Aveline

Also they raised the level cap in XI from 75 to 99 hahaha. It might just be because I'm tired but I find that soo funny right now.

They said the first wave of invites will go out March 11, and everyone attending Vanafest will be included in the first wave. Then after that they will send out consecutive waves, until everyone who has signed up for beta is in.

Just heard from livestream of Vanafest.... Beta starts March 11!!!

That's exactly what I was thinking. Visitors to RPC who are interested in browsing the rosters of various guilds will have to click a link regardless, whether that link is to the guild's website or to a roster copied to RPC. So why put extra work on the guild leaders to update their rosters in multiple places? There is a guild list on RPC's homepage, which seems like more than enough information for people interested in perusing guilds and links to further information such as membership rosters.

Sorry to assist in hijacking the thread (partly), but I don't know about keeping rosters here. Once the game starts up, guild leaders are going to have enough to maintain on their own guild websites (rosters, maintenance, etc.), adding a second area for guild rosters here seems redundant and a bit of an unnecessary time-sink. As far as who moderates the freelancers.. it seems kind of counter-intuitive to have a freelancer "leader".. what happens if that leader settles on which guild they would like to join? There could potentially be a lot of turnover there. Maybe it would be better if freelancers were to adhere to standard forum rules, and be moderated by the forum moderators? If they join in a roleplaying discussion that is guild-specific (ie. something that would need guild-specific rules) that is for whatever reason not on the guild's own website, it seems reasonable that the freelancer would adhere to that guild's roleplaying rules, and not need a moderator of their own.

I think it's especially interesting that in XIV there will also be saints as well as gods. It seems a bit more Roman-Catholic that way, but could add some depth to those that choose to RP religious elements in to their characters. While I'm waiting on more lore before I decide how much/if any religion my character will have, I could definitely see her referring to saints in passing, or swearing by a particular saint's name.

Back in the days of tabletop roleplaying, my friends and I always had this standing rule: If you can explain your concept so well that it could fit into a game manual and not look out of place, have at it. This means, if someone wanted to play a necromancer character in a game that did not allow for players to technically be necromancers, they would have to first of all, build from an existing job class and second of all, explain WHY, out of all the millions/billions of people in this realm that aren't necromancers, they are the unique snowflake of the bunch. Sometimes people could pull it off, and we would end up with a player-character that was unique and interesting and really fun to play with. But most of the time it was just someone who thought they had found an "easy" way to play something awesome, but hadn't really thought it all through. In an MMO, it would be even harder to integrate because you don't have a personal GM standing around to say "Oh ok, sure we can change ____ spell to become a necromancer talent." The endeavor would rely a lot more on the group's willingness to pretend. In all honesty, when RPers tried things like that in XI, it tended to lead to poorly played god-moding. One common example was the unstable, dark and brooding but very strong loner (usually a dark knight). I can't count how many times one of them would threaten to murder another player character in game, or insist that the player characters weren't safe around them in the city. Not only was that completely impossible to be true (we can't PVP in cities in XI, and even if we were to collectively pretend PVP anywhere other than a battlefield game was possible, there are still armed guards everywhere...), but it came off as improbable (why would so many lonely DRKs join a linkshell just to tell everyone to go away or they'd murder them?). So getting back to the necromancer example... my short answer is that it would entirely depend on how the player approached it. If they saw NPC necros like in the TOAU expansions and said "hey that would be a cool theme" and just wanted it for flavor text (as in, I blow up stuff with black mage spells on weekdays but in my spare time at home I re-animate neighborhood pets) that would be more plausible than someone who said, "I am a necromancer now and my heart is filled with the icy evil of UNDEATH! Tremble before me or I shall raise a skeleton army against San d'Oria!"

Hey Tsu, well right now of course, TALE doesn't technically exist since XIV isn't open to players, but I've been working with Kore and Aedida to create the foundations of the guild-to-be, so it's founded by people from COA, but it is not a direct COA descendant, if that makes sense.

Thanks Cas, and congrats, Keir and Kit!