Blade

Official storyline from the main website says that he vanished in a flash of light and hasn't been seen since. It's been stated that we'll fight him in a new type of endgame, so he's not dead.

Biggest problem you'll run into with upgrading the processor is that if you're going to make it a worthwhile increase, you're going to need a new motherboard, which tends to lend itself towards just buying a whole new machine. Graphics card is probably the lowest budget option you have at the moment as a means to upgrade. Just make sure your power supply is good for it. I had something similar to your configuration not too long ago. Honestly it came to getting a new machine, but you can probably get a decent amount of a performance boost from a graphics card upgrade. Unfortunately, changing your processor can require that you change a lot of things regarding your computer. I know people who have even i3s (the 'very good' category on www.logicalincrements.com) that run the game fine. It really depends on how good you want the game to run. If you want to power through the game at max settings with a FPS greater than 45 on average, that's probably going to set you back the cost of a much more modern machine. Thankfully, A Realm Reborn isn't designed to require the best machine to play at max settings, but you're probably going to want to get an i5 or i7 and a graphics card in the superb or excellent tier on Logcal Increments. But yeah, it really just depends on the experience you want. The game can perform very well at lower settings on less decked out machines. It depends on just how much you care about FPS and graphic quality. This a hundred times. Buying the best of everything isn't ever a good plan. Logical Increments is very useful for this because it helps you see in relative terms what's the biggest bang for your buck. Getting the best stuff makes you marginally better than significantly cheaper options at significantly greater prices, with money that could've been saved and spent on other ways to improve your experience for greater impact (more RAM, for example.)

[align=center][/align] Hello, and thank you for visiting Tales of Hydaelyn! Tales of Hydaelyn is the Final Fantasy XIV chapter of my other similarly named roleplaying group, Tales of Vana’diel, a group that has been running for over four years now. We’re looking to expand our roleplaying experience as a group, with the world of Eorzea and the stories it has to tell. In coming to Eorzea, we’re looking for a reset of our characters from Final Fantasy XI, as we’ll all be rolling (and some of us, including myself) already have rolled very different characters and are starting our relationships and bonds fresh for A Realm Reborn. It’s our hope that some among you may join with us as we forge this linkshell! Recruitment at this stage is set to 'Open,' however, in-character recruitment is a little bit hard to work with right now due to the fact that this group is not one that exists in-characterly and I’m unable to at this time give a rough estimate. We really want this group to form naturally through in-character means, so a lot of that has a ‘it happens when it happens’ kind of implication to it. Everything down to the name of the group is still currently up in the air, and we want to get into A Realm Reborn first before we make final plans. Roleplay will happen leading up to the formation of the group, but it will likely be formed through a plotline leading up to the official establishment. That all being said and done, if you are fine with things being less structured and up in the air, you are welcome to visit the website and apply. Please keep in mind, we’ll be rolling on Balmung, but we will likely not be particularly active until Phase 4. But the forums are up, and many of us check the site daily anyways since it's linked to our other RPLS, so there's plenty of time to get to know people leading up to then! In the meantime, here’s the things I can tell you what we’re likely to be about: •New Player Friendly! I cannot emphasize this enough. As many of our group haven't played the game before, this linkshell at its outset will primarily consist of new players. Like the rest of the RPC, we welcome new blood with almost freakish desire. But in all seriousness, really, we don't care what level you are or if you've played the game much before, RP is the priority, and if you have a desire to learn, by all means we'll help you. • Story-oriented. We had a lot of success in Tales of Vana’diel with our members coming up with their own plotlines (within established lore), and roleplaying through them. Consider it as a way to get some time playing as DM in conjunction with the LS leader. • We’re currently leaning towards forming a trading or craft company of some sort. Something that could be of real utility to other linkshells, and that would give our members good reason to travel fairly frequently. The group will inevitably get wrapped up in all sorts of adventures as part of this business, but we’d like to have the core be a more humble center. • Cross-Linkshell Emphasis: A large part of the benefit of the RPC and Balmung is the community and the wealth of roleplayers here. It’s our hope that as a sort of traveling company that we’ll come in contact with and make friends—both IC and OOC—with people in other linkshells. • It is likely that we will incorporate in-game events into our roleplay. These events will be RPed as we do them. We’re still on the fence one what exactly to include when we say ‘game events.’ At the very least, expect us to be roleplaying FATEs when they appear. • As stated above, the name Tales of Hydaelyn will change when this group takes an official form. Hopefully this provides a decent enough snapshot of our group and a glimpse of what we’re planning to do. If you have any questions for us or are interested in joining, please do not hesitate to PM me, Blade, here on the forums! See you when the realm is reborn! -Blade Belisaire & Blue

I'll primarily be on Gilgamesh until Balmung opens to all. Probably will just log on Balmung to see my old character again, and then back to Gilga.

there should be barber shops coming out so you can change your characters hair anytime you want though Aside from that, all characters get a one-time character redesign when the game comes back up! You can change your 1.0 character's name, their race, their gender, the works... and keep all your levels and gear from 1.0. ^^

Welcome to the RPC! Glad to have you.

That's.. really odd lol It's a good thing because it enables your upper level friends to do content with you at lower levels. The way experience points work in XIV is that (at least for killing monsters) you get less and less experience points from killing a monster the greater your level is. For example (and this is just an example... the calculation is different from this, but the idea is the same) If I'm level 5, and I kill a level 10 monster somehow, I get 400 exp. If I'm level 10, and I kill a level 10 monster, I get 200 exp. If I'm level 15 and I kill a level 10 monster, I get 100 exp. If I'm level 35 and I kill a level 10 monster, I get 0 exp. And so on. What level sync would enable us to do, is for example, if was 35 and you were level 5, I could sync to 5, and we could kill the level 10 monster for a good chunk of exp for both of us. So it enables upper level friends to play with you easier while still helping them make progress.

I'm planning on mostly playing on a new job (at level 1), and I really want to run and experience all this new stuff. I have several friends who will be joining the game on Balmung in your same situation, so we can all play together and experience the content the game has to offer from the ground up! But really, the people here are great. I started playing for year back in April the year it went down, and even though people were established and more experienced, I was still able to get a lot done, with a level 50 WAR, and experience a bunch of the endgame content. You'll be fine.

Edited: My apologies, I read it the wrong way. Thanks for pointing that out Kerr, hope I didn't offend.

Belisar, huh? Reminds me of the name of some notoriously bitter forum-goer... *Looks to the name above his head* Oh yeah, me... Haha but really, welcome back to the game and the RPC!

Didn't see these posted here, so just in case anyone missed them, there were tons of posts to the dev blog while E3 was running. This link points to the most recent post they made regarding the closing of E3, but make sure to check out the other pages as well! They include videos of Arcanist, Scholar, and Summoner, among other things, in case you missed! http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/post/422

Blade Belisaire 2.0

Hello and welcome to the RPC

(Note: I may refer generally to mages that can heal as 'white mages,' but I understand that the range of classes that can heal are much broader than that, including Paladins, Bards, Conjurers, etc.) I think there will be a bit of a range of opinions on this matter. Personally, here are some considerations I have regarding white magic and healing mages. 1. Healing mages need to be able to contribute something significant; like a field medic, their presence could make the difference between life and death. 2. There must still be a point where a healing mage cannot save someone. Death must be possible, since death in Eorzea (death of NPCs etc) is either directly seen/implied multiple times. 3. As Aysun mentioned, there is still a need for medicine and apothecaries by lore, so a healing mage can't really replace the IC need to carry such medicines. 4. I also agree with what was said by ForestGuardian says about there can't be such a huge gap between the restorative potential of healing magic versus the destructive potential of black magic. Bringing these all together, I sorta view healing mages as ones who sooth wounds and heal grievous injuries. I see them as being capable of doing a lot more than just healing cuts and scrapes and curing headaches and whatnot. To some degree, there's a lot that adventurers can recover from on their own that a white mage doesn't necessarily tend to (for example, cuts that later would form scars). I think its reasonable that a white mage wouldn't expend their energy to fix these small things necessarily. That seems like a good spot for the medicines to be accounted for. Here's what I personally think would be something approaching the limits of White Mage. A Warrior takes two direct stabs through them with a nasty polearm. This should arguably bring them down, and they would die in time without help. A White Mage could step in to restore tissue enough to keep the Warrior from death, but I think ICly the Warrior should still feel an ache there for some time, if not taking a few days to recover ICly, if not simply due to the loss of blood. Something that I think would be going too far? A White Mage reattaching body parts... bringing someone back to life from the dead... etc. Things like that, to me, seem too big. I think it also falls upon the 'fighter-class' roleplayers to roleplay their characters fairly and when and if your character takes a seriously compromising hit, that you don't pull a "I'll just walk it off... even though blood is pouring out of me, and my arm's broken." I think theirs a lot in place as Merri said to justify characters not taking the wounds in the first place (armor, and we're not exactly 'normal' people either with the buffs and whatnot that we get), but when we do take a serious wound, we should require help.

I've heard a lot of good things about you from everyone. Good to have you here and looking forward to getting to know you in Crystalline.

I don't think anyone has indicated we wouldn't support other linkshells on other servers. In fact, much has been said to the contrary. I'm not sure where you got that impression. Maybe there was tone being misread. We've even been asking how we could best help you. But best of luck to you and your endeavors.

Oh? I'm sorry, I must've missed that. Sorry, there's so much to read and keep track of in these posts. Either way, glad to have you aboard, looking forward to roleplaying with you.

I don't think that anyone who plays on another server would be treated poorly in any way. Thing is, they are going to be roleplayers who, for example, I'm likely never going to end up roleplaying with due to the split. Those on Moogle aren't going to end up roleplaying with my characters because at least at this stage, I'm really not going to be able to play multiple characters across two servers. I'll barely be able to RP on Balmung as it is. I think the attitude you are perceiving is that people find it unfortunate that there will be members of the community who are likely in my situation who, in all likelihood, we're very unlikely to roleplay and create a history with. It's the reality of a dual server situation. No one here disrespects your decision to take to another server, and many have even encouraged it. But it is what it is.

I don't really hold any power over how things are run here, but I can't see a subforum being that unreasonable of a thing to request. As far as equal support goes, I'm not quite sure what you specifically mean by that? What difference would you like to see?

If it's against the purpose and mission of the RPC to cater to a multiple server approach, might as well call this site Roleplayers of Balmung. If this site is truly a hub for Roleplayers of the Final Fantasy XIV, then we have to accept and support other fellow Roleplayers' decisions no matter the size of their communities. I think it's to that point that we need to start adapting to the change we are seeing. As I've and many other people have said, there have been groups that have advertised here that were never on Besaid/Balmung. There will be more such groups in the future. As you can see when you submit the request to make a linkshell, you specify what server it is on. It doesn't have to be Balmung, and it has never had to be Balmung. Kylin and many others have asked pointedly what it is that those who would like to start on a new server would specifically like from the RPC. We're trying to help out, but so far I haven't seen anyone offer suggestions on what they want to see happen. We're pretty much sold on RPers being able to come and have a presence here while being on a server. This has been confirmed several pages ago, and it's been the policy to involve everyone who wants to be involved in the past. But seeing as their still seems to be debate about it, can people who are in favor of a new player RP server please tell us what it is that you would like to see the RPC do for you?

I'm willing to help out! I'm already going to be coaching Blue, and probably several others from FFXI... so I guess put me down as sort of a part time mentor, I guess? Ah yeah, that and I'm going to be going to graduate school right as the game drops so, time may be an issue for me. But I will help whenever I'm able to be on!

I think people who have played on Balmung want to stay with Balmung, for the most part. Their reactions have to do with the fact that the RPC initially set out to bring roleplayers together, on one server. It makes several things easier; as I currently lead an FFXI RP Linkshell on Siren, I can attest to the overwhelming difficulty it is in recruiting members. Not because there is a lack of interest, but in many of my postings, most of the interested I have found have been located on other servers. Changing server, at least for XI, requires a fee of $20-$25, and would require people to leave their out-of-character friends behind as well. It's a major hurdle; the best luck I have in getting people in my RP LS from other servers is if they return and find their OOC friends all gone, and they look up my group, and they are willing (cus they have no more existing ties on their server) to change to Siren. But those are few and far in-between. Those of us who have been at the RPC for a long time do not want to go back to those days where it was a struggle to recruit members. The RPC was put together specifically to combat that hassle. Will there be other roleplay communities on other servers? Of course there will be. We realize we can't stop that and we don't really try to. But within this community, I believe it would be against the purpose and the mission of the RPC to cater to a multiple server approach. It is not what the RPC was established to do. The defense against the idea of multiple RP servers stems from wanting to avoid having several communities spread out across multiple servers. In addition, the more spread out the community is, the less well known said community is, and the harder it is to find. How many times have I looked across FFXI boards these days to find someone who posted months ago looking for an RP server, only to be told that no such thing exist? The fact is, they do exist, but they're so small and despite constant advertising, the majority of the game population doesn't know them by heart. The benefit of the RPC is that it has achieved a status within the community, and a reputation of being 'the place you go for RP.' Balmung has a community-wide reputation of being the RP server; we're well known even to people who don't participate in RP. So once again, are we defensive against the idea of spreading things out across multiple servers? Absolutely. It's not what we built this community for, and we enjoy our reputation as it stands. As such, while we wouldn't prohibit the starting of a new RP server, and as its been stated before--we've allowed other RP groups on other servers to advertise here before--it isn't something that we are here to necessarily cater to.

The reason it is not called the Balmung roleplaying community is this: More than two years ago, there was an attempt to collectively gather all the roleplayers onto a single server, to keep all the roleplayers together and not separated across servers as was the situation in XI. The site was meant to serve as a hub. When the server names were announced, the community there at the time put names of a server to a vote; and Besaid (which would later become Balmung) was picked by the community on a majority rule basis to be the roleplaying server. At the time, the site was pretty much the central roleplaying community of Final Fantasy XIV and that's where the name came from, and that collective community voted on a server. Read: This was not a group of people who started on Besaid/Balmung and then told everyone else to come to them. It was the community, representing the FFXIV roleplaying community as a whole (or at least, the largest RP community around for FFXIV at the time) that picked Besaid/Balmung. That is the reason why it is called Hydaelyn Roleplayers and not FFXIV Balmung Roleplaying community. It has also been mentioned several times in previous posts that the community also supported roleplaying communities outside of Besaid/Balmung, though they did not fair well. But there's a reason why on the Linkshell pages a group is allowed to specify what server they are on. By and large, nearly shell you see there will be represented on Balmung, as the roleplayers who come here often want to be where there will be the majority of roleplayers. But I want to say it again; this was not a community that sprung from Balmung and wanted others to train to them. The community existed before servers were named, and when they were named, a server was picked to centralize our efforts.

What I imagine will probably happen is that since Phase 4 is sort of an 'early rolling' prior to the game's release, and all legacy accounts as well as many new player accounts will be activated during that time, we'll take a look and see how Balmung is doing in terms of server population. If at that stage its looking like fitting people on one server, other options would be explored. That would be my guess as to how it would be handled at least.

This was something that we were faced with back when the game initially launched, or rather, something that was discussed. In the end, everyone who wanted to get on Balmung was able to, and there weren't really ever any issues with this. And there were a lot of RPers those days. With the servers supposedly being much better this time around, I think that its probably unlikely that anyone who wants to be on Balmung would not be able to.