Rhio

The Ul'dah storyline presents us with a lalafell that is older, distinguished, polite, and also hard as a rock. Pugilists deal with a pair of lalafell students that are both presented as serious physical threats, not as simple punchlines. That's not even counting the number of other non-cutesy lalafells I've encountered in-character, or the darn Sultana herself. I think a lot of the image of lalafells as a joke comes about as a result of promotional bits; the game itself and the story treats them as being a legitimately important part of the peoples of Eorzea. And most of the players I've met expect to be treated as such. In summary, lalafell are people too.

Rhostel punches trouble with her whole body.

Rhio's birthday is February 23rd, and she's aged accordingly. Mostly for rounding purposes I'm counting her 30th as being next year, since the whole time skip is wacky.

Excellent job! Rhostel in particular just looks so happy.

Great guide! Very useful as we experiment with coloring armors. (I found a very striking pattern for Rhio's armor that's definitely making it into launch.)

I think this conversation bears a glance back to a good friend of mine. A friend I like to call history. (If you read that sentence in the voice of Ron Swanson, I assure you it is hilarious.) Final Fantasy XI had a whole plethora of game mechanics in place to ensure that you spent as much time as possible doing things you didn't enjoy. One of these mechanics was fishing. Fishing was screamingly tedious, requiring absolutely no input other than the basic fishing command over and over. It also, however, had a very low overhead cost to get started and produced several valuable fish over time. And since gil in that game was almost impossible to make... You get the idea. Fishing was something you had to do if you wanted to be rockin' those Leaping Boots and thus ever be welcomed into parties as a Dragoon, and if you didn't feel like sitting around for two weeks at a stretch doing so, tough luck. This is fish town, baby, and we're playing FFXI, not your dumbed-down casual themepark that lets you spend more time doing things that you actually bought the game for in the first place. When people ask what killed that style of gaming, I think it's most accurate to say that it committed suicide. But anyway. There are still recipes that use fish, certainly, and based on the game's track record to this point I am sure that fishing will have mechanics to exploit. I think Yoshida's message is not "don't bother fishing" so much as "you aren't going to be forced to fish if you don't want to." Fish are not valuable rarities that are necessary for all advancement; they're fish. You cook some of them and that's it.

If I'm not mistaken (and I'm sure Kylin will correct me if I am), this has since been amended so that time-jumpers are entirely allowed. Which means that whether I bring Rhio or an alt is down to another possible attendee. But I have every intention of being there, quite possibly with bells on.

Well then. New character concept!

Welcome to the site!

Having seen the HQ and lounge last night, I feel I was the part of something grand and wonderful.

As someone who has taken part in a lot of roleplaying communities, the RPC is honestly the most welcoming one I've ever been a part of. The Blue Skies event last night seemed to be a particular case in point; both new and old players mingled, played, laughed, had fun, and enjoyed themselves, with no sense of "well, defer to the important people." Nor were there ironclad cliques of people - small groups formed, changed, dissolved, and found new anchors over time. I've certainly been in places with unwelcoming overall atmospheres before, but that's really not the case in FFXIV, and I certainly don't see myself judging anyone based upon their willingness to tolerate 1.0's messy nature.

I think the consensus is akin to time travel in City of Heroes. After the game shut down, several of the developers got together to answer a whole lot of dangling lore mysteries, and one of the questions asked was about what canonical methods of time travel existed in the game's lore. The developers responded with a list of about seven options, with the seventh being "whatever form your character used for their background." In other words, your character came back from the timeskip when you say your character came back from the timeskip, and if the continuity gets wonky, time travel. Timey-wimey stuff. You get the idea.

He's the one who stood on a ledge being all taunting. She just let gravity (and Kass) do most of the work.

It was indeed awesome. It was/is also awesome how somehow I managed to become separated from the rest of the group, ran into Gerik, and thus some small fragment is still going. Life is keen.

I will be there with Rhio in her post-Calamity makeover. As this is non-canon, I'm going to wing it as to why she's there. Seeing as Rhio is known for being vague and duplicitous, this may actually work out better anyway.

Rhio's chocobo is still named Saladin and is alive and well. Why she named him that exactly I'm not sure - the cultural reference doesn't make much sense in Eorzea - but she did.

I wouldn't think it really matters if you believe in it or not; certain words emphasize your point even if you don't believe in a religion. My shouts of "God damn it!" are not actually an invocation to a deity, after all.

I wouldn't normally, but who knows. I'll actually have time to do things now, so maybe.

Going to second the idea of having a soundtrack more than a single song for Rhio, although there are a couple of songs that fit her to the letter. I'm skimming off the top rather than making an exhaustive list.

"Bugger" is also a British curse word, generally used as a verb. Bugger this, bugger off, and so forth. "Bloody" also enjoys some use in the game, I believe. British curses often get adapted into American localizations because they're recognizable while not sounding too dirty to the intended audience. I've been informed that these terms are quite a bit more vulgar if you're from England, but at least it gives you another basis to go from. No sign of bollocks or wanker that I can recall, though.

"Thal's balls!" always goes over well.

I'm from the street. ...I'm from a street.

Very nice use of blended colors, especially on Kivhi's outfit. It's a good piece!

...Mtoto didn't already talk like that? Man, you should have held up a sign or something.

Seconding this very much. As Eva mentioned, time travel is confusing, which means that some characters might be there only not really or not be there when they should be or stupid time skip you are confusing as heck. At least from a personal perspective, I'm not counting anything prior to phase 4 as canon, and even then I'm dubious until launch. That being said, I'll do my best to attend, since I haven't gotten a chance to practice Rhio's unique brand of obsequious deception in forever.