Ignacius

I'm sort of the same way. I really disliked the graphics redux and felt like the new features weren't as exciting. But hearkening back to BC sounds a lot more fun.

I've played a lot of MMOs over the years, but I only play the ones I have the best hopes for the future in. For a long time that was WoW (and I was justified, for even if you didn't like some of the expansions I'd say that WoW was simply the best MMORPG straight up through Pandaria) but before that it was FFXI, EQ, etc. I moved to EVE for a while, but got bored of its PVP (I still can't believe that EVE is so centered on the one game aspect it doesn't actually do very well, it's a great game but probably one of the worst PVP games I can think of). I then heard FFXIV had gotten better since 1.0 and gave it a shot. Loved it, and was ready to start that when I got an invitation to the Wildstar beta. I was a huge proponent of that game. I was active on the forums and was really pushing for its success. I played that game for about a year and, more than played it, I ran one of its largest guilds, was a recognized member on the forum, and helped to run player events. Then, we got the news Wildstar was going F2P. Since I haven't ever seen F2P improve a game (all I can say is that it sometimes gives rushed games chances to improve, but I thought Wildstar was in a great place as a game when they announced it), suddenly FFXIV became the game with the brightest future. The Heavensward expansion sealed the deal, and Square's response to calls to go F2P (tell those people to shove off and just make their game better) was icing on the cake. As far as I'm concerned, FFXIV has the best chance to be the best game for the longest span of time, so FFXIV is my home now.

I think people are sort of getting at something from the wrong end. There are a lot of comments here that people need to travel to get the story elements of random encounters. Therefore, they eliminate teleportation from their travel. You really don't have to do that. Teleportation is extremely well-rooted in lore and obviously there for your use and abuse even in story terms. However, it's VERY important to note that it's expensive. And the money you use to pay for teleportation doesn't get made if you don't hoof it a while. This creates certain "classes" of adventurers. If you've got a character avoiding teleportation, they might have every reason to do that. They may make all their money on odd jobs as vagabonds. The jobs a farmer has to give you aren't going to be worth much money. And it may be your characters' view on life that they should be helping the poor and downtrodden. In that way, you may not use teleportation without altering the canon at all, you may just know your money's in between the points. You use it when you have to and when it's worth the money (when you've got a job to do tomorrow across the world, don't spend it in transit. Of course, some people might throw away that teleportation money like candy. They may simply be so rich that the fee isn't even worth thinking about. Most adventurers popping Aetherytes like that will either have supplementary income or be extremely high-level operators that get their jobs from the rich and affluent. They may simply be sent to every corner of the planet to get something as quickly as possible. This suggest a jet-setting character, one that can either afford to be trivial with the teleportation or views it as an asset that he includes in his fees (because rich clients aren't interested in waiting around for an adventurer to get around to giving him results). Orleans, for example, is one of the latter. He teleports everywhere because, in-character, he's a relatively affluent person and a few hundred gil is nothing to him. He's also not very altruistic, so he doesn't much care if a monster is terrorizing local farmers unless he happens to be there and they can happen to pay his fee. Use your teleportation strategy not as a blunt instrument, but as an instrument of character development. Using or not using teleportation IC-ly should be a function of your character. You don't have to fight the lore; use it as a tool for your own ends to give your character some life.

Easy questions get easy answers! It would appear that adventurers are all possessed of the ability to teleport except in the following conditions: -They are actively engaged in combat in a combat zone, such as a dungeon or in a fight in the open world. -They are adventurers. It does not appear that non-adventuring types, mundane or mystical, are all able to teleport. This might be for various reasons. Maybe adventurers are the only ones who routinely travel between cities, thus the only ones who routinely attune to multiple aetherytes. Maybe it's too expensive for the average citizen. Whatever the reason, it appears that only the adventurers are universally possessed of the ability. -They aren't taking much with them. You can't teleport more than you can carry with you. So carts of goods still have to travel. That would say to me that teleportation is easily disrupted in combat by even unintelligent critters (it's a delicate process), is expensive, is difficult to get attuned, and isn't useful for most transportation needs. Therefore, it's only really plausible as a means of travel for adventurers looking to globetrot. We aren't possessed of the abilities of Ascians and the like to simply vanish into thin air. So it should be pretty easy to construct stories and scenarios to stop teleportation. If someone tries to teleport out of a situation, it should be almost comically easy to stop someone from doing it or not accomplishing objectives when they do. However, to try to strike it from the record seems not only implausible, but takes away the core of being an adventurer. There's a big glowing crystal in many towns and Alphinaud seems to make pretty clear that they're seen as boons (he says the Scions are probably the only reason that Vesper Bay has no Aetheryte and means that as a bad thing). So it's not just there, it's part of the fabric of Eorzean infrastructure. Pretending it doesn't exist isn't a lore stretch, it's a lore break. However, you may have many, many reasons your character doesn't teleport personally, if you'd like to avoid it. You could be too poor to reliably use it (your character has better uses of his money). You could have a religious objection (weirder things happen). You could feel that teleportation makes you skip the places you can do good and/or make money (which is true). You could simply not be able to do it for some bizarre reason (you're allergic or aether-intolerant). But in response to the OP, I wouldn't strike it from the canon. Not only does it exist, but it exists in so obvious a form that it can't be taken as a mere game convenience.

Nine tenths of street work is recon. When I'm not logged in, Orleans is generally doing the legwork he needs to do to make sense of what I do when I get online.

Basically, I think the OP is wondering if there should be more diversity of thought in our characters. That's a fair question, honestly. The percentage of people who are racist in our society seems a lot higher than in our player characters. It's also necessary to keep in mind that our people are Adventurers, and as such are both travelers and warriors. Generally speaking, our characters are naturally less prone to that kind of ignorance. I mean, we can do quests for friendly beastmen, so the Au Ra should be a bit easier to deal with than that (they aren't constantly summoning primals to kill us). So there's a game reason for that. But, simply from a mechanical perspective, being racist might be a problem. However, it should be noted that you don't have to be a hood-wearing KKK member to have that nuance. Orleans doesn't particularly like working with Miqo'te because he sees them as generally flighty. Whether that's true in all cases, it's his gut reaction. Tribesmen aren't included, of course, but then they're a different breed as far as he's concerned.

But my 2 gil. Having a successful pregnancy would be rare, and if a child was to be successfully birthed into this cruel world it'd have (in this case) scaley kitty ears, scaley patches where the miqote marking are (or marking where the scale parts are), and fur covered + scale covered tail. Eyes take after whichever parent you want. You know, on that note (and names escape me) but it appears that there is a Miqo'te in the ARR raiding questline who appears to have a royal bloodline trait. I never finished it, so this could be completely out of left field, but that does make me wonder if the bloodline somehow jumped races due to an interbreeding.

It could go either way, I suppose, with G'raha being "evidence." Why would they entrust his ancestor with their blood? Maybe they created him. Or, maybe Miqo'te already were in existence and his ancestor was simply a trusted retainer, as it were. Well, speaking of Azys Lla and such... It won't answer these but it reminds me of this awesome thread I'm currently following. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/251109-Meracydia-Miqo-te-Azys-La-speculations-%28spoilers%29?p=3192320&viewfull=1#post3192320 My Heavensward lore knowledge is almost nonexistent at this point, but omg this thread is fascinating. Heavensward has turned out to be exceptionally good, especially from a story perspective. At least in my opinion; you can take that for what it's worth. But they definitely made sure it was known that the races can mix and that it's not looked upon highly. But hey, it's Ishgard. What is? What we can also infer is that it seems like everyone's relatively similar and has the same plumbing. It's not like the biology of these characters is different. Roegadyn aren't made out of rock and Miqo'te don't appear to have barbed penises with which they brutalize the females of the species. I've heard it said that people would have liked a little more differentiation between the races. But it appears that they have a common ancestry.

I actually do not RP women. That's rather common these days, but I know that, experienced as I am, I would never do it convincingly enough for my own standards.

Let me know if you end up on Gilgamesh. Most of the Gilgamesh people don't hang out on the RPC much these days (there's another forum for that). If you're in, zip me a message or send a tell to Orleans Ignacius. I'll try to get you hooked up to the network.

Ignacius would probably be a biker gang club chief. Since they don't really have biker gangs in FFXIV, he's more of a mercenary/hitman.

Architectural designer, specializing in health care design.

To be fair, they're not SE's "RP Servers". They're both, Gilgamesh and Balmung, unofficial RP servers. Yes, they COULD assign a few of their empty servers to be RP servers or could open a new RP server, but they haven't yet. And yes, SE should realize by now that an RP server wouldn't be some niche market pandering.

Ignacius has no regrets. He's often sad, angry, brooding, and depressed, but regret implies he'd rather have done something else. As far as he's concerned he's done everything he's had to every step of the way. Lives like his are full of terrible things, but you can avoid a life of regret if you always take the best, if not the easiest, decision.

I just hit 51 last night.... seriously. I wouldn't sweat it. In all honesty, it's not really that elitist of a game. The only part of the game that's really out of reach for casual players is housing. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what in the Hell SE was thinking with their housing. It's the only part of the game that is that exclusionary, and it's a fairly important part of the game. I'm thinking of writing a suggestion thread on the main forums for it. It's pretty ridiculous. Other than that, the whole game you can just take at your own pace. Don't feel bad. Just don't compare your gaming experience to someone else in terms of speed. Good game content is like fine cuisine. It's not something you're just supposed to wolf down so you can finish as quickly as possible.

So in the middle of a crowd, the guy drew a LANCE and attempted to injure people around him....? Did anyone ask how in the Hell he did that in the first place? I'm just curious. You don't draw a Lance over your shoulder, and having the lance on your back essentially means you can't really use it at very close ranges. You'd need to have it out by the time you arrived. Just adding on here, not only is it trolling, it's POS combat RP. It's vague, it's unrealistic, but it's also really stupid. Draw knives and start injuring people? That makes a bit more sense.

In case you weren't aware, if you want to know what heavy metal in the Middle East sounds like (it's very often reflective of older trends, but can use otherwise modern production, making it ahead of its time, ironically) then you need to get your ear on the ground in Turkey. Let me get you started with the reigning kings, known in their own country as Pentagram, but better known outside the US as Mezarkabul... I also run a weekly email spotlight of heavy metal bands and try to go over parts of our culture. This week's was my 76th episode and I try to keep it broad. Send me an email address if you'd like to be included! oXE52RBhAiE

My RP pet peeve is boredom. No joke, you'd be amazed how many people who write in RP can't write. And it's really hard, especially when you play with people you like, to stomach a boring character. By that I don't mean going the Mary Sue route either. Your character is supposed to be a person and a person is supposed to have a personality. They should have a way of talking and acting. And it's not their fighting style, but whether they light a cigarette with matches or a lighter, if they're sarcastic or poignant, righteous or apathetic. A character should be, of all thing, unique. So when I'm sitting in a bar watching eight people sulk and blurt out the same story about their parents' murder, it's not that they're all the same that bothers me, but that I can't tell them apart. Short answer, a good RP character can talk about the weather and engage you, while a weak one can talk about the end of the world and make you wish it was really coming. And there's nothing worse in all of the RP world than a weak, boring, beige-room of a character.

As with all issues of this nature, play what you're going to play. People will play with you or they won't. If you're fun to play with, it's their loss. You do you.

Given the new guild story, Ignacius is treating them pretty graciously (as would be expected). He's been in that position before. No Au Ra Dancers yet, but he's completely open to giving them a place in their little tribal brotherhood.

80 dollars for Heavensward? Wherever you live, it's got to be one of the few places that will make California look cheap.

HAHAHA. What, not a joke? A man can dream, can't he?

Maybe they can give us an official RP server and offer us free transfers.

Going by the notice they posted here, http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/240082-Aether-Data-Center-Down?p=3052265#post3052265 there really isn't a 'plan' to fix anything. So I doubt we will see a resolution so much as its all about to get worse on the 23rd and stay bad until traffic dies on its own. Which hopefully will be within the month but I still don't feel I should pay them for an inaccessible game. I work from home and I can say I tried for four straight hours with zero results. Both times I even managed to get in a queue, the lobby error eventually booted me anyway. If we can't get on now, launch is gonna make it impossible. I also like how they say that Gilgamesh and Balmung /happen/ to be on the same data center. You freakin' put them there! They didn't stumble in there on their own. What I managed to play yesterday was great but I'm left kinda bitter when its all a matter of luck if I can play at all and for how long. Probably won't go over with new players either. You are gonna have a free week when your game isn't playable to huge chunks of people? *thumbs up* Great plan. I thought the point was more that Gilgamesh and Balmung are the two most populated servers, it just happens that a huge chunk of the population ended up on two servers on the same data center. I'm starting to wonder if the RP community should take over a less populated server somewhere. It wouldn't be optimal, but having our RP community essentially sitting on the two biggest servers makes this more painful for us. There are deep roots though; there might not be a good way to go about this. I imagine it wouldn't be easy to move an entire server onto another data center, though. It's at least not something they're likely to be able to do by launch day.

Last weekend, I was on vacation. In fact, I didn't come back until Monday. On Tuesday, I had band practice. On Wednesday, I had to stay late at work. Finally had time to play yesterday... and the servers were down. I played Diablo 3 instead. Tonight, I have a band gig. I've got another Saturday afternoon. I didn't even bother to pre-order because I just figured my life would get in the way. I'm always rewarded when I bet that way. See you people on Gilgamesh on... Saturday morning? Sunday?