Why hello there. I've been sort of lurking around the forums the past few days, reading up on the threads and what not. Now that I'm a bit more comfortable, here I am to try and introduce myself! And, because I'm cheating, I've decided to just fill this out! Cruise-control to win.
--MMORPG background
My MMO history isn't as extensive as it could be. My first MMO was MapleStory, the Korean side-scrolling RPG. I managed to lock myself out of my bank account by splurging on hundreds of dollars worth of ornaments that last, max, two months...And the whole game is free to play! So, needless to say, I had to quit playing that game, as cute as it was.
Next, I moved on to World of Warcraft around the end of Burning Crusade. I played Horde-side on both Ravenholdt and Wyrmrest Accord. I played unto Cataclysm, where I leveled my priest and rogue to level 85 then retired from the game due to general boredom. Again, aesthetics play a lot into my mental equations and both the quality of the garments and the quality of the roleplay in my general area at that time were sort of dead or dying.
Partway through the WoW adventures, I stopped to pre-order FFXIV. I even got the fun little goggles and went out and bought me a new graphics card. However, the graphics card didn't come with a fan, my original card was factory/integrated, and yadda, yadda, yadda, explosion. I briefly remember a LS named MoogleHouse, I think, but... things happened. Bad things that I don't fully recall.
Finally, there is Star Wars: The Old Republic. I used to work for Electronic Arts as a Quality Assurance tester and I really thought this wasn't going to be a horrible game when I first heard about it (because many of us generally believed if Bioware touched it first, the pestilence of EA's dabbling wouldn't do any damage). It wasn't a terrible game, I played through it to end game on a Sith Marauder. We played on Jung Ma and I'd say I lasted about four months before I felt like I'd done everything worth doing and decided I was finished.
--RP experience
I'll try not to have this be as extensive as the last question:
I started roleplaying in forums and yahoo groups at age twelve (roughly thirteen years ago). I generally created huge mary-sue crazy characters such as Lunar Kitsune, the fox-demon priestess. By age fourteen, I'd discovered yahoo chats and began lurking in roleplaying chatrooms. At this point I mostly practiced roleplaying pre-made characters from comic books or anime. I admit, though, it gave me some experience in diversity; how to play vastly different characters. Then, I had a short and unfruitful time with table-top/LARPing.
And finally, there was MMO roleplaying. It began almost as a joke in MapleStory, then became more serious in WoW. I learned to do my lore research, and what godmoding was, as well as metagaming. Overall, my largest bit of growth came from learning how to roleplay through WoW.
--Character ideas/info
As I stated before, I played FFXIV (and I rocked my goggles), until my computer decided it would no longer suffer the strain. My friend recently decided that when FFXIV: ARR comes out, he wants to be there and he would like a roleplaying aspect to his future LS/FC (I'll call it guild for now, as I'm not sure what it'll actually be.). So, I have been selected to lead the roleplaying aspect of this group. To that end, we'll be running with a Neutral Good guild with a Twelve basis. As a leader in that sort of environment, my character will be a devout monk/war priestess. I originally had the concept of a Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te, but after some perusing through the Coalition's Wiki, as well as many different threads, I've come to realize there will be a -lot- of Miqo'tes. So, in keeping with the character's strict and superstitious personality, I believe I will be rolling a Hellsguard Roegadyn female instead.
I do have a general idea of her personality (disciplined, stoic, faithful) but I was having a bit of a hang up on the name. I read here http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Roegadyn that the naming conventions are rather original but for the life of me I couldn't find any other Roegadyn word-translations other than the ones from that link. I'm not sure if these are even canon, but ASSUMING they are, I'm stuck between Siobhain Surtsthalwyn or Eithne Surtsthalwyn. Eithne means, (apparently) 'little fire' and Surtsthalwyn, I'm intending to mean 'Black' (like from the Norse) 'Steel' 'Daughter'. I've made up new meanings for existing names before, so long as I thought they fit, but I'm wondering if that might not work here. So I'm accepting votes. Either way, Siobhain or Eithne might mean 'Little' 'Fire'.
--How did you learn about the coalition?
I vaguely recalled, back from when I started playing, that I learned of the LS I joined via a website for roleplayers in FFXIV (I think this was the RPC). That's also how I decided I wanted to roll on Bahlmung, but I'm honestly not sure that I managed to. As I've mentioned, it's all a very frustrating blur. I digress, I Googled it and the FFXIV RPC was the first thing that popped up.
--What kind of a role-player are you aiming to be? Light, medium, or heavy?
I would say, by my definition, heavy, and by others' definition, perhaps, medium. It's my personal belief that if I want to play a character with some meaty, fight-based substance, that the first, most basic goal should be to reach level cap. That's not to say I won't roleplay until I get there, but I do intend to get as far as possible before throwing myself into the goings-on. Also, if PVP does, miraculously, become an aspect of A Realm Reborn, I will likely be spending a fair amount of time practicing that. I'm not a great lover of PVP but I was originally raised, in WoW on a RP-PVP server where I learned that if you want say you're a fighter, you should have the bones to back it up. I know that many others don't share that viewpoint with me, and that's fine, but it's a little personal thing that I just feel I need to do.
Because both leveling to end game and learning to PVP are both simply to further my comfort levels with my roleplaying, I feel like they're adding to my being a heavy roleplayer, rather than detracting from it.
--Anything from real life youâre comfortable with sharing? (Work, school, hobbies, etc)
I am a twenty-five year old mother of one, newborn, four-month old boy whom I love more profoundly than I really thought was possible. I love to draw. A -lot-. And since I'm a stay-at-home mom at the moment, I have plenty of time to do so.
I hate to self-advertise, but I am doing commissions and for a while I'm doing ten free sketches based on this thing I posted in my dA journal. So, if you're interested, my stuff is at http://lunarkitsune.deviantart.com . The qualifier for the sketch is a post in my journal.
I look forward to meeting you, and I'm sorry if I bored anyone so quickly that they skipped through this introduction.
