Huh. I've never been asked that before. Nor have I really wondered it.
In FFXI I dabbled with all races, except for Galka (Roegadyn here). I initially wanted to try out male Miqo'te simply because they weren't available in FFXI or 1.0 and I like animals. Being an avid hiker and mountain climber IRL, I chose Seeker of the Sun because I've got a rapport with Ol' Shiny. After the first phase of beta though I felt there were a lot of Miqo'te males running around and it was supposed to be "the solitary race". This wouldn't bother most people, but I'm weird so it bothered me. Next I tried Lalafell because they were underpopulated and I felt they had the expectation of being cutesy and mostly comic relief characters. I wanted to change that so I came up with a very serious and deep Lalafell Dunesfolk character. I shortly realized I didn't enjoy being three feet tall (unless I was a dwarf, which is my all-time favorite fantasy race) nor did I like magic, which was the premise of that character. So I canned him as well. Without any exciting ideas for characters, I fell back on my love for dragoons in previous Final Fantasy games. I started looking into Ishgard's lore and it struck me as very medieval, where most of this game has kind of a half-fantasy-half-steampunk feel to it. With this in mind, I drafted up an entire family tree of Dragoons from Ishgard called the Skystriders, with the youngest sibling of the last generation defecting and becoming disinherited by his family. Each one was given either a Nordic name (for Highlander members) or a name from Arthurian Legend (Midlanders). The only reason I really chose Midlander was to add to their numbers, as they're supposed to be the most populous, and so my character wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb as "That giant dragoon from Ishgard" in the case of Elezen or Roegadyn. Plus those races wouldn't fit into the names I've made as easily. That's really the only reason. Midlander Hyur aren't in the least bit interesting. They're just kind of the blank slate characters.
In FFXI I dabbled with all races, except for Galka (Roegadyn here). I initially wanted to try out male Miqo'te simply because they weren't available in FFXI or 1.0 and I like animals. Being an avid hiker and mountain climber IRL, I chose Seeker of the Sun because I've got a rapport with Ol' Shiny. After the first phase of beta though I felt there were a lot of Miqo'te males running around and it was supposed to be "the solitary race". This wouldn't bother most people, but I'm weird so it bothered me. Next I tried Lalafell because they were underpopulated and I felt they had the expectation of being cutesy and mostly comic relief characters. I wanted to change that so I came up with a very serious and deep Lalafell Dunesfolk character. I shortly realized I didn't enjoy being three feet tall (unless I was a dwarf, which is my all-time favorite fantasy race) nor did I like magic, which was the premise of that character. So I canned him as well. Without any exciting ideas for characters, I fell back on my love for dragoons in previous Final Fantasy games. I started looking into Ishgard's lore and it struck me as very medieval, where most of this game has kind of a half-fantasy-half-steampunk feel to it. With this in mind, I drafted up an entire family tree of Dragoons from Ishgard called the Skystriders, with the youngest sibling of the last generation defecting and becoming disinherited by his family. Each one was given either a Nordic name (for Highlander members) or a name from Arthurian Legend (Midlanders). The only reason I really chose Midlander was to add to their numbers, as they're supposed to be the most populous, and so my character wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb as "That giant dragoon from Ishgard" in the case of Elezen or Roegadyn. Plus those races wouldn't fit into the names I've made as easily. That's really the only reason. Midlander Hyur aren't in the least bit interesting. They're just kind of the blank slate characters.
