Havoc Snow

It's been a while since I posted anything here, but I wanted to converse amongst people who are head deep into the lore like me and my friends to get some feedback on a theory we have currently about what role Shiva will play in the story and what sort of implications that might have on the lore. In the new trailer we get our first glimpse at Shiva, however for whatever reason they cut off the top of her head like we weren't going to know who it was. The big thing here is that despite it obviously being Shiva, she is not in Primal form but in Elezen form instead. This has some major implications of its own. Why is Shiva disguised as an Elezen? So essentially my theory is this, Shiva has taken the form of an Elezen woman in order to infiltrate Ishgard and has since positioned herself next to the Archbishop in order to manipulate/temper him and control the politics of Ishgard and further fan the flames of war. I believe that the Dragons are not actually as bad as we believe (not the sentient ones at least) and that perhaps their real intent is to battle Shiva, not Ishgard or the rest of Eorzea. Shiva has been around all this time, hiding in plain sight essentially and the reason no one has seen her yet is because Ishgard is her beast tribe, in essence. Now this begs the question however, how would Shiva get so close to the Archbishop, or even into Ishgard, even disguised as an Elezen woman? Well with a mix of tempering and deception of course! Ishgardians are the biggest religious fanatics in the setting, they worship Halone almost as fervently as the beast tribes worship their Primals, which would make even more sense if Shiva had convinced them she was Halone! Think about it for a moment, in lore Halone is depicted as a woman wielding a great shield and sword. Her aspect is Ice. Shiva is the Ice Primal seen in recent footage wielding a sword and shield. There is further evidence to support this theory if we consider that during the main scenario the refugees at Little Ala Mhigo attempt (and may have succeeded) to summon Rhalgr with the help of the Ascians. For all we know this would have summoned another Primal who would have just claimed to be Rhalgr, which is likely the case of Shiva. In addition, while we are currently lead to believe Dragons (and Dravania in general) are bad and evil, remember that the Guardian of Silver Tears Lake was an enormous Dragon worshipped as a God, and when Garlemald originally attempted to invade Eorzea it was the Dragons who fought and died to protect it.

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA. Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together. Most female characters aren't played by male characters though. As 'allgivenover' mentioned, this is all anecdotal. But recent research has shown the idea that there are 'no girls on the internet' is a very outdated belief. In your experience, most female avatars are played by men. Your experiences differ from others' experiences as well as the various censi lying around. That does not mean your experiences actually pull weight in a discussion. Additionally, it is rather foolish for businesses to ignore minority demographics. The differenceis that there is a vicious cycle in society that places white straight men as default human beings. This means that not only can straight whit men relate to their own demographics but minorities can too. Businesses do regard minorities and are foolish should they choose not to. They just don't put as much effort into targeting minorities because it is presumed that while minorities can relate to straight white men, straight white men can't relate or respect minorities...according to marketers. Woah woah woah now, let's not pull the race card so quickly here. I never said that the targeted demographic had to be a hetero white male, I just stated that companies determine a demographic early on and focus their design decisions based around that demographic. If the targeted demographic were burly homosexual steel mill workers, then you can bet your ass that the game would be heavily focused on burly homosexual men (or women, I'm not here to judge) who were probably blacksmiths or something.

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA. Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together.

You're joking, right? I would never joke about anything as serious as this. @Zyrusticae, my whole example about people being offended by a non-standard female body type was not anything to be taken literal, it was a relevant example of two different sides of an argument based on the conversation at hand. You could easily replace it by saying that there were one group of people who were offended by the lack of green colored people, so the developed add them, and then there would be a group of people who are offended by the addition of green colored people. In either case they're both a minority compared to the enormous amount of people in group 3, the don'tgivafucks. Most players are perfectly content with just taking what they are given when it comes to character creation, only a vocal few will cause a stink over it. Most developers will cater to group c because group a will huff and puff but eventually join group c anyways for the most part, which means group b will never come into being. The people in group a who don't join group c will probably never play passed the first free month anyways so there's no real loss there either. As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars and as my previous post would suggest, most of the males play female avatars. Regarding your article however, I can't honestly take anything seriously that uses EQII as its case study and assumes that is the standard to be set for the entire gaming community. It states they looked at more than 2,400 people playing EQII, I don't even think there are more than 2,400 people who still play that game. All joking aside, your article doesn't really have much ground to stand on. tl;dr: people who make a fuss over this type of thing are sadly a single grain of sand on a big beach filled with no fucks given. From a business stand point, would you spend more time, money, and resources to cater to that single grain of sand when the rest of the beach is satisfied with what you already have? Nope, don't think so.

There is an important factor to keep in mind when considering things like character creation however, and more importantly character models, and that is demographic. When developers set out to make a game they often do so with a demographic in mind well before they ever start programming the first line of code. When a game is in its concept stage lead developers will decide who they want to target with their game, who will bring the most money to them, and how can they attract that market the most. There's an age old saying that applies best here; "you can't please everyone." Wildstar targets the same market typical to World of Warcraft, the typical "Armchair Warrior" which basically means that the vast majority of their targeted demographic are males between the ages of puberty and dead. If you try to make a product that appeals to every single person then you ultimately end up with a piece of crap because you can't appeal to everyone without also offending everyone. Group A is offended by the lack of "androgynous female character models" so the developers add them into the game to try to appeal to a wider demographic, however they've now aliented Group B because the idea of a non-standard female body is disgusting, or at least foreign, to their sensibilities so they find the addition offensive and are now in the same situation Group A was in before the addition. Ultimately both groups are minorities, the people who want it, and the people who are offended by it, because the majority group, the people pretty much in the majority of the targeted demographic, just don't give a fuck so they get exactly what they want in either scenario. As I mentioned above, Wildstar's obvious intended demographic are pretty much guys. What is the best way to appeal to that demographic? Macho men and women with overly sexualized physiques, because lets be honest with ourselves; 90% of the female models you see in a game are played by guys.

So since I've been getting PMs still asking about the FC or asking to join I figured I'd post here just as an extra precaution to help clear up some confusion. I am only barely affiliated with the Blades anymore as merely a member of the OOC LS, I stepped down as the leader both IC and OOC from the FC and transferred ownership over to Raze, so for all questions and inquiries I suggest going to him, not me, as any questions regarding the FC directed to me will not be answered.

I think the problem with some stuff is that people read far too into things. For example you talk about Gaius like he's some kind of god where it would take hundreds of Adventurer's to kill him. He's not that badass, regardless of personal opinion. Every other dungeon or encounter before the end of the game required for people, which we can assume means the intent for the difficulty would mean a small group of adventurer's could take it on without much trouble. Gaius requires 8 people, so clearly he is stronger than your typical encounter, but not so strong that one should assume that it would require more than 8 people to have defeated him. There is a thin line in an MMO between Roleplay and Fanfiction, but the line is still there and at times people tend to lose sight of this and cross it all to easily, and often times they will justify it by taking things well out of proportion, my above example for instance. You can't simply justify that you killed Gaius by saying "it would have taken x amount of people to do anyways" when clearly it didn't, it only took 8 people and even if we assumed it took 50, or 100, there are more RPers than that on Balmung alone who also may be claiming to have killed Gaius. Far be it for me to tell you what you can and can't RP, but if you want to paint your character as the hero, the slayer of Primals, Ultima Weapon, and the one who defeated the XIVth Legion then perhaps you'd be better off writing fanfiction than RPing.

My group of friends and I saved as much money as we could make, managing to scrape together I think a total of 50-60 million total between the 8 of us, so it's not entirely impossible, though since making that money the market has crashed and the methods we used to make all that money are not longer viable... or as viable because market board prices very quickly plummeted as the pool of gil continually diminished into gil sinks. If a group of 8 or so people can manage to obtain that amount of money without that much effort I'm sure some of the much larger FCs can afford the 315 million quite easily if they are as dedicated to it as we were. Still, with that being said I think that the prices they currently have are a bit unfair and they really shouldn't have considered server economics, it should have merely been a flat price across the board for every server that was obtainable regardless of whether you were Legacy or not.

Just finished the last quest and I have to say I'm impressed with how well they did the event, as far as keeping it lore friendly. They even explained why she would have a Miqo'te outfit in FFXIII. The last fate was pretty cool as well and I wouldn't mind doing it a few times. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't done it yet though, but for anyone who needs to know where it's located, it should be at x26,y12 in Mor Dhona, though it can also spawn a little further to the East from there as well. Edit: x33, y11 is the second location I mentioned. Edit 2: For anyone curious to see what the final boss of the event is, here you go. Bonus Screenshot:

It's big business in WoW. Happens very frequently. People want the titles, the achievements, gear, mounts, etc, but they don't have a group that can get that done, or any hope of getting it done in the foreseeable future. This pretty much. If you don't have a full group, or any group at all, then people pay to get runs through stuff with another group. Not everyone gets carried, you could be fully geared and a skilled player and just not capable of finding a good group to run with, so you pay for a group that promises victory just so you can experience it. Besides Titan is just a roadblock, real content starts in Coil.

This isn't really accurate to what is happening, not with the legit people anyways. The people sabotaging may be doing this kind of thing, but the ones who are just offering to run people through for money are basically like... mercenaries. You contact them yourself, payment is discussed, a contract is formed, they provide you a service, you pay them for said service. In this case said service is killing a Primal. Eventually you'll probably see people selling Coil Turns as well. Most players aren't taking advantage of other players, they are just being capitalists and taking advantage of the situation, it's completely up to the players in most cases if they want to pay someone for the run, and in a lot of cases it has nothing to do with the skill (or lack of) for players, sadly Titan can be an incredibly difficult fight just because of lag.

SE has two stances on the issue that I've seen so far. Regarding the sabotages the consider it as a form of harassment, so taking part in this kind of behavior will likely lead to a ban. Regarding the actual selling of runs, they have stated it is not against the TOS and it is entirely up to the players if they want to spend the gil to get carried, however that being said there has been at least one instance where someone bought gil through RMT and used said gil to pay for a Titan kill, both the person buying the gil and the person he used the gil to pay ended up banned so it's sort of do at your own risk kind of thing.

Sadly it is, we are an RP Free Company not an RP Linkshell.

This is my biggest problem with the game at this moment. The only point to level a craft is for repairs, and that's it. Not even materia, because dropped and tome gear does NOT use it. There is literally no other reason to bother leveling a craft. That's, pardon the French, fucking BULLSHIT. I have zero incentive to level a craft other than for the sake of leveling it. Nothing I can make with a craft will ever stand muster against that ridiculous tome gear. It pisses me right the fuck off, and I hope they fix that shit, because it ain't right. This has sadly become a common practice in most MMOs nowadays. Crafting is only worth its wait as pre-heroic gear, preparing you for the grind to get your heroic gear, which then prepares you for the grind to get your raid gear. On another note, I just ran my first AK after patch and it sucked so bad. I honestly don't think I'll run that dungeon again when I can do Castrum in half the time for 20 more ATP. It took us around 90 minutes to finish, that's waaaaaay too long to spend in a non-raid. I think you're gonna run it again. Why? there is not that much content to do at the moment and you need your myth tomestones which I doubt you're gonna be able to PuG Coil to get it cause I feel like Anything past ifrit should be between LS/FC members to progress through.. People who beat them in PuGs just got REALLY lucky. I actually -don't- think I'm going to run it again, but thanks for trying to tell me what I'm going to do. AK is -not- the only place you can get ATM, it is just the first place you can get it. Coil of Bahamut drops actual ilevel 90 gear on top of giving ATM and was intended to be the main place you farmed it, not AK. Castrum is not faster to run than AK is and gives you 100 ATP, so if all you're trying to do is get your Darklight gear and Relic weapon (like I am) it is far more efficient to run Castrum, not Keep. Also I have enough people in my FC to run three groups through Coil, so I have no need for PUGs. Edit: In short, the only reason people ran Keep over Castrum was because you could do it a little faster and it gave almost as many ATP with the added bonus of also getting ATM. At around 35 minutes a run with a regular group you could cap weekly ATM in about 4.5 hours, for a total of we'll say 50 hours to get your AF+1. I will admit this is an insanely small amount of time to get the ilevel 90 gear, waaaay too short, however this was why people ran Keep. Now that it takes nearly twice as long to run Keep than it does Castrum (60 - 90 minutes for Keep vs. 35 - 45 minutes for Castrum if you skip all cutscenes) once people realize that Coil drops way more ATM they will stop doing Keep and start doing Castrum because it gives more ATP and takes less time which means they can get into Coil faster. As for there being nothing left to grind after Darklight? That is INCREDIBLY misinformed. After you have your Darklight you get to start farming Primals for your different weapons, you also get to farm for your Relic weapon, then you get to farm Coil for Allagan gear and ATM for AF+1 and Relic+1, then in a few months you'll also get to start grinding Crystal Tower for whatever gear you get from there, and eventually you'll also get to grind whatever new Primal they add into the game in 2.1 or 2.2. I would really love to know your method for clearing AK as fast if not faster clearing trash than people were able to clear it without clearing trash, and I would also really love to know how you were doing it during Early Access when Keep requires you to beat the entire story before you can access it. You guys most be the coolest kids on the internet if you managed to beat the entire game in less than 3 days despite all the Error 90k and 3102 and 1017, etc.

This is my biggest problem with the game at this moment. The only point to level a craft is for repairs, and that's it. Not even materia, because dropped and tome gear does NOT use it. There is literally no other reason to bother leveling a craft. That's, pardon the French, fucking BULLSHIT. I have zero incentive to level a craft other than for the sake of leveling it. Nothing I can make with a craft will ever stand muster against that ridiculous tome gear. It pisses me right the fuck off, and I hope they fix that shit, because it ain't right. This has sadly become a common practice in most MMOs nowadays. Crafting is only worth its wait as pre-heroic gear, preparing you for the grind to get your heroic gear, which then prepares you for the grind to get your raid gear. On another note, I just ran my first AK after patch and it sucked so bad. I honestly don't think I'll run that dungeon again when I can do Castrum in half the time for 20 more ATP. It took us around 90 minutes to finish, that's waaaaaay too long to spend in a non-raid.

I enjoyed speed runs, but I don't think that makes me an elitist or a butt head. I also rarely use DF for anything at lvl 50, that's what FCs and LSs are for in my opinion, so the people I was running with were all doing it to speed run, however they did not fix speed running in Castrum or Praetorium which is actually WORSE, because now all the people who were doing AK and WP for speed runs will be flooding those dungeons, making life hard on people who want to watch cutscenes and enjoy the ending of the storyline. So while the people who got their wish to slow down content without storylines, they have only hurt themselves by forcing those people into the content with storylines.

Keep in mind that Ifrit and Garuda were around during 1.0 as well which meant there were plenty of chances to defeat them before even the Battle of Carteneau, the current storyline merely suggests that no one has really managed to defeat Garuda since the Warriors of Light disappeared, though...

Beat Garuda then come back and read the spoilers. Though I have to agree that Summoner completely acknowledges that you have defeated the Primals, so at the very least we must acknowledge that anyone who is RPing a Summoner has slayed at least one Primal in their life, if not all three.

Why would it require a massive group of multiple FCs and adventurers if the Company of Heroes managed to defeat Titan with only 4-5 people?

Bare in mind too that the trophies are not like stuffed Ifrits or anything. The Ifrit trophy is a fireplace with Ifrits horns for example, so it's hardly belittling the might or significance of the Primals.

So a question came up among my FC about how to handle slaying Primals IC, and ultimately using their parts to make furniture for your house, especially in the case of IC company housing. For me I see no issue with claiming to have slain a Primal IC, so long as you keep from claiming you have slain THE Ifrit, instead of merely claiming to have slain him one of the times he was Summoned. However I can see how some may view this with skepticism because they are raid bosses and they are a major part of the lore, so some may not want to tie them to your storyline (even peripherally). The way I see things, no matter how many times you slay a Primal the Beastmen can always bring them back, so just because you killed him does not mean that a week from now say Ifrit won't just pop back up another company will need to go out and take care of him. In a way they are canon respawning NMs. Before I introduce the concept to my FC however and we go forth under the assumption that the Blades have at one point in time fought and beat the Primals, I wanted some input from other members (particularly FC/LS leaders) on how you feel about the subject. Do you think it's safe to say Primals can be defeated ICly since they'll always come back, or would you feel it's too mary sue to do that?

The Blades secretly hid in the shadows plotting schemey type things the entire time. Twas fun!

I would not only get behind this idea, I could totally see my character provoking some kind of outbreak as a method to test his own alchemical workings and to give himself the challenge of finding a cure for t.

The dyes require crafter level 30, not lvl 30 recipes.

Mother of God they brought back queues!!!