Darien Cadell

sdflkjsdflksjdf I've been trying to sleep and failing for the past 7 hourssssss.

The only time in recent memory that I can remember actually being bothered by a troll (actually being irked and annoyed, as opposed to simply trolled) was when I was being actively trolled super-spam-noisy-action-and-demented-emote style by a roleplayer who I knew roleplayed and I had roleplayed with on a different character and they had seemed like a nice, open, welcoming person. Then they started teabagging my face and I felt like I'd been stabbed in the back, and I snapped at them in tells. Hoo boy, was that the worst idea ever. After I ignored them, they ended up calling in friends and when we tried the disperse and regroup thing they hunted us down until we finally instanced ourselves. Gragh. I reported the hell out of them, but ehhh. Most of the time I enjoy a good troll, so giggly OOC inviting them to join in or noticing the stiff breeze from the Blizzard spells is easypeasy. But the repercussions for letting them know their harassment is working can be incredibly intrusive. If you can avoid it by being on their side just a little bit, you're so much better off, soooo much.

Don't forget, Open Beta had a bunch of people who won't be paying for the game so won't be in Early Access. I assume. It might not be enough to make much difference on server loads, but open betas are stress tests like that.

Darien leaned back against a wall, stuffing a muffin into his mouth and getting crumbs everywhere. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the guards as they walked by. "Mrt zh frnk?" he says to himself as they pass out of earshot. He gulps down the last bite of muffin, then begins musing out loud, stroking his chin. "Garlean flags? And doing the guards' job for them. Vigilantes? I like vigilantes. It couldn't actually be the Empire. Could it?" Darien cracks his knuckles. "That'd be even better," he says with a smirk as he brushes the crumbs off his shirt and heads down the street in the opposite direction of the way the guards went.

While I'm "always" IC, Darien's going to be busy running around Balmung's Eorzea like a chicken with his head cut off trying to get things done for the Free Company at first. That being said, I'll always respond to RP directed at me (provided I notice it, I can be very blind at times) and if there's a gathering or I hear something interesting as I run by, I'm pretty likely to stop and check it out. When will I finally stop and breathe and look around for someone to talk to? Probably the first organized event I attend, heh. ETA: AND I HAVE NO FEAR OF SUBLIGAR. ENJOY MY GAMS.

Latin is for Garleans. Kill it with fire! You could always just go for the Triads. I'm sure no one would question it. Bahahaha! Or something Zelda-Triforce-y. I'm helpful.

This is going to be a long, long day.

Thank you for the resurrection, good sir! I've never trolled RPers, but I have countertrolled trolls and I've definitely been a public/OOC channel jerk on occasion in various games (which is why I usually keep them turned off because the temptation is so great). I've also tried the techniques outlined in the original post, and I agree, they work. (I've also found that TERA's main RP server has such a roleplayer heavy population that people can do horribly nasty ERP type things in the Global channel (of all places) and suffer no repercussions whatsoever. To their credit, they are usually doing it with hilarity and/or squick in mind, thus are themselves trolling. Trolls on Celestial Hills don't seem to have the stamina to keep up with the sheer flood of roleplay, as I've seen it.) The hardest part for me can be not showing anger when I'm angry, if I'm really angry. And the NO FRIENDLY HUGS IN PUBLIC is something that has made me sadface in the past. Still, the validity of 'some people just don't want to see that' is difficult to argue. The only argument I have is that I don't believe it's actually possible for the roleplaying community as a whole to change how the community as a whole is viewed. That is something I don't believe will ever happen. There are always going to be RPers who storm off in a huff or hurl back insults because they are pissed off. Not that they don't have a right to be pissed off. But they're not helping anyone and they're actually hurting others by that response. My point being if you use these tactics, you're going to need to always use them. Don't think that you can "act cool" for a week and suddenly you'll be free to RP however you want harassment free for the next several years. You may get an immediate reprieve, you will likely even earn the respect of the occasional individual or group of individuals, but there will always be people reinforcing the stereotypes of both easy-to-get-a-reaction-from RPers and silly giggly trolls, and you will always have to be the 'I'm too cool to be annoyed' person to fend them off.

M is for Moogle!

I have no contempt whatsoever for duty finder, and I never have in any game. I have a tendency to play the tank or healer and acknowledge that I'm going to be carrying my group. In fact, the only group I had in P4 that wasn't duty found was a group of 3 Japanese all damage dealers and me a CNJ in TamTara. It was brutally painful, I pretty much tanked and healed the entire thing (not because they were bad, but none of them have threat generation, what did they expect) but we finished the instance. Before WoW had instance matching, I did a looot of random groups as a healer, the most infamous being a 13 hour "run" through the Sunken Temple. There were lots of breaks, but what a waste of a day. Give me a dungeon run where everybody rage quits after 10 minutes any day. But to me, dungeon finders are an extension of solo play. I usually stay very quiet in them and prepare for the worst. You'd be surprised what you can do on your own sometimes, when the rest of the group is dead. Real group play is found with friends and with intention to make new friends. So really, I'd totally be up for something like this, and some of my FC probably would as well.

Agreed. Thank you for sharing that.

I've wondered about that, too, if you'll be able to do like in FFXI, hit rank super-whatever and be given permission to switch Grand Companies. I'm lucky that my starter city and my favorite city are the same one, but yes, you get to pick your Grand Company regardless of where you started. Now I just have to convince my FC to settle there, too. It sounds to me almost like you can buy your plot of land wherever if you've got the cash, but so few of those details are confirmed yet.

dlkjsdlfkjsdf It's probably horrible of me for considering taking a sleep aid and just staying asleep until Saturday morning. Scratch probably. It is horrible. But I could do with skipping the next day and a half or so of finger twiddling. I keep trying to do other things and getting restless and refreshing the forums instead. Bleargh.

I did RPPvP in WoW, too. Nothing in FFXIV is going to come close to that feeling of hunting and being hunted, or the way it spawned some very interesting write-ups and interactions post-battle. That being said, it was also a source of massive drama on a server-wide scale. I'll be glad not to have to deal with that. Wargames over chocobo insults sound like fun, though.

This would be my reasoning for not doing it myself. "Hey, Joe. Nice sword." "((Actually, it's a ratflail.))" "((Oh, crap. Sorry.))" That being said, it doesn't really bug me at all. I'm perfectly happy to just go with it and be reminded of the ratflail whenever I forget. Also, I agree with the line of thought regarding names and personalities for weapons instead. Like Zaeed's good ol' Jessie. She was a crappy, busted up, piece of junk weapon, but even so, I've certainly never forgotten her.

Thank you for this eloquent defense. When I was tapping my chin trying to figure out what to play, I was like I'll make him look like this and... screw it, who needs a background. AMNESIA. Everyone's least favorite cliche. I actually did it because I didn't feel like giving him a backstory and thought I could give him little flashbacky type things when bored much later on, and this cheap trick would let me jump immediately into the roleplay with much less advance effort involved. But that was a while ago. And since then, I've been asked to come up with the why and where of how he lost his memories. And then I ended up constructing an actual life story pre-amnesia. So now my whole reason for having him not remember doesn't exist, because he's already got a story, ha! But now the forgetting is also an integral part of his character and I'm loathe to let it go, no matter how many people see it and go 'ugh, one of those'. So I keep it. For me. Because it makes me happy. Write what you want, as much as you want. For you. Then be courteous and consistent with others.

The only limitation I can see on amount of backstory would be whether or not you can remember it all and whether or not forgetting some of it would bother you. My character changes as I write him, and that's cool. I just go back and change what I've already got to suit the way he is now, if necessary. Same goes for if I forget something I've already set. I'll just go 'oops' and rewrite it, and if I need an IC excuse for giving two answers, I hit my head really hard, okay! I usually go into a character with nothing but a basic stereotype. That way I know basic reactions and behaviors that I intend to have and then as people ask questions, I wing it and see what happens. With this guy, I've kind of accidentally gotten him a (relatively) massive backstory due to my sheer pre-launch excitement, filling out questionnaires and writing profiles and such. I'm not worried about it, though. I just focus on staying creative and flexible in play.

Is it bad to say I love losing? That's part of why I like playing a villain, other than they get the best lines, wear the best costumes, have the best plotlines, are smarter and more attracti--you get the idea. But when my horrible maniacal plans are foiled, the world has been made a better place and the heroes are finally given a chance to actually feel like heroes! And that gives me (the player) warm fuzzies, though I'm sure my character is angrily shaking his fist. Obviously, getting rid of me entirely isn't an option. The villains never die. They just spend a little time in Arkham. Knowing that FFXIV isn't letting us play the bad guys, I've shifted my character to a more neutral, less downright lunatic kind of evil, but I still expect to have a great deal of fun as a source of antagonism whenever the setting is right. Cersei ain't got nothin' on Ramsay Bolton, mmhm.

TERA had free transfers once every 30 days (I think, on timing?) for a long time. People used to use it to make money off of other servers' economies. They only recently went to paid transfers. But I try not to hold F2P standards to P2P games, heh.

Oops. Accidental double post and I don't seem to be able to delete. How embarassing~

Yeah, there's nothing confirmed of that ilk yet. Maybe they don't think 3 days of time (subtracting bug lockouts) is worth offering transfers for? I would, but... yeah. I know I spent about 24 hours on a JP server during the 3102 error and wouldn't mind hopping that character over to Balmung, but I pretty much accepted when I started her that the time I spent on her was going to be dropped into the void with all the previous beta time -- enjoyed, but not contributing to future play. If I hear of anything like free transfers, I'll definitely drop it in here, though. For now, you're probably best off just starting again from scratch.

((Added a direct link to our forums to the OOC tab. Curiosity encouraged and appreciated! https://thegrim.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=71 ))

I was reading the official Lore forums from the oldest to the newest, gave me a really good idea of what people were questioning and what was pretty much known, but I only got about halfway through and they've been down since P4 for me. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/491-Lore That and, well, there are huge gaps in the lore as it is. Also, Loremonger, although it's mostly 1.0 stuff, that's kind of what we're looking at. I haven't yet, but I've been planning to go through the newspapers links there. http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Guide:Loremonger http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Newspapers

Here we go~ [video=youtube] [video=youtube]

Yeah, that. Never log off. Never. *more coffee*