Oli!

I'm not even going to speak on TOR, because that entire game is a single-player RPG with online portions, but as far as WoW is concerned, this is untrue. Adventurers (the player characters) are referred to time and time again throughout Warcraft lore, and are credited in droves for the most important events in WoW's history. Though many instances can only be claimed by a single person (and are therefore off-limits), nearly every world-changing event was the result of an endless horde of player characters doing Important Things. A huge amount of adventurers (players) are credited as advancing on Icecrown, leading the charge through the Dark Portal (twice!) and even killing Deathwing. They were also the backbone for the siege of Ogrimmar, the reclamation of Gnomergan, the Battle of Broken Shore, and many, many other things. Blizzard writes in armies upon armies of players as being there and taking part in huge ever-changing events. It is in the lore that it is more than possible for your character to have been there to stop the world from being Totally Doomed in almost all instances. It even gives your characters openings for being in all three prior games. As much as I love many aspects of XIV's lore (ask anyone in the monk LS how hype I get over monk lore), we simply do not have this luxury of insertion at a level anywhere near WoW's degree, and this is coming from someone that hates Blizzard's chronic case of Retcon.

One of the things I mentioned in another backstory revamp thread is that an interesting and productive backstory is a backstory that can be engaged with on some level. The reason why I ask the question "what story do you want to tell" is because that question will ultimately influence what portions of the backstory are made available. Assuming that you want something transformative for your character, the first thing you'll want is some sort of conflict, not just on a "we're going to war with Garlemald" level, but on a personal level as well. Without this, my fear is that the character's plot will boil down to her running around and going "wow, Ala Mhigan culture is so cool!" This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if it's not what you're looking for, there generally needs to be an extra spark of conflict or hook of investment that ties your character to this portion of their backstory. Otherwise, there's not much connection; even a non-Mhigan can experience an "I really like this culture and want to aid it" moment; it's nothing unique to your proposed changes, and would likely be doable already with your character's current backstory, whatever that may be. An easy connection is familial, but without any idea as to what that family did, or what their opinions or wishes for their country were, it's hard for me to give you options in that regard. I think a good starting point is brainstorming exactly what you want this cultural connection to mean for your character, and what this tie actually pulls them into that isn't benign or easily escapable.

The error is that we are not talking about Roleplay. We are talking about the presentation of lore and story in a visual media format (i.e., videogames). Other than that, your assessment of what Roleplay is is only mostly correct using these terms. Yes, all Roleplay is "the same" in terms of strict medium, but Form also includes the overall presentation and light of something through the interaction of content and style. In this way, two sets of Roleplay would only be truly identical if they contained the same subject matter and were written in an identical stylistic manner.

Verad, give this document a try. It breaks down the super general and mostly unhelpful "totality of the work" definition into something more in line with what I mentioned. The word they use is "form," though throughout the argument, they refer to the person experiencing form as the "perceiver," which gets us back to what we were talking about. It's mostly about Form, though they talk about its relation to Style and Content as well.

A further distillation of Portrayal can be more than just "how it is presented." It can also be considered to be the actual "thing" that is handed to you; an example is whether the thing given to you is a movie, sculpture, etcetera. Some also consider it to be "the work as a whole," which would fall roughly into line with what I gave you (presentation). I personally am not a fan of the "overall" line of thinking, because it leaves us without terminology we may use to discuss individual pieces of something as complex as a movie or a videogame. None of these terms are solidly defined, because artists like to argue and nothing in art is empirical. The more common terms I've seen for these are "content," "style," and "form," so a search for those may give you more information, though most of that refers to Visual Arts instead of actual entertainment media.

Unfortunately, only lectures. I'll pester some of my professors sometime. Chances are it won't be stated as plainly as that, since the media industry is allergic to simplifying terminology, and because they expect everyone to "just know." Mise-en-Scène is an example of that. Everyone "knows" what it is, but no one can agree on a solid portrayal for it.

Generally in parody, Amplification is the only difference in portrayal from the source material; the actual ratio between the two facets in parody work itself is often unchanged, meaning that style and content can still be near identical within the work itself. Parody in particular is only required to refer to something else, and not necessarily itself (self-parody would fall into self-reference). Comparison between the three axes: Style: the backbone undertones of something that categorizes a work (ex. Color, cinematography, word and phrase usage, visual design). Content: elements of a piece of media independent from (yet added to by) style (ex. Characters, story, world, mechanics). Portrayal: the light in which a piece of media is to be taken, or the way or order that style and content are put forth (ex. Tonality, genre, narrative position, presentation). Portrayal is often confused with the others because various styles automatically lend themselves to certain portrayals (ex., bright cartoons of happy animals being portrayed in a positive and lighthearted way), but the fact they can still be subverted (Happy Tree Friends) shows the difference between them.

I would argue that style and content being near identical is not the issue, and that it is instead presented in your second paragraph: poor portrayal. Media with identical style and content can still be interesting (see: self-referential and parody media).

My question in order to get more towards the heart of what you want is "what story do you want to tell with this backstory?" At the moment, even if you were thinking of doing it beforehand, it still seems like a "doing it for xpac relevancy" thing.

Idea: If "following the lore to the letter" is seen as uninteresting by large groups of people, perhaps it's not the fault of players on either side, and is instead just a side-effect of SE's lore being hot garbage.

Personally I like to think that Interesting Backstories are things that re-emerge at appropriate times. Otherwise they remain uninteresting because they stay inaccessible. Almost all great Backstories in writing come up again somewhere, whether it's something subtle like Batman refusing to kill due to his Dead Parents backstory, or something major like Darth Vader's past coming back to haunt him--multiple times. In fact, the resurgence of Backstory is often how we find out about said backstories in the first place; how do we know Darth Vader is Luke's father, and that he has a grudge against his mentor? Well, they both show up. I'd actually go so far to argue that if a backstory never comes up, it's not only uninteresting, it's also useless. It stops being a backstory element and just becomes a trophy on the wall; "my character did this once upon a time." All I can do as both a player and another character is say, "cool story bro." I have no investment. Questionable lore-compliance of your backstory aside, I would say re-do it with a focus toward making it something tangible and interactive, instead of something distant and static.

This implies that the presented alternatives are "stifling" RP, or that following lore to the letter, which some people prefer to do, does not follow the same line of "improvement." It could be argued that this is a "stifling" viewpoint in and of itself. The issue is that people have different things they want to do, and different preferences within RP, and since the two dominant trains of thought are directly juxtaposed and situated over subjctive ideas of "good" and of "improvement," there will never be agreement.

This has always been the case for Old School light-sect people. It's a different case from Dragoon comparatively, since there are stated avenues one may still use to be a monk; with DRG, we may unfortunately only assume. Though I'm also reasonably detached from that risk, because I retconned several elements to Shadow immediately, so I don't have an investment and may be taking that worry incredibly casually in the eyes of other people.

As far as other classes are considered, I doubt this going to happen, and also think additional doomsaying and "It could happen to you!" also falls in the range of counterproductive comments. Many classes are already in DRG's current state, or ambiguously close to it (WHM, BLM, SMN, etc), and those that currently aren't would require Squeenix to overwrite actual game content (the entire MNK and PLD storylines, for instance) in order for a retcon to take place, which (arguably barring some portions of 1.0) has never happened, and would be far too messy in practice. Ambiguous classes (which DRG honestly always was, and I say this as a factual statement and not as a declaration of whether or not I am on a certain side) are of course barred from this, and could have their lore switched and / or solidified at any time. BLM was placed in the same instance when Heavensward launched, because it too was in a position of ambiguity. Honestly, many of the Jobs were at the time. It's just that for some, things opened up, and for some, things didn't. But for those that are currently solid, I doubt there will be additional fiddling that affects backstory. Current events, however? Very likely.

I'm just glad that my BS about Rhalgr destroying in order to balance things turned out accurate. Though there were only so many ways Squeenix would have taken a destruction god anyway.

You're missing the idea of enjoyment in a shared space. People like having everyone under a shared umbrella; that's why we pay attention to any amount of lore (and argue over it) in the first place. Some people want everyone to follow the lore, and some people want everyone to be accepting (which, yes, is a collective umbrella on its own). Neither argumentative camp is "better" because they are advocating for the same thing: bringing other people into their line of thinking. Neither is provably more "correct" or less "damaging."

The LS has tons of mentors! I'm sure you'll be able to find someone, and we can all help you figure out the Monk lore, both OF and OOC.

Disagree. Roleplay is an activity designed for the enjoyment of a player. If something happens that the player doesn't like, regardless of whether it is known IC or OOC, the activity stops doing what it was designed to do. That would be like saying OOC discomfort should only happen for OOC things, which anyone who has had an unwelcome IC advance would disagree with. People's ideas of enjoyment do not always mesh, which leads to threads like this one.

I think there is an ongoing confusing of the idea of enjoying lore-based consistency, and the idea of tearing other people down for the sake of it, which is in fact inconsistent with the idea of being kind to each other.

Not commenting on the other stuff since I can't really talk about it, but considering the rareness of multiple other jobs (not starting that argument, merely mentioning it), it seems more likely that she's selling to just about anyone with some proficiency (some of the "classes," not Jobs, are "ancient" anyway; Thaumaturge and Conjurer, for example), similar to how the two lalafell wearing BLM gear in the class quest are revealed in 3.0 to really just be posers.

I'll be keeping an eye out for when you're around! Expect an invite!

BOY DO WE HAVE A LINKSHELL FOR YOU. There are tons of monks to network with here for all sorts of purposes, some of the people that offer up may even be in it!

Wouldn't mean as much as would be desired unless the "surviving 10" is supposed to be "surviving 100." That'll still be a wrench in the works for many otherwise.

Not weighing in on anything else here, but it's worth noting that since the Convictory wasn't official, the Dragoons in it likely weren't either. Which of course opens up a path for unofficial Dragoons as mentioned previously, but the actual order didn't have much relation.