I remember reading the original story thread. It's just as touching now, as it was back then, and still as inspirational to me. That White Mage was the perfect example, of everything I love about this game.
Even though it's long gone now, I still have my PerfectEssence pearlsacks, both of the ones I was given.
And, long after they are passed, I can still sit around with my friends, IRL, and talk about (mis)adventures that we've had along the way. Some will argue that it's just a game, but it's a game with so much depth and emotion, and I've made a lot of REAL friends within it, all around this country. My linkshell's like a family to me. All the trials, and toils, and travels (to an old familiar city, or even a new unexplored zone), and mishaps, all the things we experience along the way (IRL or digital) are an adventure in themselves.
That is the spirit of the thing, or why would S/E have put so much time into such minute details of Vana'diel? I've still never seen the rainbow, or the tornado in the desert, and I'm not able to find my way to Tavnazia, a place I've tried to find since I started playing FFXI, for months, before I realized, at the time, it didn't exist in the game. I could die happy, if I lived in a place like Zi'Tah. I still quest and quest, trying to figure out just what happened in Gusgen, so long ago. What can you see from the Stellar Fulcrum? Just what is it like in Dynamis? Or how will it feel to finally put on my Warlock's Chapeau for the first time, when I finally get it?
Did you ever notice the oddities, here and there, like how the fish in the tank of the Fishing Guild in Port Windurst is swimming upside down. And it still amuses me everytime I get kicked off the drawbrige in Bastok Port.
I often wonder, when I go some places, just what would have lay in store for Michiro and I. We had a knack for getting into trouble, no matter where we went. He's gone from Bismarck now, but I will never forget the "first friend I ever made in this game". The Giddeus stories were hilarious.