RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Uther · **05-16-2013, 07:42 AM**

This might get me the award for "dumbest question of the year" but I've been wondering this for the past few MMOs I've played.

What is the etiquette on RPing in betas? Hypothetically, if someone in the RPC ran into someone else in the RPC during a beta, would they RP? Or is a game's beta considered universal OOC? In addition to this, if RPing were to happen, would it be considered canon or just a sort of practice RP session that doesn't count? Or do heavy RPers make separate characters for beta testing? Keep in mind this isn't just a FFXIV question. I've been wondering this for a while in regards to multiple games.

Kylin · **05-16-2013, 08:14 AM**

The stance on beta RP varies from person to person. From what I understand, there was some RP in the first two phases, but not much.

There are two major obstacles that one has to take into account with the current beta.

A number of characters took the time skip that SE provided in the lore at the end of version 1.0. It's technically unknown when these people are supposed to reappear. With some exceptions here and there, most people are planning to reappear IC in open beta and not any sooner.Â
Lack of lore knowledge. We don't know how much the world has changed in the five years following Bahamut's attack. So it's very difficult to RP without knowing those details. For example, how has each zone (cities included) changed?

That being said, there has been some RP in the previous phase of beta. Some of it was with alternate characters people used to play it safe though. It's expected for RP to increase more in phase 3 since the amount of content/lore available will at the very least triple in size. Plus, everyone gets their 1.0 character back as well.

Open beta will, for many, still be considered the 'official start' for canon RP. That's not to say many aren't doing canon RP now of course. But open beta is technically the head start and progression is saved. So it makes sense to make things official from that point onward for many.

Arlon · **05-16-2013, 10:48 AM**

Personally, I've always used the time in beta tests to get to know others who I will be Rping with and using that as practice, getting as much lore and story for my character hashed out as possible(Mostly how my character will look).

Uther · **05-16-2013, 06:07 PM**

Both of you made great points. Somehow I overlooked the entire Bahamut attack thing. I guess I was pretty tired when I asked my questions. Also, the part about using beta to decide what a character will look like is another thing I overlooked. In every beta I've been in, I've spent almost the whole time making characters, running around with them to test their appearance, deleting them, and re-making them over and over to get them perfect. The only way I could RP that is "I'm getting a lot of haircuts and facial reconstructive surgery today."

Maybe I'm just too excited to jump into RPing. When writing the thread, the 1.0 character integration was on my mind as well, and how that is going to play out in a beta where everything except those characters gets wiped between phases.

I suppose it's different from a player-to-player basis, as most things in RP are.

Thanks for the speedy answers!

Probably a stupid question...

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes