ArmachiA

The level at which some people get entangled in it is crazy. Is it though? I do not mean to insinuate that it is appropriate behavior to get caught up in an IC romance with OOC feelings. But when it all boils down to it, you are dealing with basic human emotions. I do not condone such actions, but to me I find it understandable if someone is unable to distinguish between the two. Such as some people are unable to maintain the concept of "just friends" while others do not and want something more. The same situation between OOC/IC romance and relations. It's just that some people can separate the two and see clear lines between them, while another person may not. And like I said, I don't necessarily agree with that, but I understand. Absolutely it's crazy. I've seen FC's die over it, friendships get bulldozed over because of it, and wars start over it. RP romance is a dangerous road to tread and I feel like most people take it far too lightly. I understand the allure of RP romance, but many people don't understand the dangers.

That's true of a lot of romance RP, it's fascinating on a social research level. The level at which some people get entangled in it is crazy.

Still alive and kicking, still with many members!

was on vacation! almost didn't make it, but we're still around

Slow. Agonizingly slow. My character and her husband were together for a year and a half before they got married. I'm good with slow. This is also true of real life.

I decided to play a Tamer so I kind of had to accept that Armi from FFXIV wouldn't really port over as Tamer's are very Asian as their default. I added some whispers of her - the end of her hair is dyed Armi's red and she had purple circle lenses in reference to Armi's usual violet eyes. Odette's design above (My FAVORITE design by far that I've seen anywhere) inspired me to go all in on realism. It's completely different from what I normally make Armi look like but I love it. I'm legit surprised I got this from the Tamer template.

Right now my biggest insecurity is jumping back into the rp scene. Right around Heavensward's release I took a LOT of time off the game - really only logging on for FC leader things and raiding - in order to work on my own personal health. Five months later, I had dropped 70 pounds but no one knew who Armi was anymore, as the only person I really rped with was her future husband (and only because we had to to keep up the relationship and it was only like once a month). I still have like 25 more pounds to drop but now after the holidays I have more time to actually rp again and I'm finding jumping back in difficult. Everyone has all these stories and getting into them now seems too little-too late. I know I have people who want to RP with me, it's just the insecurities of having people relearn who Armi is - hell having ME relearn who she is - is niggling at me. Will I be able to find her voice again? Will anyone actually care once I do? Stressful.

An objective examination of the lore we have been given reveals, frankly, very, very few instances of " can not be done; not by anyone by any means ever." When it comes to shutting doors on (let's call them "creative") ideas, the biases of the community factor in significantly more than any established lore. My favorite example: in some thread a while back (I don't remember which specific one) someone brought up the existence of vampires in Eorzea. This was followed by citations of various item descriptions that alluded to numerous common vampire myths (turning into bats, drinking blood etc.) that would be known to Eorzeans. Posters elected to completely ignore all the information (going as far as to say none of it was "real" lore) presented in order to maintain their position that vampires could not possibly exist in Eorzea. I saw that thread and to be fair, it was never really settled if VAMPIRES existed in Eorzea or just the VAMPIRE MYTH. Two different things.

It's true we all take liberties with lore and, you know, that's mostly fine with grey areas. When it comes to grey areas, when you have to use deductive logic to come to a conclusion, there is ALWAYS going to be some lore bending. There has to be, there's just not enough lore to go around. How much bending really depends on the person though, and they have every right to post in a thread that someone's concept may be TOO bendy for their liking. I personally believe that there could have been, albeit in small amounts, Miqo'te dragoons as Ishgard only closed their gates 20 years ago, but someone else may think that's a little too out there. Both of us would be allowed to state our opinions on the matter - it doesn't hurt the player at all to see both sides of the fence on that issue. But there is also plenty of lore stating can't happen, too. Certain things in lore that just outright tell people "Nah, you can't do that." If someone comes up with a concept that is completely against lore, it's almost irresponsible not to tell them that just because someone's feelings may be hurt.

Yeah being a raider myself, and having an FC that allows non-RPers in it, I can honestly say the raiding community could give less of a shit if you rp or not.

Disagree. In almost every single thread about contentious rp subjects there is a small chorus of people asserting that the roleplay being discussed is wrong, often going as far as ignoring established lore to do it. Expressions of tolerance for other people roleplaying "wrong" are typically secondary to informing people their RP is "wrong". Also, there isn't a single person on this site I'd consider a "leader". "Loud" would be more accurate. ^ This. All of this. One can just go over every single post about WHM and DRG to see some of what I believe the OP is trying to point out, to point out just a couple dozen specific examples. Usually it is from the same people saying the same stuff every single time. Each of these posts are, in short, echo chambers of loudly shouted personal preference coupled with the threat of "conform this or we will exclude you." It should be pointed out that this is the exact opposite of what what people are saying they prefer to see in this very thread. This is part of the problem, no one willing to say/recognize that such are behaviors that are a problem. For some, actual helpfulness and reasonable discussion fall absolutely fall by the wayside in favor of loud shouting of the same opinions, outright insults, and promises censure for refusal to conform. This is another point Momo brings up, and it is fairly valid. So is pointing out that this is not the way things were in the past. Yes, there were disagreements and arguments. There was not a whole sale attitude of "we will exclude you if you do not conform." In fact, as others have pointed out, that sort of thing was actively discouraged. It is absolutely true that things just change, but that does not mean that things change for the better. In my opinion, they have not. We seem to have gone from a community of creatives discussing and offering input on one another's ideas to an echo chamber of loudly shouting assholes saying "conform to what we or we just won't include you." While this is not true of everyone on this forum, it is true that one walks away with that impression with a larger number of the posts here. This is not a positive change, but the OP brings up the point that there can be reflection on where this place has been and where we wish it to go. What has changed once, can change again. For all of the commentary on the structure of the original post, we all do seem to be able to get was Momo was going for, and we should reflect on what was said. While there are bits and bobs of what was said that I do not necessarily agree with, all of it is worth thinking about. More than a little of it is true, even if accepting that is a bit of a hard pill to swallow. The question then becomes what are you supposed to do when people say "Does this character concept work?" are you... not supposed to answer? I always see a bunch of people come in and go "You can play whatever you want =D" but that isn't helpful - obviously the person asked for imput if they wanted to play whatever they wanted they wouldn't have made the thread (Unless they were looking for an echo chamber of how great their character is, but that's another subject). I know in the past I've offered advice about character concepts and said I didn't personally jive with some of them, but always added "But you can play whatever you want" at the end so they know it's just my opinion. Should I not offer that kind of advice? Is that seen as pushing my own agenda?

I actually agree that the RPC has changed (Whether for better or for worse really depends on perspective and is a completely different conversation) but the rest of it is iffy. RPC 1.0 wasn't a community either, in fact Kylin did his damndest to make sure that the RPC DIDN'T control RP on the server. I was around and a mod during the beginning and I can tell you people tried REALLY hard to " control" the server, even leaving the RPC all together when they weren't strict enough on RPers the they didn't agree with. I can show you some old threads on my FC's forum about the behind the scenes antics of some people trying to take control of players and how Kylin was real quick to shut that down. He understood that this was a hub, not a community and he didn't feel comfortable trying to enforce rules on people and shun the ones who didn't agree. As much as this forum doesn't really like to admit it, some people are considered "Popular" rpers and will get more slack from the community than others, but that doesn't mean those people are doing EVERYTHING for their own gain either. Sure, they may make a smart alec comment in a thread so people go "ahaha that sure is so and so! What a troll they are!" but I don't think people are being helpful for personal gain? How would one do that anyway? To add someone to the list of people who like them? To be honest I'm not sure what you're getting at with that part, it would be nice if you came in and clarified.

I actually understand people getting all upset without being aware of what other people's stances on character death are - so if you're rping with someone closely it's probably a good thing to find out. My character got married recently, and if her husband's player just suddenly went "He's dead lol" I'd be pretty mad about that, but I also know what his player's stance on death is (He's open to it) so I knew going in his character has a chance of dying. We talk oocly a lot though and make sure things we do will be okay, like I made sure it was fine with him to pull Armi out of rping for a bit so I could focus on playing the villain of that arc (I gave her a magical coma ooOOooo) and he's discussed with me some ideas he had for his character that would keep him and Armi apart for a while. But even aside from romance, we had 4 people kill their characters off last arc. One was the IC/OOC leader of the guild (and my boyfriend IRL) which had A LOT of ramifications attached to it. Only a small circle actually knew about it before it happened and it took all of those people to make sure the plot holes and plot threads of Ellion's death would be filled and tied up as fast as possible. Even with all our plans and making sure it would be a smooth transition to his new character, the surprise sent shockwaves over the entire guild. Some people got mad, some didn't believe it, and to this day Ellion's player is still trying to get back of the RP ties he lost. He says it's not really the same as it was with his old character - who he had played since FFXIV 1.0 - but he understands it's a long road to get back where he was. What I learned from all 4 of those deaths - as I helped players plan them in some form - is that IC death has a LOT of consequences you don't even think about. Even if the character's story is "over" (As was the reason for 2 of them), some players may not see it that way. When Dennthota died, a few people gave up RPing all together, for instance. And apparently Denn lost a lot of contacts she had made and even some OOC friends. When one of our players killed off his character for the shock factor, it shocked him so severely he kind of pulled himself out of the rp game all together. It's actually a pretty heavy thing. That being said, I'm for character death. How you want your character to die can vary - some people like the off the cuff of it, some people want it planned out, and some already know exactly when and how their character will die - but everyone dies, so it seems natural to be prepared for it. Armi can die, but it has to make sense within the context of the story and has to be in a way I'm comfortable with. My Villains can pretty much die whenever, I've killed off 2 or 3 at this point. BUT if you want to make it so your character can't die, that's fine too. We love our characters after all, sometimes it's hard to let go of them.

We're still around! We've gotten like 15-20 new people in the last month which made us very busy too! We're also about to start our new guild storyline, with the prologue starting yesterday. We're also planning a 12 hour Thordan Ex run on Thursday (WHY?) and a 24 hour Alex Savage run in January for charity (WHYYYYYYY) Yeah, we're pretty cool. Overall the NB has been the most active it's ever been. However, over the years a lot of our members have become reclusive due to some bad experiences. We plan on trying to remedy that and be less Xenophobic. As a guild, we believe we can ALWAYS improve and we're always listening to feedback . As a quick aside, my character ended up getting married in game last week, and while her official name is Armi Alliando-Muramasa, I still name changed to Armi Muramasa for a while. If you want to get ahold of me in game, look for that name.

Happy Halloween! Yes we're still around I'll be posting a picture of us from Vegas once I actually get it off my Camera.

The Vegas trip is underway! Since we're dumb and Fanfest sparked going to Vegas as some kind of yearly event, 19 of us are getting our butts to Vegas in the next two days! Three of our guildies (Kimyo, Altaerith, and Umi) are already driving from Florida all the way to Nevada, and have been on the road about 24 hours at this point. We'll be there till the 30th. RPC-ers, if so inclined, can follow our adventures (And the road trip and is currently going on - they are posting so many videos) at https://twitter.com/NBHause2015 NBCON2k15. Let's go!

Still alive and kicking, me just barely so haha. I haven't been active on the RPC for awhile because I spent 3 and a half weeks unable to keep anything down and had to take an extended break from the game because of it, but all is well now, though now I'm planning: NIGHT BLADES VEGAS 2015. 19 of us are all meeting in Vegas from September 24th - September 30th and since it's only a month away I have SO MUCH I need to do! Night Blades is still quite active. /update

To me, there is pretty much inarguable proof Gods exist in this world, so the term "Atheist" as WE know it doesn't make any sense. That however doesn't mean that there are different versions of Atheism. 1. Someone from a country who doesn't know who the 12 are may not believe in Eorzea's Gods. 2. They believe what we know as the 12 is actually something else (Primals, Elementals, WHATEVER) and are not actually Gods. 3. They believe in the Twelve, but don't worship or revere them. Believing they have nothing to do with current, modern life. I guess Hydalean would be the only one hard to dispute, but how common of knowledge is it that people are the "Chosen of Hydalean"? It could be easily hand waved away that she doesn't exist at all if a lot of people don't have knowledge of her? I'm not sure on Hydalean lore as a God though.

Armi is pretty much forever 23 until the Devs come in and say time has passed. Birthdays are celebrated in a bubble, when time passes those events become canon until then they stay locked in the bubble. I've canonically celebrated one of her birthdays (22-->23) because it would have been within the very short timeline of FFXIVs story bubble. When they tell me how much time has actually passed, all events in her life will be retrofitted into that timeline. I hate age in MMOs. I always try to keep it vague as hell, but when asked - she's 23.

Change your avatar, that character is dead Updated the "Roleplaying and Us" section and the officers section. Dennthota is still a story lead but has race/name changed.

I think she's saying if there was no such thing as a French language then those names wouldn't be born from... anywhere. You have a Gaelic name because of the Gaelic language it was born from even if you yourself do not speak Gaelic.

Oh no, I GET it, I just don't get into it. I'm a raider, I kept up with all the current content in 2.0 and plan to do so in 3.0, but I'm not "hardcore". I've seen how bad hardcore raiding can get, I've seen it ruin friendship and stress people out to the point of breakdown. If you're competitive, that's fine, but don't let the treadmill destroy you if you're one of the people who can't, or don't want to, keep up.

Since the storyline is one of the best ways to get lore, I'm not sure why anyone would skip it. Even beyond that, it's a really good story, miles above 2.0. However, MMOs are treadmills. They always will be. You will never EVER be able to catch the carrot, ever. You get the best gear, it'll only be best for 4-6 months. If there's a new expansion, everything resets. Everything. Get used to it or get off the treadmill. I keep my sanity by remembering that even if someone is going 5.0 on the Treadmill and I'm going 2.0 - well eventually we'll all be right here. Restarting the treadmill. This is why I never get hardcore with raiding. It doesn't make sense to. Go at your own pace, be happy with the pace. Enjoy the people around you, stop trying to go faster on the treadmill.

Senpai can work in a non-weird setting, since it just means someone who is senior to you in your station (Not someone of a higher position then you, but someone who has been there longer), but given the "Notice Me Senpai" meme, I'd certainly actively avoid it. There's no excuse for HERRO though. Wow. If people are going to use Japanese, which is fine, I strongly urge to at least study the language beyond that which we learn in anime. It'd actually a really interesting, artistic language, but a huge bitch to learn.

Can we use this thread for people to tell their characters stories and plots they've been apart of? I know Wiki is a thing, but a lot of those are vague and you know, kind of a slog to get through. I'd love to read about a character's path in the game! TELL ME YOUR STORIES.