Some of the most entertaining memories I have from FFXI Roleplaying were interactions when I was playing my villain alt, Denavial. He was the type who very rarely got his hands dirty, preferring to manipulate things from behind the scenes. There was a relatively extensive backstory explaining his ties to my main character (Tyriont) but his primary motivation was knowledge. I played him as a necromancer, having gotten his start as one of the pirates summoning undead when attacking the ferry. From there things expanded and he eventually headed to the Aht Urghan, intending to figure out how to make chimera. Denavial lacked a good side per se - but he had clear motivations. He was just an amoral bastard about it and had such an overinflated ego that he genuinely considered everyone else beneath his intellect and therefore unworthy of consideration.
His ongoing "pet project" was Tyriont and he had conducted experiments on him while Ty was captured at one point and so went out of his way to screw with Ty and those close to him. A few things I remember that were particularly fun to play from the villainous side was infiltrating the San d'Orian church (done using another alt, Marneus Lanviade - Denavial in disguise, yay for in-game concealing hoods!) and getting close to another player's priestess character who was a friend of Ty's in order to bring her down - something he came very close to succeeding in. He also played a part in pushing the shell's most happy-go-lucky character over the edge by using parts of said character's deceased wife in an undead construct. A third would be manipulating another player's character into allowing him to start teaching her necromantic magics, with the knowledge that it would cause her friends to start turning on her once they found out given the stipulations against it - and who had been teaching her. Again, not evil for the sake of being evil but commiting evil acts in order to further his research with no interest in how it affected the lives of others.
Never once did I have him run around going "LULZ I R EVIL", he was very well spoken (his speech pattern was that he would never use contractions) and subtle - the other key point is that I tried to be careful not to overuse him. If there was another major plot ongoing that involved a lot of people in the shell, I didn't try to throw Denavial in just for the hell of it, which seems to be a temptation with poorly played, "cartoonish" villains - those types seem to want the villain to be behind every damn thing.
The other thing to avoid is making a "Villain-Sue". For the successes Denavial had, his plans were utterly thwarted multiple times and he came close to death several times.
One final thing I would suggest - if you plan on making your main character a villain, be very certain you know what you're getting into. Playing a main that way tends to result in the rest of your group turning on you (unless you are in a shell with a large sized villainous population) and can kill a lot of fun in the game when you are unable to find yet another realistic reason why your villain would team up with the heroes for whatever in-game event is going on.
His ongoing "pet project" was Tyriont and he had conducted experiments on him while Ty was captured at one point and so went out of his way to screw with Ty and those close to him. A few things I remember that were particularly fun to play from the villainous side was infiltrating the San d'Orian church (done using another alt, Marneus Lanviade - Denavial in disguise, yay for in-game concealing hoods!) and getting close to another player's priestess character who was a friend of Ty's in order to bring her down - something he came very close to succeeding in. He also played a part in pushing the shell's most happy-go-lucky character over the edge by using parts of said character's deceased wife in an undead construct. A third would be manipulating another player's character into allowing him to start teaching her necromantic magics, with the knowledge that it would cause her friends to start turning on her once they found out given the stipulations against it - and who had been teaching her. Again, not evil for the sake of being evil but commiting evil acts in order to further his research with no interest in how it affected the lives of others.
Never once did I have him run around going "LULZ I R EVIL", he was very well spoken (his speech pattern was that he would never use contractions) and subtle - the other key point is that I tried to be careful not to overuse him. If there was another major plot ongoing that involved a lot of people in the shell, I didn't try to throw Denavial in just for the hell of it, which seems to be a temptation with poorly played, "cartoonish" villains - those types seem to want the villain to be behind every damn thing.
The other thing to avoid is making a "Villain-Sue". For the successes Denavial had, his plans were utterly thwarted multiple times and he came close to death several times.
One final thing I would suggest - if you plan on making your main character a villain, be very certain you know what you're getting into. Playing a main that way tends to result in the rest of your group turning on you (unless you are in a shell with a large sized villainous population) and can kill a lot of fun in the game when you are unable to find yet another realistic reason why your villain would team up with the heroes for whatever in-game event is going on.