Aveline

I like the idea of voting between council representatives, due to the obvious benefits of saving a lot of time in the voting process, and making things relatively easier to deal with. Regarding the freelancers, I'm curious to hear from some of them as to how they would want this handled. I'm honestly at a loss, since we are a coalition of roleplaying groups and to give each group 2 voices but then all people undeclared from a group their own vote seems kind of unbalanced.

I'm sure a lot of testers are there to provide feedback.. So far I definitely haven't heard of anyone being there just to RP. I don't know why anyone would want in to the beta for that. >_>

Yeah I agree with you 100%, his word choice makes it seem like there will be something set up in the future. Well I guess we will see soon!

Nice job Cas. :cheer: :cheer: *goes to edit profile*

That is a pretty cool idea, actually. From what you are describing it sounds like, underneath someone's avatar to the left <----- it would say something like Aveline T.A.L.E. and would give people a quick snapshot of what guild I belonged to. I like it, especially once we all get settled into our groups and won't always remember who is with what group. I imagine it would also be helpful for the Freelancers since they wouldn't have a linkshell group to put in their sig banners anyway.

Yes I am using S-E's terminology: they call each server a "world."

@Doktor_Ljubavi OMG I love your sig! I saw that toon at a Spike and Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festival and it was my favorite by far.

Well, I think as far as Beta names go, it is just the name that is transferring over and NOT the character. They have said in a few places that Beta testers do not get to transfer characters over to full version, just their names. But that being said, it does sound like people who participate in the Beta will get at least some way to transfer their name to a server of their choosing. So really what it sounds like is, if we want the best shot at "claiming" a server for the RPC, we need people who end up in the final stages of the Beta to be the ones to first seed that world by requesting the chosen world as their destination for their character name. This way we for sure have some people gathering on the server from the start, and then hopefully we can get everyone over there as the game goes live. Also it is crucial to understand that when Nobuaki says: Like Crystal says, he is talking about Beta worlds, not final release. They introduced multiple worlds into Alpha/Beta and he is saying that there's no way for testers to select what world they want to start on during testing, they will just be put onto whichever one has the lowest population. Just want to make sure everyone is clear about that. :3 I am guessing that like I said in the other thread about this, there will be a World Pass option that players can purchase, but we will probably not be able to freely select servers at launch during character creation without a pass, since they will want to evenly distribute players across worlds. Now, there is a 2nd option that I know another (non-RP) group is doing to insure all their members end up on the same server: They created a linkshell on an existing FFXI server, and are asking anyone that wants to move with them to the same server in FFXIV join up in their existing FFXI placeholder linkshell. Square-Enix has said they want to allow linkshells from FFXI to move over together to the same server, so this is an option. If anyone is still playing FFXI, you could make a new shell called RPC Migration or whatever and people could make a toon on whatever server just for the sake of getting a pearl and guarantying a spot on the new FFXIV server. How S-E plans to pull this off, I don't know. I'm honestly suspicious that they will even be able to do so, but that is what they have said, so I guess that is what we have to go on.

Happy Birthday Elth!! And happy 4th everyone

Hey other linkshell leaders! Contact these guys so everyone gets some on-air time! :cheer: :cheer:

Well with the "what if?" about the potential 1k+ RPers... keep in mind that no matter how we get people over to a server, world passes or whatnot, every server is going to have a population cap, and if one world gets too full they will in all likelihood close that server to new players. If you guys recall, they had to do server juggling in FFXI, and new worlds were brought online where people were randomly tossed on to in order to balance world load. So if we try to cram 1,000+ people onto one world that other non-RPers are also trying to get onto, we may end up being split no matter what. Just a thought.

Haha sorry, your username keeps making me think Starfox.

Mason, I believe that what you describe is certainly one of the main points of the RPC, but if there do end up being multiple RP servers designated by Square-Enix (doubtful), or if people do end up forming RP groups on other servers (practically inevitable), then I don't think we should simply write off the RPC as a failure. There will still be our core RP groups that we have been working on for quite some time now, and I think it's clear that we are all in agreement on wanting to be on the same server, so even if further on down the line someone does start a RP group on another server, the RPC will still be invaluable to those of us who are collaborating on this project, if that makes sense. I think we would be doing ourselves a great disservice to suggest the RPC "failed" in any way if not all RP groups ended up on the same server. We cannot control what every guild leader decides to do, and we shouldn't try to. If someone decides they want to forge off on their own and create a roleplay guild on Server X while all the RPC groups are over on server Y, well then good for them. They probably won't have very many members, since I imagine the majority of RPers will want a rich community like ours, but I'm sure there will be a few. And shouldn't those RPers that chose a different server due to friends/family non-RPers also feel like an extended part of our community? I understand the fear of being too spread out, but we should work to strengthen the community, not cut it off.

I think even if people do end up on other servers, the RPC still has a role to play (haha) in providing a space for RP groups to organize, for new potential RPers to find groups, and to simply create a common space for FFXIV roleplayers to call their own.

This is true. They are more like distant parents or grandparents that get a vague notion in their head that their offspring likes videogames, so they go buy Sparkle Ponies for the Wii and present it to their PS3-nerd son or daughter as the most precious gift ever, then get really confused over the reaction. That is kind of what I have to come to expect from Square-Enix.

Probably not for release, though with their idea of possibly including a barber shop, I could see them releasing new and exotic regional hairstyles as they open up expansions.

What if SE designates more than one RP server? Well, this is a highly unlikely scenario from my perspective, but if they were to designate more than one RP server, I assume we would just have to bump up RPC visibility on all the community sites and alter the RPC's forums and site a bit to fit in multiple servers. I recall in FFXI, there was a cross-server linkshell called MithraPride. They were the ones that first made a Vana'diel clock, which is how I found out about them. Here's their website so you can see how they manage multiple servers: http://mithrapride.org Basically they just provided support for people from all servers and it worked out really well for them in FFXI's heyday. What if server selection is set up like FFXIâs was at the beginning? This will be obnoxious, but if I recall (at least at the start of PS2 launch, I don't know about NA PC's launch), you could buy World Passes even near the beginning of the game. So if some members from each RP linkshell don't mind doing the re-roll until you hit the right server technique, they can initially work on guildleves or what-have-you to pool together enough gil to buy worldpasses. Then those incoming people can save up enough to buy a few more, and so on. This is relying on there being world passes from the beginning, but it is one solution. Synchronized idea spouting. What he said. I can't think of another what if so I will pass for now and come back with something later.

Good job, guys! Thank you for the plug for our character creation article; it's going to be a multi-part series with a new segment released every Saturday, so there will be more up this weekend.

Haha thanks. It came up once in a list of available livejournal names and I immediately grabbed it for my own.

I've always wanted to learn Japanese for the sole purpose of communicating with more players on FFXI. Is there a way to type using kanji? I assume you used the Latin alphabet (Romaji)? Yeah I had to use standard Roman character keyboard, I heard there was a way on PCs to mod it so you could use kanji, but I played on PS3 and then later XBox so I was stuck with what the game gave me. That part always struck me as very interesting: many Japanese players seemed to be able to understand my Romaji text just fine, and responded to it, but I think if someone spoke to me trying to use English words but with Japanese text, I would be even more confused. I'm curious if it's part of basic primary school education that all Japanese kids at least learn the English alphabet enough to know what each letter is supposed to symbolize.

This is so true! I haven't managed to learn Japanese fluently (haha I am still waaaay off), but for FFXI I started learning some rudimentary phrases and stuff to communicate beyond the auto-translate. I made a really good friend that way; he barely spoke English and I barely spoke Japanese so we communicated in a really weird way, but we stayed in touch for years. But anyway when I first introduced myself with Japanese he was like !!!! [wall of Japanese text]. Hahaha.

Welcome! To answer your question, we are actually having a discussion about possible future RP servers now (whether we select one as a group or S-E gives us one). Here's the thread if you haven't seen it and want to jump in to the discussion.

My 360 gamertag is meowmeowpants but I haven't fired up my console in a long time. I should probably do so sometime this summer!

Yep, pretty much what Renaise said. S-E has said that all servers will be international.