K'dath

I wouldn't slap you. Because that's a terribly unprofessional thing to do! I would just leer at you disappointingly, and let the crushing burden of my disapproval provide you with the angst you need to overcome in order to save the world from inevitable fiery doom... or just, you know, not put a damn H in the word blast.

Yeah, but for arguments sake, birds aren't dragons. Fafnir, Ryujin, and Gorynych are all cool names, but it feels 'claimed' by imagery of giant scaly bastards. Chocobos are rotund and fluffy. Also, there's plenty of equally bad-ass birds out there. Like Ninkasi, goddess of beer, who is a giant fire breathing eagle, conceived from the mythological equivalent of the big bang. There's also Aquila, the aspect of lightning in Greek mythology. Altair is the Arabic name for Aquila's constellation, and the namesake of the more infamous Assassin's Creed character with a strong tie to the imagery of eagles. Alkgnost, a bird of eastern myth that flies out of hell during thunderstorms to eat souls of those stuck out in the rain. There's the Lovecraftian Shantak, a great and terrible scaly bird that commands the skies bordering the dream realm of the gods. Oh, and the Roc/Rohk, which was probably actually a real giant fucking death bird that could carry away small cattle. And these are just a few of the ones with cool-ish sounding names that aren't already spoken for in universe, like Garuda and Phoenix. Just for your consideration. We all know dragons are immensely awesome. The insanely OP'd birds in mythology get so much less credit! Really was just trying to be helpful, not pushy. I utterly lose my mind and everything comes to a grinding halt when I need to think of the perfect name, so if I saved you a headache by cracking out the old dictionary of mythology, I'm glad. Yeah. I never did get my gold chocobo though :c This was all way back before you could just google that though, so maybe I was just doing it wrong. Those darn strategy guides are never right!

Oh... I liked Cata. The big problem with it I think was that it simply wasn't polished, which there are some decent, legitimate reasons for. You know, like half the production team just up and leaving to go do Guild Wars. It had plenty of potential, but everything falls just sort of good, leaving you with so much mediocre it's disheartening. Except Dragon Soul. That was the worst thing to ever happen. Ever. Whoever okayed production on that is worse than Hitler...fusioned with Stalin all DBZ style... and then put his mega awful fusion brains into the body of a shark. With robot legs. And for people who have never done it, with how ridiculous that creature I described above is? Dragon Soul is that ridiculous. And it's a cornerstone of canon in an extremely serious story.

I really do hope we'll get a rainbow of Chocobos when breeding comes out. I so desperately want my black S-ranked guy and his lovely blue mate. Their children however were disappointing.

Considering that in game birds are actually categorized as their own species of wyverns, it would make more sense than naming a flightless bird after the 'King of the Skies' On the other hand, the Rathalos is extremely bad-ass. Maybe go with Rathian, Queen of the Land? c;

Leveling X'chail, I've done all my dungeons with premade groups where I ran heals as an Arcanist and had no problems. What do Conjies have that I don't anyway!? Then I started leveling my pure DPS alt and am sorely lacking for contacts on Gilga, so I queued as DPS. 2 hour wait, at 9am on a Wednesday, for Copperbell Mines. And then the tank left and the healer didn't speak English... Thanks but no thanks, I'll just make some friends instead. How nefarious Square, forcing me to SOCIALIZE on your multiplayer game!

Oh good, someone who's familiar with WoW. Might I query you, do you think Alphinaud also sounds suspiciously like Wrathion as well? I had to look it up at first to make sure they were indeed different actors, but in demeanor and tone they seem annoyingly similar. In fact, nearly all the FF14 voice actors DO have WoW credits under their names. And while WoW does have some beautiful, moving voice actors like the ones you listed, they also have... you know, this... slCPddt5YsQ

The only way to avoid drama is to not be dramatic. If that's beyond your grasp, you will find it wherever you go. In a welcome, loving community ... in a wretched hive of trolls... all by yourself under a rock... etc. The you here being a general 'you' not targeting anyone specifically.

Truncated for highlighting purposes. It depends on the type of person. Some people are nosy, busy bodies who think they are involved in everyone's conversation. Some people are earnest and good-intentioned and simply want to contribute, whether they're welcomed or not. Others are just socially awkward or deficient (and I don't mean that in a rude way, it's a legitimate problem) and literally can't process social interactions correctly. Though I'm not trying to be contrary, because I doubt most people are RPing socially stunted folk in good faith. It's simply the best way they know how to flag themselves as being interested in what you're doing. Just saying there are people who are that way and it's a legitimate character flaw. Instead of letting it break your immersion, you can roll with it, if you so choose :b

Tia's is named Warky. Which... kinda falls flat, considering that they went with 'kweh' for the onomatopoeia this time. I suppose I will name my next one 'Kwehky'

I haven't experienced this issue with fates. In fact, I don't actually have to do anything to get gold. I just spam Tab+1 (Bio) and consistently get gold. No parties or... you know, actually thought needed. This may very well be part of the larger problem with how utterly unbalanced Arcanists are though.

You know, I never had a lot of love for FF13. In fact, I vehemently detested it and made people go sit in the naughty corner if they brought it into my house. The other day someone who'd never played it before asked me what exactly about thirteen was so bad that prompted such extremist reactions... and to be honest, I could not actually articulate a reason why. I don't even remember why I hate it, and it makes me feel very idiotic. It was kind of an earth shaking revelation. I even called my ex, who of the two of us is drastically more qualified to review a Final Fantasy game, and asked him why he didn't like Thirteen. To which he couldn't answer justifiably either. I feel like my whole life is a lie... To the actual subject and the possibilities it opens, I actually highly doubt they'll liberally allow cross-overs from other games. Lightning is from their current IP, which is in need of sales. They're trying their damnest to sell /this/ character. "We are going to shoe-horn her into every facet of this company until you like her!" Or, if you're not mean and cynical like I am about everything, the technical limitation of "Well, we'd have to actually make unique character models and outfits and dynamic events/behaviors for them, and that's a lot of work." Which is a legitimate enough reason to limit it to a promotional thing. Assuming FF14 is still around when 15 comes out, they'll probably do a tie in with that. Maybe with subsequent Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest releases as well, since Square seems to like sharing characters across IPs. I doubt we'll get an 'ohfuck, Sephiroth came here through a dragon break and is gonna drop another meteor on your face unless you wail on him! Oh, and use this redonkulously large sword!' And I seriously doubt we'd get anything with more dark horse characters like Theodric suggested. But who knows? I'd lob my wallet at the screen to run amok with Balthier.

Oh, you mean like the period of about five years where Johnny Yong Bosch was every major protagonist on every anime dub? Those were some dark times. I mean I like the man, I've met him before and he's a genuinely nice guy, but hearing him five hours a night on my anime night was getting downright depressing. I see where you're coming from though, and I don't disagree. I'm just saying there's a standard I think of with this company, and I don't get the feeling they were too discerning with the choice of VA's for this game. Given, it's a small amount of voice acting, and it hardly calls for busing in, say, Crispin Freeman. But branching out to other talent shouldn't mean compromising quality. A bit more 'constructive' look at what specifically has rubbed me the wrong way about FF14 is everyone is over acting so hard. It's like a soap opera. And they're all so loud. What comes to mind prominently is Merlwyb. No matter what she is trying to express at any point in time, its sounds like she is thinking so hard about what she is saying and trying to sound the most dire one can make their voice. It comes out so over the top instead of serious she sounds comical, and it causes me to actually physically cringe, then lean over and turn off my speakers. And with Kan-E-Senna she never changes tone... ever. Having normal conversation with adventuerer? Same tone. Giving a spirited memorial service? No inflection. Having a fucking meteor dropped on her head? Might as well be picky daises with how involved she sounds in what's going on. Then again, it's the same stuido that gave us true voice acting gems It's a lot of hair splitting on my end, and I certainly don't mean to imply my personal tastes are the end-all be all of voice acting! I just think this isn't up to par for a Square production... and my standards are pretty low.

Oh of course. It'd be silly to expect award winning performances from MMOs, games that traditionally don't even have tons of voice acting. But, at the same time, it is Square Enix, which tends to budget in a b-list voice actors. I'm more or less judging it by the same standard as FFX or FFXII, than say WoW or GW2. And in comparison it just feels like instead of hiring voice actors, they grabbed some guys from the bus station and told them "Try really hard to sound really serious." Like I said though, I acknowledge I am being dramatic. Read everything I say on the matter as hyperbole~

ohgod, I thought the voice acting is absolutely abyssal. Square isn't legendary for having the best dubs (ohgodTidus), but at least they usually hire people who sound professional. I could google them and go "Oh, THAT's where I heard Mr. Frowns-a-Lot before." But this time... euhg. It's like they blew the voice acting fund on more writers to come up with the godawful puns for every quest and fate. Glad to see I'm not the only fellow who can always appreciate mister Emery's work though. By now he's really nailed that 'no nonsense elf' character he keeps getting cast as. He was certainly the best of the Scions, but his dialogue is sadly lacking (in my experience thusfar) apparently to leave room for more lines from my bane... Thancred. Looking at him, I was sure he would be an interesting character that I would surely like and would look up to fondly as my white-haired, smarmy dark horse. You just get a feel for these things after so many Square games. But then he opened his mouth... and every word that poured out made me just want to smack him across the face with my lexicon. And he never shuts up. The character ruffled my feathers enough as he was presented to me, but the voice acting really struck a chord... an annoying, hateful chord. Then I looked him up, because I knew, somewhere before, I'd heard this voice. The other voices might make me cringe with their amateur-ish-ness, but something about Thancred just made me hate him... Apparently he shared a voice actor with Darion Morgraine of World of Warcraft. Who's another character I've wanted to slap every time I talked to him. For being 'High Lord' over hundreds/thousands of zombie murder machines powered by rage, he's a whiny bitch. Of course that's just my opinion. I'm very dramatic when it comes to voice actors, with the same intensity high school girls fawn over celebrities, hahaha~

It's called mutual respect. It's what normal, civilized people do. When you meet people you're polite and courteous to them out of mutual respect. Unless you just run up to strangers and slap them? There's just no reason in the world to be rude to people. Everyone should be polite and respectful of others. I don't know where you're getting that I am being combative from? Again, this is implying that this is some sort of retaliation, done out of passion. I can assure you, my exchanges with trolls are free of combat. It consists of pleases, thank yous, and have a nice days. I'm not being snarky or sarcastic when I say it, I am being sincere. I treat them with the sort of respect I would like to see them extend to me, and in my experience, it works. It's not that I don't advocate self empowerment, it's that I prefer peaceable resolutions, rather than leaving a problem to fester. I haven't meant to imply I am better than anyone, and I'm not sure how you glean that from anything I've said. I'm not trying to tell you your opinion is wrong, because it is your opinion, and opinions are not objective. I'm just utterly flummoxed about what the actual contention between us here is. Your tone makes it sound as though you're upset, I thought we were having a friendly discourse about the social ramifications of trolling. I respect the fact you don't want to be in an argument (which I didn't think of this as), since they tend to be rather grating on the nerves. Though I would rather you not depart thinking I'm some sort of raving asshole over some sort of miscommunication that could yet be resolved.

I'm an advocate of agreeing to disagree. I don't think we're preaching from two totally different books either, just different chapters. The problem is, there's this implication that I'm allowing it to bother me, like asking people to stop antagonizing me is some act of aggression. And I don't think of it that way. I honestly couldn't give a rat's furry little back side what people do with the time they pay for. If they want to get naked and dance on tables for 6 days straight they're well within their rights to do so, and it's not my place to tell them they can't. However, I expect a certain amount of respect and civility from people, and I don't believe there's anything wrong with asking for that. And in situations where the harassment goes beyond simple disruption and into the realm of vulgarity, I'm completely within my rights as a consumer to report them for violations of the terms of service, which they have agreed to abide. The thing is, griefing is a problem. And problems don't go away by ignoring them.

I think you misunderstand the part where I said "There is a difference between being a raging lunatic at anyone who might possibly be doing some slight thing to break your immersion..." In the case of someone sitting around crafting near you, it's not exactly earthshaking. Pick your battles. But there's nothing mature about allowing yourself to be bullied.

I don't mean to imply that simply ignoring the problem isn't a perfectly acceptable course of action, but it does nothing to correct the behavior. By not saying anything, you're saying it is acceptable for them to behave this way. There is a difference between being a raging lunatic at anyone who might possibly be doing some slight thing to break your immersion, and politely telling someone who is being an idiot to kindly take it else where. If someone was shoving you repeatedly at class or at work, would you just ignore them? Maybe. But it makes far more sense to tell them in the nicest way possible to bugger off, and if they don't go over their heads and demand action from the higher ups. It improves productivity and decreases hostility in your workplace/place of learning. The same applies here.

I'm still making the slog to 50 myself, but I whole heartedly support what you're trying to do here. I've been healing MMOs as long as MMOs have been around, and my time honored battlecry is "Don't run with me if you hate fun." This is a game. And games are fun. If you're not having fun then you are doing it wrong. As a healer, raid leader, and person, I always treat other players with enough respect not to yell or lose my temper with them. Mistakes happen. Sometimes people don't know the fights and they need to be explained. Sometimes they need to be explained more thoroughly than others. And sometimes you can't quite explain it, and what you're talking about needs to be seen first hand. I'm not experienced enough with game content yet, but when I get there, you can count me in as a healer that won't cry over spilt raids.

Haha, it's far less faith than it is years of headaches. Though I do prefer to think that people are good, until they are bad. Most people will act like jerks because it gives them an ego boost. Being polite in return is usually jarring to them because it's not what they expect, and they don't know how to react. They become self-conscious because you have more self-control than they do, and they leave with wounded pride, less likely to do it again soon or risk humiliation again. Though these are just observations I've made over the years in other games. It'll naturally vary from game to game, server to server, and person to person. Some people are just damaged goods and delight in that fact, and there's nothing you can do about them.

I believe someone else mentioned in a thread about griefing that, while people that don't like RP are free to blacklist RPers so they don't see their RP in their chat logs, we can't exactly block the graphics of their whole bodies sitting on top of us, or tossing nauseating spell effects at us. Ignoring them rarely works as well as you like. You need to be upfront. You don't need to be as much of an asshole as they are in return, but you need to be stern. "Excuse me, sir, but you're going out of your way to bother us while we have no intent of bothering you. If you're offended by our role playing you are free to blacklist us so they you do not have to abide it. Please and thank you." And if they feel the need to be a snark back, kindly remind them that Square has a zero tolerance policy on harassment and ask them kindly again to cease and desist. If they start swearing or using vulgar language, that alone is cause for suspension. Write a ticket and blacklist them. Go somewhere else if it bothers you, because even though they 'win' by driving you away, you know you have the moral high ground, and that should be enough. It's just a space in a game, as good as any other. Shockingly enough, politely asking them to leave works most often, in my experience. They're either shocked or shamed into silence and shuffle off because what they want from you is anger. Ignoring them encourages them to continue until they get a response, and usually their persistence will last longer than your average RPers temper. Don't call them names or say rude things to them, it just puts you on their level.

I always find myself intimidated by 'real' artists. I'm more of a doodler than anything. I would comment that your style is beautiful, though as far as I can see you do excellent work with varied stylistic themes. Color me jealous. I have an alt I've been toying with on and off on Gilga, since I wasn't 100% on if I wanted to stay on Balmung. If you see a rather strapping Miqo'te lad named Aliki'to Sedrah running amok in Ul'dah, that'd be me. I go there when I'm bored of slogging through the storyline on X'chail. *My hours are a little insane too though, due to crippling insomnia.

I can't say if that's any worse than 'Crane Trolling' which became really popular on my WoW server. People would get the crane mounts which just make the most awful noise you ever hear, and honk at RPers relentlessly. For hours. You have to wonder, how devoid their lives are of any humor if they can afford hours to simply spoiling another person's enjoyment of a game we all pay money to play. I would say simply don't let it get to you. They're having fun they only way they know how, because their minds are small.