K'dath

If you're a Seeker you're in luck. There's a Seeker tribe at the Forgotten Springs in game that gives us a detailed look at Seeker tribal culture. It doesn't give us all the answers we'd like, but it's a lot more than nothing. Check it out when you can. I've been there, done all the quests there, and I was deeply disappointed with it. There's very little that distinguishes them from any other race or any other settlement in the game. The only 'tribal' thing they do is hunt, which is a fate that pops up now and again and a briefly mentioned affair in a quest that is half as long or prominent as the one where you have to chase away people oggling the bathing cat girls. Even the important NPCs could either just as easily be city folk of any race for all the cultural difference they show, there's nothing about them that makes them distinctly Miqo'te. Two rival Tia vying for dominance is all the 'detail' we get, and they both have all the personality and ambition of plaster. The same amount of factual information you can pry out of them is summed up in the 'naming conventions' article. And the nunh is a terrible, played up trope of 'lol cat people'. He rolls his R's and he's sassy! Groan. And on top of that the naming conventions article goes out of its way to mention that Nunh are NOT leaders of their tribes, but he is, for whatever reason. If the lore's self contradicting, you can't say either interpretation is definitively right. It all hardly amounts to more than nothing. The way the Miqo'te are handled as a race is a joke.

You should be proud! Your simple question gave birth to a brilliant conversation that has spanned several subjects that are at least within the same realm of your original post! That's quite an achievement! Heh. Maybe you're right. Thing is, the last RP-orientated forum I used to frequent had a strict policy against derailing threads, doubleposting, and necroing. I guess I just got used to the rules. We roleplayers can't be confined by such silly ideas like "staying on topic." I mean, geeze! This is now a funny gifs thread. Here, I'll start. ALL ABOARD THE BANDWAGON. Here's one I made. This is pretty much how I feel all the time.

There is also actually more than one or two outfits for men which tend towards the slightly more salacious side of design. Not that it has anything on the long running history of 'boob plate' objectifying women, but it's a nice change of pace. I, for one, welcome the impending age of objecting men to plate thongs.

I for one am extremely offended by the way Square has handled Miqo'te as a race. I felt like there was a lot of potential that was hand-waved and eye-rolled until tribal just meant "People who don't live in a major city." I've made way more trips to the mythical land of land of probable than I'm normally comfortable making with a character, but the lack of really deep lore sort of limits the number of objective facts I can tie myself to. We get a lot of general lore, oh yes they are tribes and they showed up around this era, with no details or insights into what they're like. So all I can do is make assumptions on many fronts and admit I can't justify any of it with facts. ICly, I at least have 'Well, he's from a reclusive and xenophobic tribe of a species who's culture is built around brutality and mating rights. His understanding of the world is very different than yours.' It's original given the context of the world where all the NPCs behave pretty consistently despite their race or heritage. Original concept though? Certainly Not.

It could be argued that Gridania is a very big exception to that. I mean us as humans. That is WAY beyond the scope of this topic, BUT the humanoids in the story mode certainly have their share of major malfunctions. Eorzea pretty much runs on the rule 'Everyone is selfish, so I've gotta get mine before they get theirs!' Or 'If I can't have it no one will'. The problem with the aetheric disturbances that 'will certainly destroy Eorzea' trace back to human aggression. In fact, pretty much everything that's ever gone wrong in history that we know of has been attributed to humans being idiots, not the primals. See the Eorzean Timeline for some great examples of how humanity in this game is exceedingly stupid.

Welcome to Fantasy as a genre.

I am a table top player, so I am all about the rolls. But my introduction to that system in an MMORPG setting was... unfavorable. I'd made a new character who'd been immediately co-opt'd into a friend's RP guild who was VERY strict about using rolls as the rule, something that blew my mind because I'd always just used, you know, common sense. But the GM was extremely anal retentive about 'I don't care if you're a good RPer, we all roll.' He was a player-run arena champion of the roll system and vouched for its vital necessity. He was ICly a combat master. ...and my level 12 Worgen Druid, who'd never held a weapon before that moment, ground him into human meat paste. Twice. And then that worgen was suplexed by a Gnome... So I have pretty mixed feelings about it. If you're building a system then I'd say go the full TRPG route and draft up some merit/flaw points that'll add or subtract from their roll total.

I am not sure what R&D is, but yes, most of my character relates to researching beast tribes and primals. Do I have a colleague now? Indeed! I have made understanding the nature of the beastmen and their craven gods my purpose! Sometimes to... less than ethical ends. But all in the name of research and understanding! And that's gotta count for something. Have you been sacrificing humans? -__- No way man. That's against my alignment!

I purposefully didn't touch on the Primals themselves, because they could very easily be a subject/thread all to their own with the various factors they bring to the table. In fact, I could probably write a full length essay just off the top of my head. I won't, but I could. As far as tempering and worship go, I think that it is possible for non-Amalj'aa to revere Ifrit without tempering, but not probable. The primals 'feed' on the worship of their followers. Without the prayers and pleas of their followers they cannot maintain a tangible form. The more prayer, the more powerful. That is why they temper mortals, humanoids and beastmen alike, so that they will devote themselves to the Primal's being and no other cause. There are non-tempered humanoid pirates 'The Serpent Reavers' in service to Leviathan, and there are 'heretics' which serve the Dragons (though whether they are 'tempered' or not I don't believe was ever brought up, only that they were 'mad'). So you could, as far as lore elaborates on the matters, be a willing, non-beast servant to a primal, but these people are usually not the sort you would associate with and would most likely be publicly condemned as criminals, incarcerated, or flat out executed to prevent the unmaking of Eorzea any further. As for the nature of Odin, there's some quest text that elaborates on his nature a little more. I just grabbed this bit off the wiki: It seems like his major function is to simply be a wondering swordsman looking for the perfect battle, a very common fantasy trope, especially in Eastern culture where the samurai is still an honored symbol. His 'primalness' seems comparatively unimportant, though crowning him an 'Elder' Primal does make me curious as if there is even more to all the primals' history we don't know yet. I'm aware Bahamut is considered an 'elder' primal too, but I don't think what the distinction between primal/elder primal has been touched on or elaborated yet?

I am not sure what R&D is, but yes, most of my character relates to researching beast tribes and primals. Do I have a colleague now? Indeed! I have made understanding the nature of the beastmen and their craven gods my purpose! Sometimes to... less than ethical ends. But all in the name of research and understanding! And that's gotta count for something.

Did I hear Primal R&D RP? Because I think I heard Primal related RP...

I was Alliance for the most part and rarely ever went Horde. I can't really say why, to be honest. It just never clicked with me. I have heard many great and wonderful tales about Hordeside RP, though! I have fond memories and even greater screenshots of my Nelf pre-Moon Guard back when I played on Silver Hand during Vanilla and BC. Horde RP was pretty starkly divided into: Blood Elf RP and No Blood Elves Allowed RP. One was vastly better than the other, but included about, oh, 10% of the server. It was why I spent most of my closing days on my Druid rather than any of my geared/raid toons. Sweeping generalizations and sarcasm aside, Horde RP was alright. It had some really, REALLY good, inspired guilds that did some really cool things... And then there was the very prolific 'sex slave brothel' guild. /PTSD

Yup! But vanity slots are still not coming till 2.2! Priorities!

Oh god. Don't take me back to that place man. I've seen some things in my time.

The majority of WoW nobility I ever saw were humans or Blood Elves. Blood Elves sort of kind of make sense of you take in the Convocation of Silvermoon-- as at least five of the houses were unnamed so far as I've ever found. One large effort on Ravenholdt was to re-establish seven houses (not including Sunstrider or Drathir) in place of the seven that had fallen in RP. It was done entirely through roleplay and for a while it worked out really nicely, consolidating smaller houses into larger one and generally using political marriage and manipulation to get things combed out. I never played on Ravenholdt, so I can't speak for that, but we had dozens of Sin'Dorei 'noble houses' on Moon Guard... and they were all awful. The idea itself isn't bad, in theory. But you're taking a major lore component into the hands of players at that point. Especially if you're going to present your house with having any sort of merit that's to be respected or acknowledged ICly. I think it can be done, I think it can be done well, again in theory. But you have to have the drive, the ambition, the organization, and perhaps most importantly the lore knowledge to pull it off and run a respectable establishment. Standing in bars all day playing spin-the-bottle is not what nobles do, and organizing whole houses around that perception is even worse. And that's what they all were. In fact, that's all any 'noble' type RP I've ever seen, really bad played up 'Victorian Playboy' types. Thus, my long running apprehension. I completely understand your point and I've heard horror stories of MG's hack at 'nobility'. I saw the same thing happen on Wyrmrest Accord and honestly when Ravenholdt began to deteriorate, it happened there too. I'll list my issues with poorly-done noble houses in a moment but on Ravenholdt there was organization. The cornerstone to the whole thing was two large Sin'dorei houses run by an OOCly married couple. One ran one house and his spouse led the other. Their conflict and their openness to bring other houses into the 'fray' provided the building blocks. More, and here's my stance of noble houses, they fulfilled what I consider to be one of the most IMPORTANT parts of running a house-- GIVING YOUR MEMBERS SOME STORY. Too often do I see a clique of people who are all ICly connected or related expecting all their roster to simply support their story. They commonly walk around with their posses who exist, seemingly, only to credit their 'power' or 'status'. In our house at least, each person who was brought into the fold was given plenty of attention. Our officers turned us, trained us, and stayed with us. Our guards actually did their jobs and spent much time talking and training amongst themselves. Our diplomats lived endangered lives, we had spies, infiltrators, scape goats-- no one was simply a servant with no other purpose except to add one more to the roster. We had goals, rivals, and conflict. Nothing was swept under the rug simply because a member who got involved with an issue was 'too low rank to notice'. I mean when it really boils down to it, it's RP. For the nobles, you should have some sway and notoriety. You're not going to get that by trying to accumulate as many RPers as possible then neglecting them or focusing solely on your own story. The revival of the Convocation of Silvermoon made no real efforts to try to twist the actual lore. No one was trying to dethrone Lor'themar, no one was trying to usurp the Horde or pretended that the united 'power' of the group could accomplish such a feat on behalf of the whole of their people. What they did was fill their niche-- whatever job they did that made them a noble house, they continued to do. The conflicts that arose were often two wealthy houses having an issue over territory or jobs that they wanted to fill that some other group wanted as well. The IC decisions they made and topics they discussed affected the united houses as a whole, and perhaps the 'retainer-houses' that were allied with them, but they didn't try and control NPCs. If, say, a war broke out on their doorstep (there were huge non-Elf groups like the Shadowtusk Clan which was a giant Troll guild who hated belfs and loved to start issues that could turn into full scale blood-sport, or evil guilds such as the Knights of the Icy Blade who readied themselves to attack the living houses eventually), they'd use that Convocation to persuade the other houses to aid the effort, throwing whatever accumulated weight they had around and pulling all the ties they'd forged. Another fun part of it was the 'Shadow War'-- all members of all houses and even non-Elf houses were held to the single important rule 'No fighting in the cities'. The NPC guards would no doubt take you and put you away. Rather than testing that rule and saying 'Oh well that Sentinel just ran by me and didn't do anything' people honored it and took it a step further to the Shadow War. They worked in manipulation, kidnapping, subterfuge, and there were people in the houses whose sole purpose was to do the dirty work and keep the reputation of the house pristine. It's almost unfathomable now-- people not being called on their guild tags simply because they're floating over their head or recognized because of their name. I don't know. All the memories and the work and how well things went for quite some time still leaves a nice big place in my heart for nobles and noble houses that are done well. I always feel a little sad for an aspiring crime-lord or a noble who doesn't have anyone to beef up their reputation but I feel it's something that can be accomplished in character. I certainly don't want to see nobility demonized OOCly by people who assume everyone who RPs nobility is going to do so poorly and they don't -deserve- to RP a noble character-- but I know the vast majority if not the entirety of the RPC doesn't feel that way because of the general open-mindedness I find here. Someday I'd be happy to have Siobhain swear her loyalty to some noble or another if their views were in line with her own. But chances are, just because of the character type, it'd be far more likely to see her connected to some type of militia or school. *On another note, I yearn to see some large scale criminal coalition in Ul'dah filling different niches that are connected and work together. Similarly, I'd enjoy, I think, seeing a few nobles grouped up and doing noble things together. I'd like to see the dynamic of different nobles and how they interact with each other despite their different origins as well as non-nobles interacting with them. *dreamy sigh* To clarify, I would never assume to tell someone they don't deserve to play anything. You don't need my permission to play whatever you want, however you want. But if I can dissuade someone from making their character some sort of noble for no reason other than 'eh I feel like it' and doing it poorly, in favor of say, something different and interesting involving some unelaborated part of lore, I personally feel like I've done a good deed. I don't mean to outright condemn the subject matter as a whole or tell anyone what to do... in fact earlier in this very thread... Truth be told, the one thing that irked me more than anything was the games of 'noble swap' they various house guilds played. Like they were noble houses who... collected other nobles. Not retainers, not servants... not anything that would make sense. And they didn't marry them off or make political alliances. Nope, noooo. Way too much effort. They just hoarded them. Plucked them off the street and said "Hey, you wanna join my house, you stallion?" ...and then, you know, they'd meander off to screw. Just tons and tons of unassociated, unconnected noble families but they are all under one 'house'. Which prompts my 'Do you even know what nobility ARE?' point of contention any time I see someone bring it up. Even worse was the ratio of retainers to nobility was abysmal. In fact, there were several hundred players in some of the larger guilds... and I knew... 3 people in one that were not in and of themselves nobility. Three. One, two, three. Out of around two-hundred... Nothing about either of those things is good. It's just blatantly pontificating your own character and their importance. I'm not saying all nobility are this way, I'm not saying the concept is inherently this way, but if it's not handled with a bit of common sense it's much easier to overblow it into all out 'mary-sue' territory than, say, your garden variety warrior. Nobility aren't the only ones to suffer from their either. Warlocks are the other major culprit of 'Mary Sue by Design'. Everything in lore denies that they should be allowed to exist alongside the rest of society, but, you know mechanics get in the way of that... Anything can be a bad character, a bad design, or a bad concept. It's execution that's going to determine whether it is or not. But some require a bit more forethought to conduct in a meaningful way. That's my point more than 'You shouldn't do it ever because it is bad and you're bad if you do it'. No, it's not. But you should think about it, contextualize it, justify it, and bring it into alignment with the lore, the world, and most importantly the player base. Doing things just because you can IS bad design. So I do apologize if I seem overly hostile on the matter. I don't mean to discourage or berate people that do aspire to such levels of competency as you described. It sounds absolutely lovely and I'd adore to see nobility being treated like, you know, goddamn nobility instead of conductors of orgies. I paint a grim picture because it's all I know, it's all I've seen, and I point to it and go 'Don't do that' out of love and a desire NOT to see the community go the way of Moon Guard, rather than to upset anyone who has well intentioned aspirations.

The majority of WoW nobility I ever saw were humans or Blood Elves. Blood Elves sort of kind of make sense of you take in the Convocation of Silvermoon-- as at least five of the houses were unnamed so far as I've ever found. One large effort on Ravenholdt was to re-establish seven houses (not including Sunstrider or Drathir) in place of the seven that had fallen in RP. It was done entirely through roleplay and for a while it worked out really nicely, consolidating smaller houses into larger one and generally using political marriage and manipulation to get things combed out. I never played on Ravenholdt, so I can't speak for that, but we had dozens of Sin'Dorei 'noble houses' on Moon Guard... and they were all awful. The idea itself isn't bad, in theory. But you're taking a major lore component into the hands of players at that point. Especially if you're going to present your house with having any sort of merit that's to be respected or acknowledged ICly. I think it can be done, I think it can be done well, again in theory. But you have to have the drive, the ambition, the organization, and perhaps most importantly the lore knowledge to pull it off and run a respectable establishment. Standing in bars all day playing spin-the-bottle is not what nobles do, and organizing whole houses around that perception is even worse. And that's what they all were. In fact, that's all any 'noble' type RP I've ever seen, really bad played up 'Victorian Playboy' types. Thus, my long running apprehension.

Well, since September 2013, of course. Someone needs to learn to read~ And it is. In fact the band is awesome, I get the feeling you'd appreciate their stuff. I'd stretch so far to say they're the only thing playing on the radio that isn't bloody horrible. Give the rest of their album a listen~

Everyone's destination isn't necessarily the same. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying from a general stand point though. You shouldn't be able to snap your fingers and be level 99 with relic+++ and armor made from the flesh of Bahamut himself etc, etc. It is important to level and progress and learn. You get a feel for what you are capable of in an intimate way by doing things besides spamming Ruin2 at FATE mobs till you collect your 555k exp. You should invest in your character. But that's a personal decision, and other people are going to feel/connect differently. Your mileage will vary.

Normally, I'm not into the whole 'character theme' shenanigans. Then I found this song. And it was too perfect. Because... [align=center]...Banjos.[/align] [video=youtube] It's campy, but clever, profoundly deep, with a playful face, and rather romantic, in the more traditional use of the word. Perfect song for a rambling troublemaker. I don't think anything better fits, in both tone and lyrics, what I was going for. [align=center]But hold me fast, hold me fast, Cos I'm a hopeless wanderer[/align]

I really wasn't gonna respond anymore on my earlier argument because I liked the note I ended on. I feel like it's a bad design choice and I dislike it, I would have it removed if it were within my power. You know what else I think are bad design choice? French doors and lime green paint. I find them needlessly garish. My house has them both and if I had the power to change them into something more pleasing to my sense of style I would. I'm not going to burn my house down to spite the doors though. And I'm not going to quit the whole game because I don't like the story. I stand by my point though. They're making you run a single player campaign to unlock the MMO features. My ability to engage in multiplayer is affected by their decision to gate off content according to story progression. There were times where I was the correct level to go do a dungeon with my friends, but was not far enough in the story so I couldn't go with them. If I can't multiplayer with a massive amount of people online, then how can you call it an MMO? Instead of millions of people I can play with 'people who have done exactly this many quests only'. It damages my ability to be a part of that game's community, because regardless of my skill level or gear I am tethered to this small chunk of content. It's not just dungeon content that's gated by the 'story progression' system. You can't access a personal bank, use the auction house, or have use of your mounts until you've completed the 'story' for those things. Those are arguably VERY important features that people who want to level crafting and/or gathering need. Is their enjoyment of the game less legitimate because instead of combat they'd rather do that? It's even worse for them because you can't use your crafting/gathering professions to further the story! So now they have to level a combat class just to get the basic tools they need to 'play the game for real' by their own terms. And people DO play this game for only those classes. I feel like my enjoyment would have been vastly improved if I could have grind between 37-40 and said "Story? Just gimme cliff notes... blah blah ship blah dragon blah, got it. I'll do the wrap up dungeon a few times to get some better gear and work out this difficulty spike before I ship off for Garuda." Because I was excited to do Garuda! ...and then I spent two weeks at level 38 because I could not stand the story at that point. It was painful for me to do. After I finally slogged through the parts I found tortuously boring? Bam. 40-45 in less than 9 hours and I'm ready to do the boss I was excited about. But I lost all that time because the game arbitrarily slammed down a stop sign and said "No video games until you've done your homework." That's all the story is... homework. Some of it I do like. Some of the subjects are fascinating and I can get into them (the primals are way cool). Some I simply don't mind and I can busy my way through. Others I can't see the appeal of and will likely never understand. That's why I failed every math class I was ever in and never dropped below an A- in History or Classic Lit. I frankly just don't see the appeal in forcing a single-player narrative into an MMO. It feels awkward and disconnected from what is going on in the story and what is actually happening. I'm not going to say that's an objective statement, because I clearly am expressing my opinion, but the game itself maintains Story/Content segregation in regards to MANY things. I don't see why just giving the nod to players who level ahead and say 'Well, this way lies the lore and context you may find to be of merit. If not, that way is the pen were we keep all the grinders. You can move on to the next area when your hips are sufficiently chapped.' While I highly doubt that it is the norm to skip that much stuff, I honestly would not be surprised if there are people who mostly did FATEs and side quests all the way up to lv 50 without completing a large percentage of the main storyline. I mean, my WHM is almost 50 and I haven't even started the chain of quests that lead to Garuda yet... If doing a bunch of bland, run-around story quests weren't in my way, I could do it right now. <_< I have never, in my whole time as a gamer, been more frustrated and angry with a game that I was with the whole Corethas/Ishgardian questline... Nothing but swear words spewing out of my mouth for two hours unrelenting and any attempt to talk to me was met with a "F**K ISHGARD AND I HOPE BAHAMUT COMES BACK AND LEVELS THIS WHOLE MOUNTAIN". It was the worst time I've ever had in a game I've played willingly. And I've played Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition.

You only dislike it because you're bad at it. Standing around like a lump while your pocket cat boy spams AoE.

Perhaps your content =/= story comment is the crux of it, for me the story is the key piece of content, if I only wanted tab-targeting mechanics and roleplay I have other options, but none with the backdrop and narrative of Primals, Garleans and the like. The seemingly and sometimes literal shark jumping is one of a dozen reasons WoW and I parted. The dark, drama-ish narrative is what (aside from social events) is what keeps me interested. For an MMO current content is generally another way of saying end game. Normally just shortened to 'content' for the sake of talking about whatever the most recently released patch/raids are, not necessarily the whole contents of the game. In most MMO's your reward for getting to level cap is access to that content. You can now 'play the game for real' as it were as this is where most of the challenge and fun distractions open up. In a single player JRPG your reward is the story line. You play through the game to experience the story and when you have beaten the game you get to know the ending. FF14 is telling me I have to play this single player RPG while sitting next to tons of other fun people before I can play the MMO with them. I feel that this is a bad design choice.

While I don't entirely agree with SE's decision, the End-game content is directly tied into the story line so I can kind of understand their views, as far as the internal lore of the world is concerned, behind gating the content, perhaps they think "well the raids are a part of the story, and to see the end, you have to go through the beginning." Again, I don't really care if people are interested in the story, twelve knows you can right click and escape-cancel your way through it if you don't want to watch any cut scenes. But i've had enough people in Prae going "WHO IS THIS LAHABREA GUY ANYWAYS" to make me cringe. But the dungeons and raids in WoW are connected to the story. Even some of the minor dungeons help tie up massive, glaring plot holes that go otherwise unaddressed. The raids, in fact, ARE the story. The entirety of the fate of Azeroth is tied up in them. They're arguably more important than the actual quests when it comes to that point. (WoW's story telling overall is somewhat weak, YMMV on that end) But you don't have to do the story to enjoy them for what they are. In fact, because of the branching leveling paths and abundance of quests, you'll often out level and area/dungeon before you even get to the point where its dungeon becomes relevant. Some dungeon stories are completely missing if you play a different faction! The story compliments the content. It's the framing device. It is not the content itself. In your regular JRPG, yes, the story is the content. But I think that's a bad model for an MMO. I would have preferred to been able to grind and do things with people and then do the story. Gods know I'd do it anyway because I am a lore nazi and need to know everything. But holding my nose in it and scrubbing my face like an SOS pad is not a good way to sell your narrative. For me, slogging through it is tedious and it's being used like a punishment instead of a reward. Again, YMMV, but I think regardless of whether you think it's a good story or not, it's a bad design choice.

Oh my, I'd loved non-timed dungeons. Not because I can't finish them in the allotted time. Just so I can take part in shenanigans in the empty places after there's no more enemies, haha. Some higher level people and myself ran through Sastasha and roflstomped it in about 7 minutes, and just ran amok playing around in it with our swimsuits and pirate hats on.

I was having a discussion about this last night in fact. I was complaining that the end game is totally locked off from you if you don't do arbitrary story quests, a system I am not okay with. I am totally indifferent to the main story and would be fine with FATE grinding my face into a gory mess if it got me to 50 and I could then do what I perceive is 'the fun stuff'. "Well K'dath, you whiny ass, just play a different game then if you hate the story so much." But that's not my point. I like the game. I don't like that there is only ONE way to do things and that you are locked out of most of the content if you do not complete the story. I compared it to WoW and GW2, the only still running MMOs I've played for more than 30 days, which have variable ways to get to level cap to cover various types of appeal. Don't like this faction/story/questline? There's another area you can go to! Don't like questing? Dungeons! Pvp! You can also grind, if that's what you like to do! You can level in WoW 1-90 without ever killing a single mob and it has been done. With GW2 it's the same thing, they reward you for being part of the world passively, exploring the world isn't just '300xp here and there' it's a full blow, legitimate way to reach the end game. Climb that mountain and poke the flag on the top, it's just as efficient as questing. (I leveled to 80 only doing exploring and whatever dynamic events pop'd up between vistas. It was the most fun I ever had leveling in anything.) HOWEVER you get to 80/90 you can then proceed to, you know, DO end level stuff. There's no 'Well, you didn't do this long quest chain in Krasarang Wilds, so no Siege of Org for you until you finish it!' It's done. You have made it to the end. Enjoy your end game! We will have something new for you to do in a few months and you can start all over. To which I was told: "It's because of cultural differences. Westerners want instant gratification." That statement kind frustrated me, because I felt like it immediately equated my frustration to, uh, this. I suppose it is true though! Complaining about the right to do content you haven't 'earned' the right to do in the context of the story isn't too dissimilar to whining about gear requirements. But it just makes me feel like this game is too married to the 'traditional' FF model with the MMO endgame tacked on at the end. If I wanted to play FFXII... I'd play FFXII! I want to partner up with people I meet and kill things and not have to be concerned about poorly written tripe the story if I don't feel it's necessary for my enjoyment. Final Fantasy 14 is comparatively a young game, it'll improve, and that's fine. WoW is almost a decade old and is a titan among men who eats other AAA MMOs for snacks. Guild Wars, as a franchise, is nearly as old and covers a unique niche with its F2P model. FF14 shouldn't TRY to be those games or shamelessly copy them. It's important to have your own identity... but linearity shouldn't be it. Just... my rambling thoughts on the matter.