Zoya

Well...step forward, japanese speakers! The uneducated mob requires your aid in this time of need! Personally, I'm not getting my hopes up just yet, but if it truly is real, I'll probably end up buying it for the hair. Again. I'm an idiot like that >.>

Considering the source of Dark Knight powers, wouldn't it be easiest to simply have it associated with strong emotions? You know, a keepsake, the weapon of a former rival or friend, a reminder to a certain event? I don't know your character, but there's a lot of possibilities with just that. Could be as little as a custom made sword that reminds her of the reason she went the way of the Dark Knight in the first place.

_Lots_ of stuff, but much of it isn't as much about my characters than RPing in general, so I'm putting those in spoilers. As for my characters, my biggest worry when playing Zoya is that people do not "understand" me. The combination of thieves cant and accent can be overbearing, so I reduced the prior by a fair bit by now. And after every RP I am "constantly" worried whether I did convey her personality properly. From what little I've heard (I "do" ask for feedback sometimes), that often doesn't seem to be the case, which is NOT comforting at all. The worst however is that this can bring me into consistency issues, should I meet the same person again later and actually "do" convey the personality properly that time around.

Only to keep you subbed by giving you "something" to do when you're bored and have nothing else to work towards. To you as user, the weapons will be pointless except for further upgrade down the line (and glamour, prestige, yadda yadda). As a matter of fact, they already are largely pointless as is, Thordan weapons are better for many classes, considering the secondary stats and unnoticeable gain in weapon damage. BUT...it's the relic. Your very own weapon. At the current rate, possibly even your child. It's special. Don't you want it? Juicy, juicy carrot? It's right there. Just gotta do a step. And another. And another. You get the idea. There's no point in getting it. The point is to make you think there's a point in getting it so you try to and stay subbed. Edit: This is purely my opinion of course. Not claiming facts.

So much so that I expect a harsh nerf to it with 3.2. The first two steps are a work of a few days, maybe weeks depending on how much you play. The last step? Months. And that's completely ignoring the money you might need for the crafted items. Honestly? I think SE simply wants to bridge the content drought until 3.2 with that. You aren't "meant" to get it before the patch, you are just supposed to work towards it.

1. To yell "SURPRISE!" after sneaking up to them or similar pranks. Needs to be in a place where she can easily run away after in case the person doesn't take it so well. Playfulness/Boredom. 2. Asking for help/favors, assuming she's in need and the stranger looks like he would be able and willing to offer some. Necessity. 3. Someone else motivated/told/asked/forced/enticed/recommended her to. Relatedness. 4. The stranger in question does something weird but harmless that catches her interest. Like, sorting things in alphabetical order, walking aimlessly up and down, wearing a stupid hat/mask or similar. Curiosity. 5. The stranger appears to be in distress and nobody else seems willing to help for an extended period of time. Conscience.

Even the hype is radioactive. Guess it's a good idea to play some Half-Life.

As some others in this thread, naming takes a long while for me as I think about a good name. It's supposed to be short, meaningful (to me) and good looking (to me) on screen. (Spoiler to make the post shorter for those not interested)

Well, I only ever got to play Trails in the Sky first chapter (on steam), but I've been waiting rather anxiously for the second chapter to be available to me. I really liked the combat system and the, uhm...weirder parts of the story. And I'm a sucker for the manga style. I think I got a little too invested in the characters, though. As for the other games, I didn't even know they existed, but now that I know I'll def check them out, so thanks for the note!

Indeed - the only exception is our Machinist crystal. That one was recently produced, had no prior owners and consequently, no knowledge. Incidentally, not a single skill you are taught during the entire questline comes from that crystal. How hard it is to produce one however is not touched upon in the questline IIRC. How the whole process of getting the memories in there works, I have no clue. It might have something to do with the carvings. It might simply be spirit bonding. Or a combination. Or something else entirely. Someone more up to snuff with the lore might be able to help out.

We are the Miqo'te. Raise your fantasia and surrender your body. Your biological and technological features will be changed to our own. Resistance is futile.

I think "shanking" a padjal could have minor political consequences. Besides, you still need to do the awakening stuff yourself. Even the WoL has to do stuff to make the crystal hand over some memories and he gets all the good stuff on a silver platter.

And then you're left to wonder how a BLM soul crystal can even hold any kind of black magic knowledge. I mean, in order for the empty crystal to be filled with knowledge, you need to perform the art. In order to perform the art, you need a soul crystal filled with knowledge. That doesn't quite work out.

"Whoa, shiny rock! Can I touch?" To me, soulstones are simply shortcuts to knowledge and thus power. Kinda like rare candies. So I tend to not use them, I prefer to get EVs. But I acknowledge the lore around them and if I wanted my character to quickly learn a skill that would require years generations of research and practice, I'd most likely develop a plot around the search of a soulstone. When I think about it, they got quite a bit of joke potential, though. Imagine someone carved his bedroom successes into the stone instead of anything useful related to the job. And the aspiring (and mildly disturbed) scholar suddenly awakes the knowledge of ancient allagan positions. The concept of soulstones is quite interesting IMO. They're just a pretty cheap way to quickly gain power, so they're best used in moderation.

Rogue:

Thanks for the replies :3 The language thingy is quite a relief. NPC are usually the first place I look when searching for appropriate behaviour/names/speech, but sometimes it's just...yeah. I second that. It's also pretty extensive, but luckily, most people interested in roleplay are not the TL;DR type. Then again, that might just be a stereotype of mine. My current plan is to decide on a character, then make it on another server and transfer as soon as possible. I could try creating one now before/after the coming maintenance, but for that I would need to know which. And I am indecisive there. I mean, I still have a couple hours, but I'm not working at hedgehog speed. And it's 3 AM over here. I'm personally flirting with the fantasia guy/gal concept, because it hits my weak spot and gives me a lot of freedom with unconventional name/race combinations later on, but fantasia is probably one of those things that's highly controversial in the community, so that's a major downside to consider. The IC conflicts might not be worth the OOC conflicts. I don't wanna ask for trouble and certainly don't want to make it double. There are other appealing options after all. On the bright side, talking to you makes the anxiety fade a little. Either that or I'm just getting drowsy.

Hello everyone. I'm not sure what makes for a good introduction (this sentence probably does not), so I'll just use the template offered by Kylin and add a bit of extra at the end. A word of warning: It might be long. Partially because I like writing, partially because I'm nervous about this and secretly hope nobody is actually going to read it if it's just long enough. Well, not so secretly anymore. Aaanyway, let's start. MMORPG Background I originally wrote a lot more here, but copy&paste from Word does not work, so I'll shorten it up a little. I started with WoW in beta and played it many years, getting a fair share of everything the game and the community had to offer: Raiding, PvP, Leveling alts and RP. Later on, I also played Guild Wars 2, SWTOR and FFXIV pre-ARR. RP Experience Far less than I'd like. I RP'd in WoW for a while, but other than that, I really just "prepared" to RP (mostly on forums) and didn't pull through in the end. You know, doing research on lore, thinking of characters, building backstories, thinking of possible conflicts and how the character reacts etc. And single player RPing doesn't count. Character Ideas/Info Oh boy. Been tossing around a _lot_ of ideas, but very few of them are characters I'd like to play as for more than an evening or two, either because they are not sympathetic to me, not visually appealing or both. The range goes from complete joke characters like a capslock Hellsguard named "Loud Noise" over fairly standard characters like like the tomboyish, reclusive and cynical Duskwight Estelle to less textbook-y characters like like the quirky oddball Seeker R(h)ei, who has absorbed more cultures in her childhood than her brain could handle. That's her on the left by the by. You can probably guess that more work went into the latter category of characters. Thus far, the only thing that's for certain is that I want to play a female character. Or, a male character that accidentally sips fantasia sometime in his story and wakes up as a highly disturbed girl with major re-socialization issues. I'm a sucker for those kinds of story. D'aw, I'd somehow make "her" wear a cute, girly dress, with frills and ribbons and stuff <3. Uhm, I digress. Backstories for my characters naturally vary a lot, they tend to be more lighthearted however. Little to no death and none of that really dark stuff. I'm more of a comedy person. Also, I have a fondness of poorer backgrounds I found. Seeing as Balmung and Gilgamesh are pretty much off-limits without a transfer, I would appreciate getting some feedback from you guys and gals here. I couldn't rush things even if I wanted to. How did you learn about the coalition? That was easy: I put "Final Fantasy XIV Roleplay" into the google search box. It was the first thing that popped up. Been lurking a bit since then. What kind of roleplayer are you aiming to be? Tooough question. Looking at the handbook here on the forums, I'm probably somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, I want to deliver believable, lore-friendly and somewhat entertaining characters with a coherent backstory. On the other, I don't shy away from acknowledging my hammerspace (aka armory) and usually run, unless it would be insensitive to do so (e.g. at RP events). I deliberately set up my characters to allow me to experience the game content largely unrestrained (except maybe for a class or two), but I also want to stay in-character at all times, again, unless it would be inappropriate (for example, in an otherwise fully OOC dungeon group). Naturally, I also try not to bump into people. From the character perspective, you can't go through them and even if you could, it would be considered impolite to do so. I know I would feel like taking a shower if someone did. So I'd say the RP/Gameplay tradeoff is 50/50 for me. Anything from real life you're comfortable with sharing? Uhm...I'd be comfortable with sharing my entire life story, but who on earth would be interested in that? I'll keep it short: I'm a soon-to-be 27 year old student from europe, germany. Also, I'm a freak, sort of, and (former?) sociophobe. I've just recently started to swim in more social waters and try not to be too much of a nuisance. My hobbies are video gaming and writing stories suited for and inspired by video games (read: lots of fighting involved). That's also where my forum name comes from, it's a character from one of these stories. That said, I would appreciate if you don't bite me. Or at least do it gently. Questions from myself Technically, I only have one, but it wouldn't fit elsewhere, so...new headline it is. Do I have to speak the way the NPCs speak ingame? I'm afraid english is not my mother tongue and even though I consider myself fluent, I have a hard time making proper use of "dost", "thou" and "thyne". Or, do the rogue talk. Then again, the latter probably is a meme already. Miscellaneous Fear not, it's almost over! Just one more section of me rambling about random things. The first one being a clarification: I am just starting out again. I didn't play FFXIV for years and then suddenly decided to do RP, I decided to RP in a MMORPG and FFXIV was the game of choice because I was the least familiar with it. "Almost" everything I know therefore is from wikis, guides, forums and lore pages. On that note, big thanks to FreelanceWizard for his Miqo'te lore dump. Another thing is, I am a little unsure about my endeavour. For one, I am insecure about my own performance. RPing is basically acting and I think it's the stage fright that gets to me. Furthermore, I'm not sure whether my character concepts are sufficient or appreciated. I want to do this thing right. Lastly, I am a bit worried about my E-Mail address to be honest. The forum rules clearly say:"No disposable E-Mail address" and while I do consider my gaming address non-disposable, it sure doesn't sound like it. I can change it later if it's a problem, I just wanted to raise the topic before a random banhammer hits critically. Alright, that's it from me. Kudos to everyone who stayed 'til the end. Hope I didn't break any rule in the process. Sorry if I did.