Verilys

There are plenty of weapons that sure do animate as though they're sentient! Like the Cognitome and the Dryad Cane.

Moonlight Blade looks pretty snazzy! It's looking like their NA release is still a fair ways off though? It's a little tricky to find much info about this one or their plans at this stage, I suppose. Which is probably why people are more focused on BDO and B&S for now. But this might be worth watching in the future.

What it looks like and how it plays are kinda two different things. Probably the main thing (myself included at first) that people miss out on when watching BDO is that there are a lot of different key-press combinations going on. Dark Souls, on the other hand, is just about the weapon-static move sets linked to two (or three) attack buttons. I can see the allure of comparing B&S to a fighting game, but the inclusion of MMO-style abilities called 'block' and 'counter' and 'grapple' don't make it what a fighting game is -- the way you execute those abilities and how it plays are the key points.

That's a good way to look at it, though I found things like grappling to be more akin to a really nifty and interactive kind of MMO-style CC more than any form of fighting game. Playing my Kung Fu Master kinda came down to a kind of conditional rotation for me. I find B&S to be a good (and fun!) blend of traditional MMO and action combat -- you basically hit a button and you get what you want. You might hit the button too fast or too slow... but you're still hitting a button and getting the desired effect. Certain conditions may affect when you can hit the button, but that's just a staple of many MMO combat styles. BDO, you need to know which combination of buttons is the combo and be able to pull off the button press correctly. It's that inclusion of execution error that really makes it more fighting-game-esque.

*nod nod* As someone else said elsewhere, BDO does have open world PvP past a certain level (in this case, it's level 40, though there's a quest to allow level 35's to also participate). It depends on your personal preferences and tolerances. If you tend to like RPing in city areas and housing, you'll be fine in BDO without worrying for random PvP, since they're safe zones. If you particularly like housing, Black Desert is the only one of the two with housing in it (and it's a really cool system too). In my experience on PvP servers, I've rarely had much issue with RPing, especially in out-of-the-way locales -- so for me, the rare annoying occurrence isn't enough to cause an issue, especially when I enjoy the gameplay, the graphics and the atmosphere.

To give my take on things... B&S is a more traditional, focused, and silly MMO packed with a linear level progression, instances and raids, and pvp with a 'TERA'-esque combat system. BDO is a more open ended, 'realistic' (yet fantasized) MMO that puts focus on trading, crafting, housing and open world events and PVP and has a more 'fighting game'-esque combat system. Black Desert Online would be my preferred game.

Behold. The 'cutesy' race. It shall destroy you.

After playing CBT1 to a very casual and quiet degree (only getting to about levels 10-13 with three characters), I have to say that I find myself really, really, really wanting to RP in the world that they've made.

Does a medium-sized house count? Or is that too big to fit into a stocking? Oh to no longer be at the whim of a wibbly-wobby FC!

Oh, the bullet points are mostly to highlight that we don't know the answers to the questions. At least, we don't know them to the degree that's necessary for an aspiring Arcanist to know -- if we did, we could draw a Ruin spell and it'd be the same regardless of our individual interpretations. But that's really more an aside.

Sounds good, but that kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda sounds more like supposition than anything particularly conclusive: You say it's 'VERY VERY' precise. How precise is that? What are the exact angles that we're talking about? What are the lines and their associated length? What is a geometry? What differentiates a 'Ruin' spell from a 'Bio' spell? How are Arcanists able to cast cross-class skills? Can they cast cross-class skills lore-wise? It'd be really nice if there was some sort of quick guide to it all that was used as inspiration for the class, such as what Brandon Sanderson provided as a supplement for 'The Rithmatist'. (An excerpt of which can be found here) As it stands, I don't think we can go into detail about the likelihoods, let alone the amount of research it would take for any specific variety of spell. We can make broad estimations based on common sense. The derived method of spellcasting would not be near so effective as those taught with formal education. It also makes sense that a teenager without education would therefore not have an advanced system in place for spellslinging. Rather than liken it to coming up with modern algebra, I'd liken it more to Gauss coming up with the equation for summation at age eight. But most importantly, as Solenne says, it's not so much becoming a competent arcanist, as much as finding some vague magical responses and perhaps even simple cantrips from a series of experiments. And I think that's more than reasonable.

Though I'm not an expert on Othard and the like, I think the answers to your questions are both: Probably yes. I don't think we have enough geographical evidence of Othard to cause any fuss with the fishing village/island idea. As for the second question... The Arcanistry in particular may take on some 'primitive' forms as a result of her isolated and limited access. I don't believe there's much in the way of particularly detailed explanations for how Arcanists do what they do. Symbols, geometries, equations, (and in the case of Carbuncle) gemstones -- these being used to shape the aether and possibly amplifying based on some factors. There are some details such as the Arcanists' Guild coming about with Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn becoming admiral -- so your character will likely not be practicing the precise techniques taught there, though the practice in general (or, at least, its origins) are much, much older. The only detailed explanation for geometries I've found thus far in-game was from the Alchemist quest line: Alternate ideas for Arcanist forms could be those rooted in symbolism -- perhaps your character drew something with some special ink and it was able to do something magical. For a more mathematical approach, your character could perhaps have created fractals -- trace elements in the ink proved conducive to the aether and the underlying mathematical concepts of the fractals proved to be able to mimic the equations/geometries of those taught in Limsa Lominsa. Hope that provides some inspiration, at least

It's really less about what's depicted in the lore and what's accurate and more about how we expand upon an abstracted world. That is to say, most of use do not RP in FFXIV -- rather, the characters we create and interact with are in a world inspired by FFXIV. I make that distinction, because FFXIV is, as I mentioned, an abstracted world. It's a chunk of lore that's been flattened down and shrunk to a create a playable game. None of us have a complete picture. We take what information we can glean from the story, the dialogue, the comments made by developers and and try to make sense of it all. Some role-players expand inwards, some role-players expand outwards. That's... pretty much it.

I really feel like there should be some form of peace treaty when it comes to the topic of White Mages. The only thing new that comes out of these discussions are novel (and often quite roundabout) ways of saying "we're not really sure and we may never know".

To be honest, the only 'concrete lore' that we know about White Mages are that Padjal are more like Padjackasses. :