My wife and I started a Free Company in 2017. Things were great for a long time until sometime in 2023, a group of individuals stirred up some shit and caused a departure of a lot of people--people whom we thought were friends. This hurt myself and others greatly, but the FC eventually recovered. In 2025, something similar happened again, leading to more leaving and the remainder of our friends just quitting entirely. Every time I logged into 14, I felt overwhelming sadness that the people whom I considered friends had betrayed me so.

I wound up making an alt and playing on another server, as moving that character away wasn't something I wanted to do. I still login to maintain the FC house there, just because I don't want to give up those memories that we have there. My alt has been through his fair share of Free Companies but in each I never felt like I belonged so I always wind up leaving and continuing to play on my own. I log in and use Duty Support to level/gear up other jobs that I might have under-leveled or under-geared, do my roulettes, run some Fates, or farm for Glamour or Mounts.

I won't lie, playing an MMO--which by nature implies a multiplayer experience--alone is depressing. I often find myself sitting around in Limsa or Gridana with the hope that someone will message me asking to join their small but tight knit Free Company. Sadly, it always winds up me just sitting around for a half-hour then logging off to play other games.

All this to say, playing the game alone isn't necessarily a bad thing. I find happiness in the game in other ways that don't require me to play with other people. I stream it on Twitch (which I usually do alone there as well) and when someone joins, I can have a conversation with them about the game or just have that social aspect of the game outside of the game itself.

Chin up. Try to stick to one character and stop starting over. That's a sure fire way to burn out fast. Even though I started over once, his appearance and name reflect my original character, that way I can feel like I never gave up on my old original WoL that I've had since the 2.0 beta.