the apex of the linkshell. I appeared as a "Guest Humper" in Eldiablo's Humpathon video, which actually garnered a lot of attention from places like the Killing Ifrit forums. After this, Eldiablo actually went forth to make countless videos (most of which included music from nightwish) of various boss fights Chocobus Maximus undertook. The linkshell has never really been known to be kid friendly, or clean in language and so there were a few times when our very rude nature scared off a few of our members ( I cussed a them a lot, so what?). As far as social guilds go, we were one step away from being just a bunch of assholes who everyone hates. At any rate, these were the halcyon days of the Chocobus Maximus linkshell, and it's only downhill from here.
It's amazing that I've written this much, and haven't really covered some of the other key players in the whole of my FFXI career...And consequently Chocobus Maximus as a whole. Loku is an awesome, and strange person from CM that I'm still very much in contact with. I have absolutely no idea how he came to be in our linkshell, but I do remember that we became fast friends through our mutual vice. Syldaryn is another interesting guy, although I barely have any memory of him and so he might actually just be a phantom or a wizard I don't know. I think we played a bunch of games like CS:S with him, and of course FFXI. Brodyn was another pretty cool guy, I think I got pissed off at him once, or Haud voked I really can't remember much else besides his cousin who's name I can't spell. Blivont. Bliviont. Bliviviolont I don't know. I guess Maestro counts as a person, but whatever. Whataburger is a man, I told you guys. There were also a lot of smaller players who are too many to really talk about, if you feel you were a really big player on the whole CM scene (I may have just plum forgotten about you, btw) just leave a comment and I'll amend/expand this section.
It's funny how this stupid collection of pixels can bring back so many fond memories of really old friends that I have, some of which I'm still in contact with. MMOs are funny like that, aren't they...But as with all things CM began to decline, and people started to do other things. We started playing other games, or hanging out with people in real life for a change, hey some of us even got a job. But those two mother fuckers in the picture above have always kept in contact with me over the innumerable resurgences of the linkshell. Seriously, this linkshell was reborn more times than I care to count....The old adage is always going to be true: "Never uninstall FFXI, because you'll be back". As we move forward to the release of Seekers of Adoulin maybe there will be another come-back of the linkshell, in some way or another. Just like there was for Aht'Urghan, and for wings of the goddess, and the various Abyssea releases.
Hell, I don't even play under the name Echdah on the game anymore, I play as Friends when I do play...And even if there's not a "Chocobus Maximus" linkshell out there, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because there's likely a guild called "ButternutSquash" or "DisciplesofParagon" or some other nonsense name that some CM member has created on some random game. Anyway the point is, there's still CM members out there playing cool games, I'm sure of it. They're just calling themselves something else, or we called them a homo or something and they're mad. Don't be mad, bros. We still love you.
HERP HERP HERP HERP!
