Fulcrum

My characters will likely be doing this sort of thing anyway, so I'm in for joining some sort of formal RP affair for it. I didn't stick with the game, so I kinda don't feel right about playing someone who was teleported by the Gods RP wise (though likely that's what the new game story will be based around?); once base recovery was done, which would be faster in some areas than others, my characters would be out in the world trying to figure out where to go next, and what exactly happened.

I wouldn't mind joining in with this, and might be able to use one of my existing characters since I never really got to RP with them. Any idea what race you're looking at for it? As far as playing a servant, I've done the indentured servant bit several times before and the less than indenture servant (long time family servant, bought/traded slave) a few times. Although I'd be terribly afraid that I'd end up defaulting to Disapproving RP Butler's attitude from time to time, depending upon the actions of the employers/owners. >.> If you don't think your servants notice when you're doing stupid shit, and don't try to warn you...you're very wrong on at least one count - some servants might not bother with the warnings after a few times though.

Update: The site owner tweaked some things on her end, and it's working now. Looks like it might have been a minor conflict between her modified PHP BB* and MyBB. Thanks for looking into it on your end though. =)

Bit of an update, Kylin. The site owner thinks it might be something on her end; the entire site may be based on PHP BB*, however she's heavily modified it with her own coding all over the place. Once she's done some changes and testing, she'll let me know, and we can go from there; since the code likely isn't adaptable enough to be stolen, I believe she'll give some of it over if nothing works on her end so that we can hand it over to the MyBB team.

Another thing to keep in mind... I worked in the MMO industry before I got sick, and there was a common thing the developers always wished people would remember about their characters (especially RPers) - we are technically the minority in the world setting. Even though we don't always get to see them (less the case now a days with tech advances but still), there are thousands more NPCs than we know of, your average Joe who isn't and adventurer. Where I worked, we sort of decided without really talking about it that the player populace was somewhere between 1% - 5% of the population; the average agreed upon was 2% - 3%. Some games may have more of the population be the player populace - I could see something like City of Heroes/Villains being more like 5% - 10% because of it's setting information. But for the more part, every game setting assumes the player populace is a low percentage of the actual populace. As Merri mentioned, we can also sort of cut out anyone who isn't an RPer coming over or coming back, since they're not really all that involved with our calculations as a whole, and likely don't give a shit about it. That would bring down the percentiles even more!

This is the only question I'm really going to answer, as the rest are pretty well covered - I just have an interesting addendum to this sort of thing. As mentioned, it's up to you if you're character has ICly forgotten something. It might not be a good idea to have this forgetful trait for all your characters. As an example, I have severe memory surpression issues due to medical stuffs, to the extent of where common things I know are suddenly no there; sometimes I'll be in the shower, and forget if I washed my hair literally minutes after doing so, or I'll forget how to spell a word/name that I've never had a problem with. Over the years, this has presented a lot of problems with role playing, as even though I try to keep notes of things that have happened, I still end up forgetting things my characters should not. While I have had a character or two who had memory problems as bad as my own (didn't keep notes with that character, so that it was natural ), it just doesn't work for every character I ever play in every MMO or table top or LARP. I would be utterly appauled if anyone ever hardlined the "you don't remember, your character doesn't remember" thing if someone asks OOCly for reminders. Even my hardcore Gygax style DM for D&D is kind about it, and has me roll an intelligence check to see if I really did forget it. For the more part, people know that memory is ultimately flawed in every human, to an extent, and are understanding about it. Where this gets to be a problem...instances where you don't realise you're forgetting something till after a bit of RP has happened. At that point, I strongly suggest pausing the RP, explaining you forgot and asking for a bit of a soft ret-con on the situation; I really hope most people will be understanding of this, as if not in my own case, it would quickly lead to just not RPing at all. For the more part, most people I've encountered across a variety of games over the past few years are okay with this, which is why I strongly suggest the pause/ret-con request. Just my whole 2 gil on the subject, even though it was pretty well covered previously.

I have to agree that it all shouldn't translate into character as masteries, although beyond what's been stated here, one could go with the "Jack of All Trades" idea, and have a bit of proficiency in a lot of things BUT have no main specialty that is mastered. This gives you an IC reason for cycling between jobs a lot, but doesn't tread into Mary Sue territory because you either only know the basics to the class or are slightly proficient at it, which isn't over powering when done tastefully. Also, if you go from one mastery to another, there's always the option of RPing learning that new mastery; this, however, takes time that a lot of players don't really consider. I don't think I'd balk at someone who took an entire year to RP out going from a master Archer to a master Conjurer, even less so if they took longer than that; I would, however, not buy that it only took a few months. Just some additional food for thought!

They're giving us an official naming conventions guide?! OMG, that's fantastic. I've helped with them in several other games, and currently am leading a project to make a guide for Wildstar...all of the time and guesswork and obscure name hunting (which has earned me a strange status as the Name Chic amongst some of my friends) removed and just having the damn thing provided by the creators. I think I'm going to faint. Granted, I'm likely going to have to rename some of my characters. Particularly Rana, who is a Seeker of the Sun...though she grew up in Ul'dah so I'm not sure if its really necessary too. Eva Llewellyn is another one I'm considering changing, as the surname doesn't fit with the names I've since seeen in relation to those who escaped from Ala Mhigo; Eva's kind of neutral because it can be a nickname for a lot more complex, fitting names. May end up having to change Anezka's name, however I waited to give her a surname and I -think- it works; it's Gaelic, and an alternate spelling at that. Anyways, now that my inner linguist has geeked out, back to one of the original questions here. I do have a suggestion for you, beyond agreeing that most of the communing would be feeling based (sort of empathic in nature) rather than direct speaking, and when it was, the speaking would be very broken and defined in a word or two. Depending upon your race, you can go with this idea I used for Anezka - have your ears twitch when you suddenly hear the elements. In Ana's case, this generally happens due to how sensative the hearing of Duskwight are, whenever she hears something new that catches her attention, or her linkpearl goes off on her. I could easily see something like that happening when a Conjurer/White Mage hears an element. Spacing out isn't entirely necessary. I believe the moogles do such more so because they can get in deeper conversations with the elements than we ever should be capable of, though if one said something really weird, it would make sense to stop and have a WTF moment from it. Anyways, that's my whole 2 gil on the subject right now!

Thank you for working on this! Perhaps some of the artists could get together and make one of those "line up" images like they have in various D&D books after everything is "finalized", to a point, for a more visual reference? The current graph does help, but I've noticed people tend to have an easier time connecting with the "line up" style height guides.

This coupled with Merri's (*snickers*girlsname*snickers) overview of the main questline leading up to the Seventh Umbral Age are two musthaves for people who didn't get to all of the lore in the original game before it shut down. That is a good question - will either of these two things be made into wiki pages? I love you, Merri, don't kill me.

Even though I'm getting upgrades in the next week or two (literal full overhaul of my rig after about four to six years of upgrading nothing but a video card), I ran the benchmark because my fiance will be inheriting my old parts since his PC is worse than mine. Firefox and Photoshop were running during this, so I'm sure that technically this rig could obtain higher marks, but realistically, I keep Firefox open constantly and unless they make cut scenes screenshotable, I'm going to have PS open too. There wasn't a benchmark resolution that matched my monitor, and it doesn't support HD even though my video card does (someday, I'll correct this problem), so I ran two different sets of benchmarks. I'm really surprised my monitor didn't cut out when I used the 1440x1080 since it's a whole 180 pixels too large and technically out of it's range but...hey, I'll take it.

I think there should be far more coordination that "day of", or else we're just asking for a hornet's nest of drama to spawn; granted, it might not, but it is a terrible idea. I'm also very against the "Go to X number on the server list", especially if said number is in the 1 - 3 range or the last three or four servers in a list - lots of people make those kinds of decisions, and we could end up on an over populated server where we're the extreme minority (as we're likely always going to be a minority, but possibly not the smallest minority). Beta 4 is an Open Beta, in which characters will persist through launch, which implies that the servers for that beta will be the live servers. Some people will be getting in for Beta 3 for the import testing, so those members of the site should work behind-the-scenes (cus NDA) to select a server at that time, in case they transfer over into Beta 4. At the point of Beta 4 opening, said server can be revealed and people can shuffle their characters there as they make them or possibly import them. This is placing a lot of trust on the members of this site who make it into Beta 3, and will require a bit of work from them, but I think its the best direction to take in the matter. It will reach a lot more players, it is a lot more stable than saying "Go to X number server in the list", and hopefully we can end up somewhere that won't end up getting over populated.

I doubt any of their skill degraded. Supposedly, even though five years passed in the world, it was mere seconds for those who were sent into the rift. They would be capable of what they could do previously, and while they would create an additional pull on the food supplies, they're actually quite a boon for the world. They saw first hand what Bahamut was like, and can provide clearer information than those who were bystanders or not even present at his attack site(s). They also can fend off the ferocious monsters that have appeared, and many might have been skilled craftsmen or gatherers; they might not even put as much of a strain on the food supplies if a good percentage of them were gatherers too. With the Grand Companies being largely destroyed, there's a lot of need for heroes and strong spirits (which might not yet have been heroes, per se), so they're likely a welcomed addition.

Updated! I was able to get my old Wiki pages after discovering a post about the conversions, and they all had surnames on them! I also added links to their Wiki pages. The pages are still works in progress, even more so now with the new lore that the end of 1.0 came out with, and the five year move up that occurred; likely, the majority of my characters were not at the final battle, as none of them were high enough level for that!

I don't own the site the gallery is on, and it's homebrewed. I'll see if the creator of the site has any suggestions or is willing to share the code. I do know that all the images in the gallery are 110x110, as I just adjusted them down from the 150x150 they were for the old version of this site. I'm not sure what size the image not found icon is, so I'll ask about that as well.

OMG! That's so awesome, if they follow through with it in a timely manner; other MMOs have promised me my own nautical ship or airship, and only Pirates of the Burning Seas ever delivered on it.

I. Basic Info Characters: Ember Stone , Kym'a Thavma, R'ana Surya, Safiya Stormcrow Primary characters: Ember Stone, Safiya Stormcrow, Kym'a Thavma Free Company/Linkshells: Dark Embers Primary RP Free Company/Linkshell: Dark Embers II. RP Style Amount of RP (light, medium, heavy): Mediume to heavy, depending upon the day; if I'm not feeling well, I'm less inclined to RP but will remain in character when around RPers. Views on RP combat and injuries: I believe that combat and injuries are acceptable if the parties involved give their OOC consent to things before they actually happen. With the right amount of OOC conversation, I'm willing to have my characters receive injury during RP, whether it be from extensive emote based combat or actual duelling. I actually use a "consent of harm" form when I storytell in MMOs, that covers about six different injury levels, including death; however, even then, I still talk to the player before actually doing anything to them directly. It helps immensely, as I can't memorize every player I'm storytelling for's preferences. Views on IC romance: Well, in general, I find that IC romances tend to lead to a bit too much drama both IC and OOC. While there are some that enjoy this, I've just encountered too many instances of it failing horribly and dragging everyone through RP (and often, OOC issues) that they don't really enjoy. I also feel that most IC courtships are unrealistically fast; while I get that these relationships are happening in a game, and there's always the chance that the person might not be around for a long time, I rarely see more "organic" relationships being played out. All of that being said...if there were to be a good level of OOC communication from the other party, if they were willing to have a courtship that lasted several months to a year (or more!) rather than a few days or a few weeks, and if they could keep IC and OOC separated in regards to romantic feelings, I would not be against an IC romance. Views on non-romantic RP (family ties, etc): I am all for forging familial bonds between characters, as long as there is enough OOC communication to do so with believable reasoning. Whether it be a cousin or such arriving and becoming a part of another person's daily life or well done "long lost sister/brother" situations, I'm game if it makes sense and fits all of the characters in question. I am also all for forging non-blood related familial bonds, whether they be close friends, all the way up to something like the "blood brother/sister" concept, as long as the RP heads that way organically and there's good OOC communication. Views on lore: I'm a bit dubious about the way they're handling the cross over from 1.0 to ARR, largely because of how some of the lore was just not particularly addressed, while other parts were sort of balled together in a badly homogenised way. Overall, I liked the overall storylines from 1.0 - the few we had - and a lot of the concepts that are now missing. On a more generalised level, I tend to stick to the lore as closely as possible, as well as naming conventions when I can find them or figure them out. As long as something can be pointed to in game or in development posts/articles to justify something, I'm generally okay with it. Views on chat functions (/say, /linkshell, etc): I believe that /say and emotes (whether default emotes or custom emotes) in any MMO setting where there's RP should be 100% IC when someone claiming to be an RPer speaks, and any OOC should be taken to tells, private channels or bracketed/notated that it's OOC. Such a thing in /say (or in /linkshell if that linkshell's chat is IC, etc) should be rather limited and kept to a minimum. The majority of the time, I take tells as OOC unless someone emotes they're whispering to me ICly; the majority of MMOs do not have any sort of lore-based telepathy, so the only IC use I see for tells is whispering. Group/Party chat out in the field should generally be OOC so that if there's some sort of problem in game-play, it can be handled quickly. In a strictly RP setting, I can see group/party being used to discuss something in low voices or whispers between people, though. III. Other Info Country: US Timezone: EST (Nocturnal) Contact info: Please PM me via the site, or leave a post below. ~Special announcements can be found in the posts below~

Pardon the necropost, but Rosethorne just helped me get back on the site, and I've run into a bit of a bug with the Avatar updating. There is an option to link to an off-site image, however every time I put something in there, it is adding code to the end that breaks the image. The first quote is a link to the image; this is from a "rotating image gallery" that basically sends a different picture from the folder each time the address is queried, whether it be because the page it was linked on is refreshed or someone has moved to another page where its linked. This is the first time I've ever had it not work right, which is odd since this is a BB/PHP based site, from the looks of it. This second quote is what shows up after I save the changes, however I need to note that the numbers after the dateline= section change every time. This is what's causing the image to break. Even entering a "normal" image link is doing this. =(