(02-08-2016, 05:46 PM)Burd Wrote: Pros: People. People everywhere. Lots of RP to be had. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the ONLY servers where you'll find guaranteed RP are Balmung and Gilgamesh. I have alts on other servers and I feel like I never see any RP. So if RP is a must-have, you want to be on these two servers. And yeah, high population means there are almost always people to play with.
Cons: So. Many. People. Housing's all gone (but that's a common game-wide problem). You've got to jump through a couple of hoops to roll a character on Balmung.
And I've come to accept that "RP illuminatti" is just a term used by certain people to describe cliques, and it is not at all limited to FFXIV. In every MMO with an RP community, you're bound to run into RP cliques - it's just a given. It might be a group of close friends who just happen to prefer RPing with each other over players they don't know, or maybe it is a group of people who enjoy the feeling of being exclusive, in which case, lawl. So don't let that deter you at all. In my experience, this is one of the more inclusive RP communities out there right now.
A lot of this has already been said much better by the folks preceding me, but I think it's important to note that all cons aside, if you want to RP with a big community, you need to be on either of these servers.
Well back when I came to ARR in '14 I created a character on Balmung first before going to Gilgamesh, I tried to RP and jump in to some open events, but I was told by someone that Balmung was mainly for Legacy roleplayers and I should go to Gilgamesh to find RP I kinda felt put off on the server and made the switch to Gilga(she said it in kind of a rude context), it wasn't until after I had already quit playing that I found out the majority of the community was welcoming to new roleplayers and my experience was just wrong place wrong crowd.
That's not to say I haven't experienced many groups like that in other games, but when it's a new roleplayer or inexperienced roleplayer who's first contact is with people like that it tends to push them away and into the arms of a less desired gaming role I.E: PvE/Solo/PvP focus. From my experience at least, I can no way claim that to be the reaction of all new roleplayers.
I mean you can even look at these forums in the same light, It's daunting for someone like me to get involved in threads that are already well underway, reading posts and seeing everyone know each other while you/I are standing on the outside looking in. My advice to the OP, jump right in to Balmung, you may not get in with the "cliches" but I can promise you'd find a group you mesh well with.