A few days ago, I discovered that Brian Green (we just called him “Psycho”) had passed away. It’s taken me a few days to gather my thoughts before writing about this. I dug through my FFXIV screenshots to find what I’d preserved of the times we spent together, and I wanted to add these to the posts out there.
Interestingly, so much I’m reading about him talks about his professional life and his impact on MMOs and blogging. Why wouldn’t it — there’s so much to laud about the things he accomplished! In fact, I learned things about his projects from some of these posts that I didn’t know.
Perhaps because whenever Psycho and I interacted, we rarely talked about the professional side of his life that much. The Psycho I knew was a Roegadyn in FFXIV who grumbled about the fact that it was hard to find a glamour that looked good on the race. He was especially proud of this glamour though:
Of course, I knew who Psycho was — that he was a MMO developer and a blogger who made considerable impact. And by some strange fluke, he was also a FFXIV player on my server.
I blogged about meeting him for the first time — which was back in 2016.
Now, I knew that he was on our server. But me being shy, and not wanting to seem like a creeper, I never sought him out. In fact, I don’t think I’ve actually seen his character in game until this weekend when I happened to run into him in Idlyshire, and I threw him a passing /eureka emote before running away.
Anyhow, little did I know that he’s been helping out some folks in our free company with runs, and that Zeb had even grouped with him in the past! It’s a small world on Midgardsormr, I suppose. I kinda like that.
We all struck up conversation, and he was invited for a Weeping City run that didn’t happen. But we did get a chance to meet up on Discord, and (I hope) we all had a pleasant time.
While waiting for the queue that never popped, he showed me one of his glamours + catbat minion. If you see this, Psycho, I hope you don’t mind I posted it.
Back then, we were building up a pretty active Free Company on Midgardsormr, and it was probably the height of that community. Eventually, Psycho asked if he could join us, and of course I told him sure!
Aside from Zeb and I, I’m not sure that anyone in the FC knew who Psycho was. I almost think he mostly rathered it was that way — he was there to play just like we were.
I considered Psycho a friend through the years, though I wish I’d spent more time getting to know him. We exchanged Christmas gifts on Steam, and he even at one point had asked me if I was interested in doing some commissioned artwork for his website of stories – Restless Deep. We never got to plan that out, sadly.
I remember he enjoyed having conversations in game via /whisper about random things. We’d also run content sometimes (like the maps run pictured in the header). He even took part in the fashion contest during our FC’s 3rd anniversary event. And attended our 4th Anniversary event, too! Psycho was very much about wanting to be involved in the community and in guilds especially.
Eventually Zeb and I moved to the Mateus server, and Psycho moved to Balmung — he was quite active with in-game role play as well. I know that he ran his own RP FC on Mateus, and the last conversation we had was about this FC via /whispers just a couple months back.
He’d visit Mateus from time to time — I know I saw him on my friends list visiting not too long ago. I wish I’d said Hi. I didn’t know then that I’d not get the chance to /whisper chat with him again.
I was shaken to learn that he’d passed away. He wasn’t all that much older than I am, after all. And this is the first time I’ve experienced the loss of a friend I’ve known online.
It was kinda a wake-up call to me — you don’t always think about who’s on your MMO friends list and that each of us have a finite amount of time to be here. Be sure to /whisper chat and take care of your guild mates and fellow bloggers. Because you just never know.
No matter what, you always made that Roe look fashionable, Psycho.
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