Skae

For most jobs the soul crystal merely acts as an accelerated learning device, allowing the wielder to learn in a year or two what would otherwise take many decades to master. The staves, rods, books, etc. that spellcasters use aid them in channeling and focusing aether. They probably can cast spells without these tools, but it would be much harder and with less control - especially if they aren't used to casting without their tools. Trying to cast any powerful spell without their usual tools would presumably also be dangerous for the caster, since the reduced control would mean they could easily burn themselves out trying to channel all that aether. .

Most of the Jobs are restricted one way or another. Paladin and Machinist are fairly open - no major problem playing one of those. Ninja, Warrior, Samurai, Bard, Astrologer, Red Mage are all quite plausible, but do require a bit of explaining how a character learned them. The rest (White Mage, Scholar, Summoner, Black Mage, Dragoon, Monk, Dark Knight) are all either very rare and/or illegal. However all the classes are pretty much wide open - very few restrictions on belonging to one of those. So if you want to play a spear-wielding warrior - play a Lancer, not a Dragoon. If you want a healer - play a Conjurer rather than a White Mage. Etc. Roleplaying as a Class instead of a Job will give you almost all the abilities of the Job, but will have much less lore-based problems. Or you can just ignore the whole Class/Job thing when creating your character. Plenty of people in Eorzea who fight with sword and shield while never having visited Ul'dah and the Gladiator's Guild - just as an example. As an another example, you can be a Ishgard-based vigilante wielding two-handed sword without actually being a Dark Knight.

For starters go to this page:https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/clubs/46-rp-network/ and use the information there to get into that LS, and - more importantly - join the Discord. Most of the discussions and event announcements for RP on Omega happen on Discord.

Eorzea as a whole isn't that badly xenophobic. Gridania and Ishgard are xenophobic for different reasons, although they are improving. Ul'dah used to let beastmen into the city for trade. It is relatively recently (as in the last 20 years or so) that beastmen have banned from the city. Limsa Lominsa welcomes beastmen as long as they follow the rules. It is only kobolds and sahagin that are banned - and they used to have treaties in place with the kobolds. Yugiri knows very little about Eorzea when she first arrives there. She disguises herself mostly as a "just in case" measure, and because humans as a whole (not only in Eorzea but everywhere, including our world) have a tendency to fear the unknown, and fear often makes them quick to violence.

Balmung is once again an officially Congested server. That means it is impossible to create a character on Balmung, or transfer characters to Balmung. (There are, or at least were, ways to get around the transfer stop - but using that exploit did get people banned.) Balmung has been a Congested server ever since May 2017, except for a brief period between Feb 20 and Mar 13 this year.

So far Viera are not only not a playable race, they are not in the game at all, and will most likely never be. They have been considered as a playable race, yes, but that was a long time ago and nothing further has been said about it. People playing currently non-playable races such as goblins, or sylphs, or other beastmen - that is one thing. Not my cup of tea, but I don't see it as a problem. People playing non-existing races is another thing. You can't do any research on them, since we don't have any information about them. Even if it is a race which exists in another FF game, it would most likely not be the same if it ever was added to FF14.

Sort of. New character creation will be unlocked, but the standard blocking of character creation during periods of high activity will still be there, just like on all other servers. We will just have to wait and see how often character creation will be open. Perhaps it will be open most of the time, and perhaps it will be like before the congestion lockdown when character creation on Balmung was only possible for a few moments right after a maintenance.

The underlying issue of Balmung's congestion was two-fold: 1) For a long time it was de facto the only RP server - hence all roleplayers went there. 2) Many people (RPers and non-RPers) wanted to play on whichever was the busiest server just because they liked having lots of other people around, or because they wanted the best chance of getting into a raid group. Right now we have three RP servers - Balmung, Mateus, and Omega. Establishing Mateus and Omega as viable RP servers would probably not have been possible without Balmung's lockdown - not enough people would have gone there to achieve a critical mass, but with Balmung closed many people had to go elsewhere. Hopefully not everyone will rush back to Balmung now. With cross-server DF and PF at least some of the reasons for going to the biggest servers have disappeared. Not much SE could have done to fix these issues since they are really just people being people.

If there is a massive migration to Balmung they will slap back the Congested label sooner rather than later. Note that they explicitly warn that this can happen if too many people move to a particular server.

There is a maintenance on Feb 20. Once that is finished the moratorium on individuals buying houses will be lifted, and all currently Congested servers will no longer be congested. https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/516c7b25603c44092d792b2a14c2313fb8a9f11b Time to start preparing for the rush.....

Balmung is the main roleplay server but it is not merely full, it is overfull. Due to overpoulation it has been completely locked for some time now and will remain so until further notice. This means that if you aren't already there you can't get in. Luckily there are alternatives. Mateus has sailed up as the main other RP server. Just like Balmung it is part of the Aether datacentre which is intended for, and mainly inhabited by, Americans. For us Europeans the go-to RP server is Omega. Not quite as big and busy as Balmung or Mateus, but you can still find plenty of RP there, and most events happen during EU-friendly times. For both Mateus and Omega much of the RP discussion and event announcements etc. happen on Discord, so they are more active than it would seem from just looking at this site. For Omega see this thread: http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=21046 for more information on that. Small RP communities can also be found on many other servers, but the three I listed above (Balmung, Mateus, and Omega) are currently the unofficial RP servers.

I don't think we ever get a precise and detailed explanation about how all the class/job abilities actually work - most likely because the developers have never bothered about that. I do think it is clear that for a number of class/job abilities some kind of aether manipulation must be used - so many of them cannot be explained simply by sheer physical ability. But don't think too hard about this - it is one of those things were there likely isn't much lore behind it, and instead the abilities work the way they do because some game developer thought it would be cool.

All agreed. Discord does add an extra barrier to entry, but somehow people these days seem to think that web-based forums are outdated somehow - or at least they act like it. (Personally I think that Usenet is still superior in many ways over all the newer discussion venues, but I have long since given up that fight as lost.) Now for Omega in particular this post: http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=21046 contains a link for the Discord where most of the discussions for Omega RPers currently take place. The linkshell that post is mainly about is also helpful to join.

Character creation getting temporarily locked does not mean all that much. All the busier servers will get temporarily locked for character creation now and then. When a server starts getting locked on a semi-regular basis even during off-peak hours - that's when it is time to start worrying for real. Mateus isn't there yet.

While I agree with all you had to say about Discord, fact is that people do use it as a forum replacement - even though it is fairly bad for most of it. Discord is great for chit-chat which makes people use it, but then people use it for everything else too - probably because they don't want to use more than one site. It is not what a community needs, but apart from a few old farts like myself nobody seems to worry or care about that. As mentioned, for Omega everything happens on the Discord, and almost nobody appear interested in using anything else - despite how lousy Discord is for 90% of what it is used for.

You can probably find small groups of roleplayers on all servers. If you want anything looking like an actual RP server your best bets currently would be Balmung, Mateus, or Omega. I have not played on Mateus, but from what I hear it is quite active. If you play during US prime time, then Mateus is probably best suited for you. Omega is quite nice in my opinion. Still in the growing phase - which was hampered previously due to transfers to Omega being locked for some time - but coming along nicely, with little problem finding at least some RP. Just be aware that it is an EU server and most RP activity happens during EU evenings.

The RP network LS http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=21046 is a good place for general RP contacts. The Discord mentioned on that page is also very useful to join.

You can play on any server regardless of type of account.

Balmung is indeed the most populated RP server. It is so populated it is even overpopulated and character creation and transfers to Balmung has been blocked until further notice. Even before the complete lockdown it was almost impossible to create a new character on Balmung, except for about half a minute right after maintenance. Of the RP servers you can actually get onto I'd say Mateus(NA) and Omega(EU) are the most populated and active. Thank you so much for your reply!! I created my character in Mateus for the very reason. Also, I was wondering which version is better, Steam or Retail? If you use Steam you will probably have to use Steam for pretty much everything. If this is a problem or a good thing depends on your opinion of Steam. The actual gameplay shouldn't differ though.

Balmung is indeed the most populated RP server. It is so populated it is even overpopulated and character creation and transfers to Balmung has been blocked until further notice. Even before the complete lockdown it was almost impossible to create a new character on Balmung, except for about half a minute right after maintenance. Of the RP servers you can actually get onto I'd say Mateus(NA) and Omega(EU) are the most populated and active.

Or we just get a really bad exchange rate when using gil in Kugane, due to it not being the native currency.

It is hard to decide on an exact exchange rate between gil and real world money since the relative prices of things in game can be quite different from the relative prices of the same things in the real world. However after looking at what various NPC vendors charge for food and ingredients I'd say a beer would likely cost somewhere around 20-30 gil.

Forgotten Realms: Cormyr, Cormyr and the Dalelands, and Styss. Balmung is currently locked. However, there is an active and thriving community on Mateus, which is not locked! Omega also has an active RP community and might be preferrable if you are in an EU timezone.

Partly because they don't know each other, but mostly because most of them won't be the type of people who start groups and organize events and generally makes things happen. It is well known that it is a fairly small minority who actually does those things, and most of them will already be busy with one thing or another. Starting a group is easy. Making it grow and become established requires a lot of work, and without someone doing that work, groups will generally fall apart fairly quickly.

I think it is, at least in part, a case of long-established groups not really looking for more people to add to their group. It is not that they are opposed to adding new people as such, but more that they are not actively trying to find new people and are a bit wary of adding the "wrong" persons. This means that the new people will have to work much harder to join an established group since they will have to be the sole driving force behind the recruitement process. Newer groups however will often be much more open to add new people to their group. The relationships within the group will be less entrenched and thus new people will cause less disruption. They will often actively try to recruit people who might be a good fit - making it much easier for new people to join.