Kilieit

Even small pre-established contexts can help push characters to interact - it doesn't always have to be "our characters were childhood friends all along". It can be as simple as "my character saw yours at [place] last week", because then that means my character knows yours is a [profession related to place], and can strike up a conversation about being/needing/etc a [profession]. It's nice to mix and match "missed connections" introductions like that with the more typical "cold call" introductions.

I tend to put major model divergences in my character's search comment. Like Aghurlal is significantly shorter than his in-game model, so his search comment has his RP height in it. If one of my characters was missing a limb (or an eye, or a horn), that'd go in there - so anyone inspecting my character could potentially mention it, not just people who caught one of my previous emotes. I don't think you have to go the magitek limb route for an amputated limb. It's something I think a lot of people jump to when they want their character to still be capable of combat in short bursts - they think they need something that functions just like a real limb, so they go to the setting's highest level of technology to get it. But low-tech prosthetics - made of wood, most likely, given the setting - would exist that would allow, say, your character to have both arms at first glance (so it makes sense for your character's missing arm to not be the first thing anyone mentions), or to basically walk (albiet with an unusual gait). And if the amputation was below the joint, and the thing was reliable enough - sturdy and well-fitted - the character could probably still fight on it, although their style would almost certainly have to change. I've never roleplayed an amputee character, but my friend who did said there are quite a lot of youtube videos from real-life amputees with first-hand stories about what it's like - to do certain tasks, to get a prosthetic fitted and adjusted... Those are a really good resource, since they allow you to learn more about what you'll be trying to portray with your character. (And let's face it, most IRL amputees have pretty low-tech prosthetics too, at least compared to the average RP magitek limb.)

Still here, still accepting new people! Send a /tell to any of the folks listed in the OP!

Yeah my advice still stands. Put this out of your mind completely, stop asking other people about it, stop replying to random /tells at all, and work on any improvements with feedback from people who are actually invested in your FC.

Or you could also ask the people in the FC itself - the ones still around. While it could end up being hug-box-y and echo-chamber-y... if your FC is set up where people are able and willing to provide critique on how the FC is run, I'm sure they would tell you. Though, I would also hope that if there were concerns they might have already raised them in a polite manner - though I can understand why they wouldn't, due to nerves or not wanting to "rock the boat." Yes this - basically look to people invested in the FC's success, not people invested in its failure. So you, your officer team (if you have one), and your members. Actively open the communication channels. Be honest with yourself about where you're having shortcomings (no one should kid themself here - every FC has them), and ask for feedback on how to improve in those areas. Ask what people like and don't like about the things you already do well. Ask if there's anything people would like to see more of.

I don't think it's helpful to pin the blame on one demographic of people over another. I happened to run a guild with """tumblrina""" rules like "don't use slurs" and "don't make racist jokes", and we had this exact kind of issue, people trying to spread rumours and making level 1 alts to try and make us think it was more than just them... from people who were kicked for breaking them. The "rumours" were along the lines of that we were a guild of over-sensitive SJWs and that I was a dictator with "oppression privilege". Because these people were mad that I'd told them they couldn't stay in our guild if they kept breaking the very clear rule we had about slurs and didn't stop calling things r*t*rded. And of course they tried to use this image against me - paint me as a hysterical child who was "triggered" by the tiniest thing, and therefore couldn't possibly run a decent guild. It was all bollocks, and it never stuck, because at the end of the day our guild was decent, openly, and added a significant amount of value to the RP community with our presence. But that didn't stop the attempted harassment campaigns. I think it took the most tenacious of them a year (and some actual, legit, not-sure-in-retrospect-why-I-didn't-call-the-police stalking of me personally) to give up. Point is, people like this - who start a harassment campaign when you tell them to leave - exist in any cross-section of any community you sample. You can't afford to think that all the people in your group will be reasonable when crossed just because you happen to agree with them on other matters, like politics or game lore. As for how to deal with it: 1. Don't give them a rise. Don't get upset at them. Don't reply to the level 1 alt tells at all. Blacklist the original person who caused the issue, if you haven't already. You are not obligated to entertain this. If your members bring it up, address it with them in a calm, transparent way. Say that such-and-such a member was kicked for [reason], and then these rumours began. Tell them they're free to ignore the level 1 alt if it's causing them distress. Tell them if they have any concerns about the way the FC is run, they're free to bring them to the officer team as per usual (and then address them in the usual manner you do, which I hope is open and considerate). And if an outside player asks you, you're not obligated to either prostrate yourself to them or to give them details. Tell them you would hope people would witness your FC first-hand before believing bad things about it, and then change the subject. Think twice about recruiting this kind of person - if they can believe bad rumours about you now, what of later? 2. Don't change your FC's behaviour. Barring simple and non-loaded things like locking an FC house to non-members, you shouldn't change the way you run your events, interact with the wider community, or advertise for recruitment. Changing these things teaches the person that if they want to stop you from, say, openly recruiting for your FC, all they need to do is create 3 level 1 alts and send you /tells doubting your leadership. So next time they want to change something about your behaviour, they'll create 3 more alts. Remember that, at the end of the day, you have very little evidence these rumours are actually rumours. Treating them like they're real makes them more real. Don't give this person the satisfaction. [This differs from advice when it comes to IRL stalking, because online, there's no actual physical danger involved in just continuing about your business.] 3. Don't be afraid to get the GMs involved if things get out of hand. The GMs in this game take stalking and harassment very seriously. Privately collect the names of the level 1 alts who send you /tells about this (blacklisting them is a good way to do this automatically, especially if you don't have many other people on your blacklist). If it keeps up for too long (honestly the fact you're writing to us today tells me you're already fed up), gets worse, or the messages get at all threatening, file a GM ticket. They'll tell you what they can do and help you out as best they can. And if you happen to get an unhelpful GM, file again, as you'll likely get a different member of staff handling your ticket - though I've honestly never heard of someone having problems with the GMs with regards to harassment. Compared to the GMs in WoW, the ones in XIV are pretty clued up on problems like this. Good luck. I also want to emphasise: this is not your fault. It's not your fault and it's actually not your job to handle it, even though you more or less have to. This person is being horrible by doing what they're doing, and that's on them, not you. If you want to know whether you're running the FC well, look to yourself and what you're doing - not to reviews on random websites, and not to the words of level 1 alts who may or may not belong to someone who feels unduly slighted and has nothing better to do than to try and turn that feeling back on you.

I've seen a lot of people saying that most of the Shards are destroyed, but I can't actually recall any lore evidence for this idea, beyond the vague idea that each Calamity on the Source echoed through the Reflections... We only know details about the state of the 13th and the 1st, and we know that Nabriales is an Ascian who originated from the 12th, "the fragment world adjoining the Void" (but we don't know anything about the state he left it in...). I can't recall, at this date, reading any details about any of the other Reflections. I wonder where it's coming from? Telephone game shenanigans where people take the seven Rejoining attempts (AKA Calamities) as having actually destroyed shards rather than just trying to collapse them back into the Source? Because I doubt that's happening: the one shard that has been confirmed destroyed, the 13th (aka the Void), has also been confirmed useless to the Ascians and now unable to Rejoin. It was destroyed by Igeyorhm, due to her outclassing its Warriors of Light so badly that its balance was tipped beyond the point of no return - it was not destroyed as the result of a Rejoining attempt. It's actively against the Ascians' interests to fully destroy Reflections. They probably wouldn't be employing a strategy that would cause it as a matter of routine - so it's unlikely that initiating attempts at a Rejoining has this effect. I can't imagine most of the Reflections are in top shape, but neither is the Source, really. As for what they are, they're parallel dimensions. The Void ironically provides the clearest described example of the nature of Reflections.

Addressing 3 with a side order of 4 at the end: I actually think summoner is a little easier than dragoon... Dragoon - in the sense of job crystal dragoon - is very Ishgard-exclusive. Only a character who was born there or raised there for a significant portion of their life would really be able to access this job. They likely would have been on the frontlines against the Dravanian horde for a long time before they earned the right to train as a Dragoon - losing many many comrades in the process. They would have been put through rigorous, re-traumatising training. And then something must have happened to cause them to stop being in active service. And then the war they gave up their personal life to fight is ended and they're just meant to make peace with the dragons? Basically, it's a very specific character archetype: bitter, Fury-fearing war veteran. Summoners, on the other hand... while they still have certain set things that have to have happened in order for the character to be capable of becoming a summoner (have been present at the defeat of a Primal; have a certain level of aetheric surplus and basic magical talent; have access to a soul crystal), it doesn't place any limitations on where the character can be from, what type of personality they have, what their family history is like... They'll probably have at least one trauma in their backstory (how did they end up fighting a Primal?), but beyond that? There's much more freedom, and much more range as to "this is what a summoner looks like" in roleplay without people having to set aside the lore in order to suspend disbelief. To recap, here are the things you need to consider when making a summoner character: • They absolutely must have been present at the defeat of Ifrit, Titan, and/or Garuda, and they will only be able to summon egis of the primals they have been present at the defeat of. (So if they were present at Garuda's defeat, they'd be able to summon Garuda-egi but not Ifrit-egi or Titan-egi.) This is non-negotiable. No Primal defeat witnessed = no egis. There's a few ways your character could end up in such a situation - some consensual, some not so much - so there's still options here. • They probably need a background in magic. Arcanima is the standard route - this is taught by the Arcanists' Guild in Limsa Lominsa, who seek to spread the art of arcanima so that it isn't lost over the generations. But I could see justifications for a conjurer or thaumaturge seeking tutelage in Summoning as well. • They need access to a soul crystal. In the SMN's case, these are ancient Allagan artefacts, and so far most of them seem to have been recovered from the dig overseen by the Sons of Saint Coinach in Mor Dhona, near the Crystal Tower. Either the character should have scholarly ties to the Sons, or they should have motivation and ability to try and steal a crystal from this dig. If this is still too restricting, or doesn't click with you - there's absolutely nothing wrong with making your character a regular old Arcanist (or Lancer, for that matter). Arcanists can still summon Carbuncle through the use of arcane geometries - there's a game feature now where you can make your in-game "egis" look like Carbuncle, too, so you don't even have to worry about what to do if you want to run duties IC. And they can still reach excellent levels of power, so please don't worry about always being "weaker than" any other characters who happen to have job crystals. In fact, most RP characters I've met in this game don't have a job crystal - they're just a regular person, who happens to be trained in certain magic disciplines, or capable of using certain weapons. (Or sometimes neither. There are pure Disciples of the Hand/Land I've seen, too.)

I'm so hyped for jump potions. I will pay good money to skip the MSQ. Not that it's bad but..Two times were enough. Pretty much the same. I have a full set of eight with most of them below level 25 because I just can't. I'm on alt #3 of 10 through the 2.0 MSQ and it's taking me weeks to do the Coerthas Central section of the MSQ. Especially because I know the bit after this is just as boring and tedious. ><

Actually (and this is what I meant about my opinions having changed over the years), I find that as a healer, I have very little investment or control over what my character is actually capable of. If someone loses a finger and they want to play a nine-fingered character, obviously we can't heal it - but it goes the other way, too! If someone calls to my character on a linkpearl, begging for her to come quick, she gets there, and they have their arm ripped off. If I say, "I'm sorry, I can try to stop the bleeding, but I won't be able to give you your arm back," when they were hoping to be magicked back to perfect health with a few days bedrest, that's in many ways worse than healing someone who didn't want it. We healers are exactly as powerful as people tell us to be, no matter what the lore says. I mean that most healer roleplayers: a) want their characters' ability level to reflect their training and experience, and b) want their scenes to last longer than "boop, you're done" If the SCH quest in question was baseline for healers in the setting, then anyone that couldn't do "boop you're done" would look incompetent. Anyone who wanted to RP longer scenes would have to RP a trainee. As it is, there are a lot of wonderful, impossible-seeming things that are possible with healing magic. But being unable to recreate them consistently doesn't mean your character is bad at their job, because these impossible-seeming things usually rely on outside circumstances (which may or may not be present for the given RP scene, depending on the desires of the injured character's player). Which means our healer characters can heal extraordinary injuries to full health, if that's what the player of the injured character wants. But because the lore leaves room for a variety of outcomes regardless of the healer's skill, it means our healer characters also don't have to take the fall ICly when someone OOCly wants their character's injury to be not-healed. ICly it becomes a "that just happens sometimes" thing, not a "OH NO AM I LOSING MY POWERS I HAVE TO GO BACK TO HEALER SCHOOL EVEN THOUGH I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 10 YEARS" thing. That's why I think the fact that level of healing is extraordinary is a breath of relief.

All of what you said is accurate to my experience and perspective, but I wanted to emphasise this part. This is what I meant when I said it wasn't always feasible to weed people out with an application process. In my experience, there are four rough groups of applicants: A) Well meaning and they fit in. (The ideal recruit.) B) Well meaning but they don't fit in. C) Don't fit in but they have another, neutral reason to want to join (E.g. friend in the guild). D) Malicious (E.g. wants to rob guild bank, wants to "spy for another guild" (i.e. stir shit), etc etc). Application processes only help you distinguish between types A and B. They don't help you pick out Type C or D - that's what conduct rules are for. Because both types will lie on their apps, but it's harder to keep up a lie consistently over a number of weeks or months. Your rules should, therefore, be angled towards picking out when someone is clashing with or harming the guild culture - and making it a monitorable, quantifiable thing, that everyone knows you can be kicked for and expects people to be kicked for. Most of our applicants were type B, and as I mentioned earlier, were weeded out during the recruitment process - mostly via inactivity during the trial period (which tells us they don't really care that much about being in the guild, and we want people who care about being here). Thing is, Mr Abusive wasn't even a type D recruit - he was type C. His girlfriend had been in the guild longer, and he wanted to join her. Given the incident he was kicked during, he lied on his application in order to do this. (I can only think of one Type D applicant we ever had, and they were kicked within 5 minutes of their joining, lol.) I think it's folly to try and angle your application process so it'll weed out Type C as well, because this generally involves making it so much effort that someone who isn't invested for its own sake won't complete it... but... there's a certain threshold over which even people who might otherwise fit in with your guild are going to be lost. I do think the app process should be indicative of what every day life in the guild would be like - so unless you write daily prose marathons, requiring essays seems odd. And IMO once you go over 5 single-word-answer questions, you have to start asking what Shuck suggests: what are the answers to these questions even telling you about the applicant? That they can tell you what you want to hear? Our app had a couple of single-word questions that mostly existed so we could hold people to their answers: stuff like "have you read the rules" and "will you follow the rules" less so we knew, and more so we could point to the agreement as justification if they later went back on it and we needed to make a kick. The last question was "tell us a bit about your RP character" so we could verify that they a) at least understood the principle of being an RPer and b) their character wasn't going to be stuck in "but I can't think of a reason to come~" limbo with regards to guild RP events. Everything else in terms of membership curation was done in the trial period or with the conduct infraction system. All in all, I didn't actually have to make that many kicks of active members during my time as guild leader. But the ones I did make were justified, improved the health of the guild as a community, and I don't regret them. I think the other members of my guild understood my reasoning as well - helped by the fact that I was transparent about it - and that's why I only ever faced challenges (read: name-calling, attempted rumour-spreading) over my kicks from people who had just been kicked. IMO if you are transparent about what you expect from people, transparent about what constitutes a kick in advance, and transparent about when someone hits those limits - and you still encounter drama... you have a bigger problem than the immediate drama, because it means your FC members don't trust your judgement, or your leadership. That's when you open a discussion with your members about how you can do better; not when you take kicking people off the table. JESUS CHRIST WHY DO I WRITE SO MUCH

To call this out specifically - one of the SCH quests has you go around and heal those people, and you actually do miracle many of them back to health in a single spell. They recover instantly, despite their ailments having plagued them for months (even complicated illnesses like alcoholism and PTSD). That would seem to refute the idea that magical healing can't heal old wounds, but I chalk this up to the WoL being special. The "average magical healer" wouldn't have been able to heal those people, or else they would have been tended to a long time ago. My opinion's changed over the years, but I think it's totally valid to say the WoL (and to a lesser extent, the other Scions) are leagues ahead of the rest of Eorzea. If M'naagho stumbled in with those same wounds to Maelstrom Command (or even the Conjurers' Guild) instead of to the Rising Stones, she would have been lucky if they managed to keep her alive long enough to deliver her message. You're also using an ancient lost art of healing in those quests, taught to you directly by a fabled master of healing from Nym - the city that had to be taken down with underhanded subterfuge because Mhach (the fabled masters of destruction) just couldn't beat them on the open battlefield. I think even people with a SCH soul crystal but no direct Nymian tutelage would struggle to recreate the feat... which is actually a breath of relief for most healer roleplayers.

Bolding mine. I think this is an interesting point - in my experience, a lot of FC leaders are borderline phobic of the /gkick. I've been in the position myself of needing to make a gkick of a member who has exceeded their maximum allowed number of conduct infractions and need to be shown the door. I've also been in the position of needing to kick someone who is being so abusive, in guild chat, right now, that they need to be removed immediately for the mental health and emotional wellbeing of the other members. I feel like... people think... a gkick is only "justified" if it's the latter sort of extreme situation? And forget to either include or enforce rules that say "we may ask you to leave if you're not fitting in" (which is essentially what "this member has made 3 conduct infractions in the last month" is telling you). They try to pre-emptively prevent the situation ever coming about through interviews and trial periods, which is just... not always feasible. It was definitely easier for me to kick Mr Abusive. It was also easier for me to handle the fallout... or lack thereof. Enough people had witnessed it that there were no "he was kicked unfairly" rumours for me to have to handle. The effect of removing Mr Abusive was immediate, obvious, and positive. But if anything, I think the health of the guild community was helped just as much by my kicking Mr Maximum Infractions. I was definitely more nervous about doing it - I was worried that people would come after me and say I was being unfair, that we should give him another chance, or that I was messing things up. But it turned out Mr Maximum didn't even have that many friends in the guild. He wasn't integrated or invested, despite having been a member far longer than many of our more active crew, and longer than I had been its leader. Other members weren't invested in him, either, and felt awkward around him - usually as a direct result of the same behaviour that scored him his infractions (stuff like using slurs in guild chat). So there was way less backlash than I anticipated there to be. The minor yet repeated conduct infractions were a symptom of a wider problem that - because, despite me approaching him after every infraction to ask if there was any way we could help him get on better in the guild, he was never amenable to talk beyond apologising for the infraction - I could not solve: he just wasn't fitting in. And since he wasn't leaving of his own accord, the best thing I could do - for us and for him - was to kick him. I think a "no hard feelings, but we need to part ways" kick is definitely a tool that goes underutilised. It helped my confidence in my decision that I'd watched my previous guild leader fail to act in similar situations (particularly abrasive people breezing past the supposed 3-strike rule and getting infractions in the double-digits with no kick in sight) and sworn to do better. But equally I can see how someone with a different experience - maybe all their previous guilds have been problem-free in this regard, or they come from the opposite end of the spectrum, with a former leader who would kick at a moment's notice for no reason - would be nervous about making that kick. A kick is seen as something you only do to bad people, or people you don't like. But I think that's an incorrect perception. It's just a tool to remove someone from the guild, the same way an interview process is a way to remove someone from the recruitment pool. TL;DR: Yeah please don't be afraid to kick people, and make sure to include rules to deal with if someone unsuited to the guild does make it through whatever interview process you got! YET AGAIN i know i'm really long-winded i'm just... like this... i'm sorry

My xaela has somehow ended up with a bunch of xaela friends (Avagnar, Bairon, Himaa, Kagon, Qestir, and a raen Malaguld) despite actually being pretty flighty around most xaela. We don't really do a lot of xaela-specific RP, especially not in structured places or times - more xaela-flavoured RP in other settings and times? I assume that sort of thing will take off in Stormblood - but right now, for a lot of our characters, it kind of makes sense to be scattered refugees and migrants, only finding each other by chance... Anyway, feel free to hit me up if you see me at an event (I'm planning to hit Stellazio Pizzaria tonight - my Bairon friend is wait-staff there, and there's a Dotharl NPC too - and Grindstone on Saturday), though I apologise in advance if my lizard ends up scared and either mouthes off at yours or tries to escape. My IGN is Aghurlal Qar-akimusun.

Well, the maps are usually created to be in-universe objects, usually ones made by the Ironheart family (of sightseeing log and side dungeon unlock quest fame). Which means you can probably safely assume the map is written from an Eorzean perspective... and that's why stormclouds, haha. It actually made me laugh a bit because it's so over the top - but of course an Eorzean would be that dramatic! I'd love it if we got to see Garlemald itself in a cinematic or something and it's just, like, covered in snow but otherwise a normal semi-modern city as we would recognise one. No evil stormclouds in sight.

Recent cutscenes show that even world-reknowned conjurers struggle to insta-heal severe injuries. An NPC is told by two such spellcasters that they're amazed she survived her injuries, and that while their magic has stabilised her, she won't be back to full health any time soon. -- Separate from the lore, here are some fancy-sounding reasonings I've used, as a healer (on my alt Telluric Medic), to explain why my character hasn't been able to magically heal a character (belonging to a player who wants them to stay injured): • "I've already healed some more severe/life-threatening injuries of yours, and you've exceeded your aether quotient; you need to rest before I can use any more aether on you, or you'll get sick." • "The aether is not flowing correctly, going to the healthy parts of your body before the injured part; pouring more aether into you will just make you sick." • "The spell just isn't taking; the tissue is resisting it, or I didn't apply it correctly. I exhausted myself before the injury was healed." • "The injury itself also caused damage to your aether, and that must be fixed before any magical healing can take place." • "I know you're hurt, and I'm sorry, but this injury isn't life-threatening and if I use conjury to heal it, the Elementals won't lend me any aether to heal anything else this week. You have to do it the long way around." ~Coincidentally~, the solutions my character tends to suggest to these problems all look pretty much like regular healing process would do. First aid, surgery, bedrest, physio, medication (potions), etc etc etc. I'm of the strong belief that my job as a healing RPer is to facilitate the kind of plotline that the other player wants for their injured character. I think that anyone who can't comprehend why someone would want their character to stay injured needs to take a look at what it is they want to achieve with playing a healer. If it's to be powerful and appreciated and to fix everything and make it so there are no more problems, they're in it for the wrong reasons. It should be to help facilitate the progression of the plot - even if that plot is about being injured long-term, and having to deal with treatments and disability. If a healer tries to heal you without your OOC consent, that's still power-emoting, just the same as if someone tried to injure you without your OOC consent. If anything, healers should encourage this kind of plot, because it gives us a way to turn healing into a source of steady RP partners... why have a one-shot wonder healing session when you can have several sessions over a longer period of time? IDGI... -- I think chronic pain, stiffness, or maybe even losing a limb altogether could allow your character to still be up and about while still not be fit for service in the military (especially elite military). You could also have the limb simply be unreliable - good days and bad days, but some days it just locks up completely and won't move... which is fine for civilian life and not so fine for a military career where something like that can mean the difference between the success or failure of an endeavour. Any of these things would lend themselves well to constant contact with a healer, either an off-screen NPC of your own or another player character. You can allow your character and others to explore possible solutions, even if none of them work out in the end - then make accepting the disability the resolution of the storyline. You can let them try different things to lessen the symptoms without making them go away (some maybe successful, some maybe not).

Thanks. It doesn't really help me read it, but it does help me see more of the map's beautiful details. I am curious, though. I thought the continent we are on was called Eorzea, but it looks like the script might say Aldenard. I'm a bit confused as to what some of the smaller names are. "Eorzea" is a political definition (like "United Kingdom"). "Aldenard" is geographical (like "Britain").

Finding quality members (as defined by the FC's culture) who will add something to the FC as a whole with their presence. Not just finding literally anyone. Way back when, my guild had a relatively long application process (read the rules, confirm you've done so, answer 3 questions, wait 1 day while the officer team reads and approves your interview, then be invited, on trial for a week or two, before promoted to full member). And honestly we got a lot of people who we just could never find for their invite on the next day - who flaked out between reading the rules and the in-person interview... or who went inactive during their trial and never got full membership. But we were a tight-knit group of people who wanted to be able to rely on each other to be around and help with stuff. Bloating our roster with people who weren't that active or who didn't have time to spare for the FC wouldn't have added any value. That's why our recruitment was angled in such a way.

To clarify: It's not a world map; as it says in the top left hand corner, it's a map of the three great continents - Othard, Ilsabard, and Aldenard. So yes, we're still missing Meracydia (south) and the New World (west), as well as any as-yet-undiscovered-by-Eorzeans continents. I think the Ilsabard thing is cute - because this is probably an in-universe document, and being as Eorzea has been at active war with Garlemald for a while now - and Garlemald likes to put huge holes in the ground on semi-regular occasion - it makes sense that Eorzeans would have no clue what's going on in Ilsabard geographically right now, other than the rough shape of its coastline and the position of some of its islands. It sheds light on Eorzea's position, if not necessarily on Ilsabard. I wonder if the giant and the whale mean anything in particular, or are the equivalent of "here be dragons" in a world where we're meant to be making friends with dragons.

PLL is done, here is my TL;DR (I'll go back and add it to OP as well in a minute): Q&A • Butt sliders: no • Increasing garden item slots: maybe later • Eos or Selene recovering position after knockback: do it yourself! • Rhythm game in Gold Saucer: maybe (probably not) • Remove racial restrictions for hairstyles: yes for some, not all • Remove racial restrictions for hempen sets: difficult technically • Repeating MSQ fights: difficult technically. Roll an alt • 3.0 EX primals too easy, what about 4.0?: accessiblity of content is more important to them • Krile outfit on mogstation: would be expensive to make • More Hildibrand trials?: probably not. Hildibrand may or may not reappear in 4.X • In-game/official DPS parser: hard no • PS4 Pro patch: in progress • Keeping flowers in pots: planned for 3.5X • Umbrellas as a vanity item: considering adding as a mount • PotD across data centre: in progress, but cross server alliance raids first • /tells across data centre: in progress, as are linkshells, free companies, and friends lists 3.55a news • Live on Tuesday, 28th February • Anima weapon story quests - “easy!” • Zhloe Aliapoh - story quests for crafters and gatherers • Proto Ultima battle • The Feast •• new maps •• sudden death to resolve draws •• new items and adjustments •• season 3 ending / season 4 pre-season so people can get used to new map before ranking begins • Items: •• Adjustments to Sophic and Demon Lanner drop rates •• Garo Gear added to Calamity Salvager •• FanFest gear codes redeemable • 3.55a because Diadem isn’t ready for release yet. They’re very sorry, but there’s a bug they couldn’t fix in time. Will be in 3.55b •• 3.55b release planned anywhere between March 7th - 14th •• Constant stream of content between 3.55 and 4.0 • MSQ continuation in 3.56 Guinness World Records • Final Fantasy 14 has longest end credits in an MMO video game (1 hour 38 minutes) • Final Fantasy 14 has the highest number of original pieces of music in a video game (384 original compositions) • Final Fantasy series is the most prolific role-playing game series (87 titles)

Another reason is that before you can even set foot in Ishgard itself a player need to go through the entire 2.x MSQ. This prevents lowbie characters from entering the place, and thus everyone is reluctant to place any RP-events in Ishgard since it would exclude all those characters from joining. Result: Not much RP in Ishgard. (That it is a quite isolationist place IC does help.) All of this. I didn't even unlock it til half way through the year, because I'm super slow at questing - and even after I had done so earlier, I could scarcely find reasons for my character to go to a city where he was pretty explicitly not wanted (being xaela and not a member of a grand company). TBH we'll have to see how Kugane plays out in the MSQ, because we know the wider nation has an isolationist stance - it may end up being the same sort of deal politics-wise, but for a different demographic... PLEASE DON'T GET ME WRONG I am super excited for the inclusion of these areas, I'm just trying to think about the scope of possibilities

I agree that this is a concern of mine - I go with "rule of fun" on the huge majority of my stuff but for some reason travel times is something I prefer to stick with wherever I can. Which is reasonable when it's like "RPing that it took my character an hour to get from Vesper Bay back to Limsa by ferry", but less reasonable when it's like "took my character an entire week at sea"... I guess it probably helps that my main character in particular is extremely uninclined to make the journey casually, but while I assume at least he wouldn't need to be smuggled this time, I just can't really... imagine any of my characters making that journey in a reasonable timeframe? Even the ones who would want to. I must admit I was a little surprised to see an aethernet in Othard at all - I always imagined it was, while not a magickless place, definitely a place where magic was less of a daily fact than it is in Eorzea. Maybe it'll be placed during the MSQ itself? Maybe MSQ will provide us with a specific shenanigan to enable IC "fast travel" cross-continent that doesn't require inhuman amounts of power? IDK...

If I'm being honest, I'm a little disappointed they never sorted Ishgard housing too... though more because I recognise it would've been a boon to the RP community as a whole than because I'm personally interested in it. Perhaps they may go back and add it at a future date, as server technology improves and allows them to store more wards for cheaper..? Who knows. I'm still really happy for Shirogane housing, though. I wonder what the level requirements will be to obtain it - I have a certain alt who will want an apartment in that region specifically (assuming apartments there are a thing, ofc)... He's gonna open a venue. Assuming I can get off my ass and get him the prereqs.

The ERP thing is a huge YMMV. There are people I've heard from with frighteningly real anecdotes along the lines you're talking about, but... I've never actually run into explicit chat by accident, and I've been playing here for a year now. People naked in the open world, yes, but never explicit chat. I think it's just luck of the draw, really. ><