Lydia Lightfoot

Excellent! I'd asked mostly because the bulk of the friends I have tend to be available around those NA evening-ish hours (same as me!) and so if you'd be wholly unavailable during those times anyway, then it'd probably just frustrate you to have been introduced to a bunch of people you wouldn't get much RP with anyway. BUT, it sounds like we're all good for that, so, poke me via Discord if you want to meet some potential friends! :3

Hi Ranulf! Welcome! With your location in Australia, do you find yourself nevertheless generally available during North American "prime time" hours (somewhere in the 6pm to 1am range, Eastern time zone)? Or are you mostly looking to connect with others who have availability to RP during your own time zone's evening hours?

Hello there, Val! Roleplaying is pretty straightforward, after a bit of practice. Have you read through some of the tips and advice here on the RPC? I'd have to nose around to figure out where they are exactly, but I recall there being some pretty thorough topics on the matter which you might find to be some useful study material. Beyond that, though, if you have specific questions, toss 'em out there and I'm sure you'll have a deluge of answers.

It's an ongoing issue that Franz is working on resolving, it's affecting a lot of people. Thankfully the immediate workaround is as easy as reloading the page, pain in the butt as that may be.

Snag me on Discord and I'll tell you all about it, Scaith! I don't want to hijack your thread.

The bold part there might be tough... there aren't very many RP FCs that have so many players in them, at least not active ones. From my observation the best most FCs seem to reach is 8-10 regularly-present players, with the rest of the number (whatever that total may be) being infrequent or entirely inactive. Now, that's not to say RP is dying, not by any means. It's just that beyond a certain number of active players, the likelihood rises that there will be segregated cliques within an FC, and when that happens, a fracture is all but guaranteed, and one clique shuffles off to make their own different FC. That's especially true if they can manage to get ahold of a house. More houses in FF14 has meant that more FCs can get a house, which means there's less incentive to stick with a less-than-ideal FC for the sake of continuing to have a house to RP in (whereas before, with less houses, there were some larger FCs even with cliques, because none of them wanted to go without a house to RP in). Anyway! If something with less players (but seeking more) might be to your liking, I could certainly tell you about my FC, but if you're determined to hold out for a rare large one, then of course I'd understand - I can't think of any I'm aware of off the top of my head, but if I came across a big one like that, I could always refer them your way.

Hello Scaith! Welcome back to Balmung-land! What kind of FC are you looking for, besides "wonderful"? I'm sure we'd all claim our FCs meet that qualification!

Aw! Sorry to hear that - I admit I never made it by, but I'm Pacific time zone, and so I tend to be unable to make it to many events that are closing down by 10 EST (since that's just 7 for me, and I'm usually only home and done eating by around 6-6:30 at earliest most days). It sounds like it was a fun idea, though! How were you spreading the word, besides being on Erah'sae's weekly list?

Guess what! Now you know me. You're dooooooooooomed. I'm in-game enjoying RP with various friends just about every evening, and we have a linkshell and Discord (and a pretty cool lil' FC, though being in that isn't at all a requirement of anything else). Toss me a hello on Discord or in-game if you like! :3

Hiyo! I'm regularly looking for more friends for Lydia and Marsazio, and I also happen to have a pretty swell FC (though, of course, joining it isn't a requirement of enjoying fun RP with me and my friends). If you use Discord (and if you don't, check it out), mine's in my signature - chat me up on there, or message me here if you prefer.

Hey there! Lydia and Marsazio are always up for making new friends. Discord's in my signature, or just flail at me in-game.

Is the server now having an existential crisis due to feeling empty inside?

I'm waiting for my first encounter with a character who claims to be a "flying xaela".

Your best bet if you want to go with this is to play up the Othardian miqo'te group as being very, very isolated. This will largely avoid the issue of lore contradiction, since it therefore makes sense why an NPC might at some point comment about there being no miqo'te from Othard. Well, of course the NPC wouldn't know about them, they were total hermits living high in the mountains, pretty much nobody knew they were even there.

My general take is this: In the IC world, the guilds which exist do have a focus on particular arms, but, we also encounter myriad examples of NPCs who are brandishing arms which could not likely have come from a membership in the relevant guild. We can therefore conclude that there's no particular mandatory correlation between membership in a guild and use of that guild's preferred arm (or, to put it another way, one needn't be in the Lancer's Guild in order to be capable of learning to be proficient with a spear). Play as an IC samurai complete with soulstone and visibly use a polearm or bow if you want, and I'd say that's totally fine.

The others have done a great job answering your specific questions. I'd like to add one more small thing - a bit of unsolicited advice which I've given to a lot players who are new to RP or just new to a given setting. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid ...by which I don't mean to actually call you stupid, of course! It's only an acronym. The practical application of it in this case is to give strong consideration toward playing a character who, like their player, doesn't have much experience in the setting. Thus, as their player, you can be forgiven for not knowing how magic works in this setting, because your character doesn't know either (and so as their player, you don't even need to know it yet). Via this wide-eyed and curious character you can learn about the setting by way of your character's experiences interacting with and learning from other characters. It's a fun approach to learning about a setting by immersion, and either the character will grow and become more complicated than their basic start, or, as the player becomes more wizened to the ways of the setting, they could just opt to make a new character who's more complex from the start, and feel comfortable with their knowledge about it. Food for thought!

Oh, yeah, hey - just to be totally clear, I'm not complaining about anybody's event. I was only offering a possible explanation to the person I'd quoted as to why they might've gone to some events and seen those particular events having a limited attendance. Everybody should run their event exactly as they mean to run it, and I'm glad they are. :3

That's a challenge of the event hosts, not an indicator that the community is dying. In a lot of cases I've seen events of the same general type occurring on the same day of the week with overlapping timing, and so of course their potential attendance will be shot in the foot due to that. A lot of event hosts are rather passive about advertising, too - they just put it on the RPC calendar and hope for the best, but to really drum up a crowd they need to get out there and throw shouts in the main cities, including RR and Kugane, and in some linkshells and Discord servers that exist for general RP socialization. In some cases I've also seen the staff mostly get self-engaged or stand staring into space when there's low attendance, rather than chatting up the attendees (in more than a "can I get you another drink" capacity - they need to interact and befriend their guest). The fact that the actively-advertised events draw a big crowd is the real indicator of how awesomely active the server is. The events with a bad turnout just need to step up their game. Or, maybe they prefer light attendance - that's also a possibility.

\o/ A friend Nabi shall have! Saz is very familiar with Kugane. I'm not totally sure what time I'll be around tonight and through the weekend, but I'll definitely have time. If you use Discord and want to throw something at me there for more fine-tuned meet-up planning, mine's in my sig.

Still seeking more new friends! I haven't had a lot of interest come my way from the ol' RPC thusfar... but I also haven't found it easy to make random new friends for Marsazio in-game, either, so I guess I'll keep trying in whatever ways are available. :3

You'll run the gamut between players who don't care, players who don't know enough about the lore of the setting to care, and players who will froth at the mouth over the issue. You'll encounter some whose characters will, likewise, either not care, actively pursue the character for research purposes, avoid the character, or, unload a full salvo the moment the identify the void presence (and there'd be no legal repercussion in the setting for them doing so). Sadly, these kinds of wildly mixed reactions both IC and OOC are the stuff of nightmares for event planners who will have to run the risk that the entire occasion could be derailed by the sudden discovery of such a character and the myriad responses people will have to it. My advice is, if you have a solid group of regular pals you could play the character with and have fun doing it within that circle of willing participants, the sky's the limit! But as a "let's seek out random RP and try to make new friends" character, it's... well, you're probably going to have some good days and some days where you or those around you will become very frustrated.

RP is going strong as far as I can see. The only serious issue I can say I've noticed is that players on the whole seem reluctant to branch out from their existing friends, even if they wish they had more friends. But, that's just the clique nature of basically every RP community in basically every MMO. It's only problematic on Balmung because there's a lack of new players due to the lock, so with existing players being a bit set-in-their-social-circles, it's a challenge to make new friends.

Well, I mean, the opposite of conventional is unconventional, and in real society we see unconventional names all the time. Thousands of girls named Sarah, and then there's randomly one named Apple. In other words, don't worry too much about it, but, do be prepared for the realistic situation of having a tale to tell about the origin of the unconventional name, because some characters (or their players) are bound to ask. It needn't be anything convoluted, though. "My mother named me Archibald," said the raen warrior, solemnly, "To honor a brave hyur swordsman who had saved her life from a stubborn foe whom, she said, did not relent until he had been repeatedly shown the point."

You probably don't know who Lee Jun Fan is, but you've probably heard of Bruce Lee. Same guy.

https://i.imgur.com/YsEt7na.jpg I also love the drug names. Love it. Giggleworthy.