FFXI had the most impact by far on my life of any game I've ever played. My life would probably be completely different had I never discovered this game.

All because my parents took me on a trip to NYC in the early 2000s, and we went to toys R Us in times square. At the bottom they had the video game section and there was a stack of FFXI PS2 and as soon as I saw the box I wanted the game so my dad got it for me. Then the addiction started, I couldn't stop playing the game. I was in high school at the time and it sucked away my entire life, social life, school work, didn't care about any of it I just wanted to play FFXI all day. My grades started failing, I fucked up everything in school and never really recovered. All my friends were in FFXI, I lost all my IRL friends so my friends in the game were my social life. I did eventually quit the game one day in 2008 I think as it was ruining my life, soon after Treasures of Aht Urghan came out. I

So just out of no where I shouted in Jeuno and put everything I could sell in my inventory for sale for 1 gil each and told people to come buy all my stuff I was quitting the game immediately.
Went to my mog house grabbed everything I could as I was swarmed by people buying all my shit. Then I deleted any rare/ex gear. My character was lvl 60+ in most jobs so I had a lot of gear, then I logged out for the final time cancelled the sub and deleted my character and never played again, until I made a new character in 2012 because I was so nostalgic about the time I spent playing it and played it again on that new character for about a year before quitting again. I played that character again back around 2015 but since then haven't touched the game.

I still regret what I did, I wish I never deleted my character... sometimes I wanted to just log back on and talk to my friends again, this was before discord and other shit so saying goodbye was final.

I still listen to the soundtracks for it all the time though.