Yian Kutku

Is there a place on this forum to ask tiny, inconsequential lore questions that aren't really worthy of inclusion in the Lore Questions Thread, but still bug me immensely disproportionate to their importance? I just have two to start with, but I'm sure there will be many more to come. First, does Minfilia do anything, apart from using her long-range communication system to summon me for face-to-face meetings? Second, how does Yda's skirt work? I assume it's a skirt; it looks like tight shorts, until I see the huge side-slits. And yet the skirt clings to her like shorts. It's weird.

As clearly illustrated by the introductory setpieces, yes. Limsa Lominsa is paranoid about collaborators, yet insistent on the principle of individualistic freedom at any cost, even to society. Gridania is hugely xenophobic, and only grudgingly tolerates adventurers. Ul'dah thinks nothing of treading on those with no money, which is exacerbated by their refugee crisis. It's just that the intro cutscenes at least try to establish Limsa Lominsa and Gridania as slightly sympathetic (until you talk to the respective Adventurer's Guild rep and see the other face of the city), but Ul'dah doesn't even bother. More updates: I ran my first dungeon. And then had to run two more, because of course the game had to throw new players into the deep end with three consecutive dungeon runs in all three city-state areas, complete with DPS queue timers for all three. (About 15 minutes each from queuing in Duty Finder to actually getting a group.) I'm really not used to the Holy Trinity style of MMO team content, so I hope I'm not doing anything wrong. I did ask in teamchat if there was anything I should know as a newbie, and the answers were mostly noncommittal or vague (ie "no" or "just do whatever"). I did learn to recognize the symbols for Tank classes, since I quickly learned to always follow the Tank. And that's just as a DPS, which presumably does not require anything special. I have no idea how I'm going to fare as a Healer, or even a Tank. Hopefully the Hall of the Novice stuff will be enough.

It did take me a while to start exploring the FF14 website, especially since it inexplicably locks me out of most of the content if I log in with a trial account, yet works perfectly if I log back out. Now that I'm a Proper Subscriber, though, I've been looking through all that they have to offer. I was a bit reluctant to look through the official forums, though. MMO official forums tend to have well-deserved negative reputations; my own experiences have shown that the best I can expect was a careful selection of subforums that weren't terrible. Usually Gameplay subforums should be avoided at all costs, due to people being very opinionated on how their characters should play. Anything PvP-related contains too much trash-talking. General Discussion is usually the worst, simply due to size. Lore is usually all right, except for the inevitable handful of people who insist on their One True Interpretation, especially if there's any nuance or grey areas to the game's morality system. I don't know if FF14 has the same issues. In any case, now I have three characters on the same server, of whom I will probably play only one. I did take the opportunity to watch the different intros to the three starter cities, which says a lot about their respective personalities. Limsa Lominsa and Gridania don't seem too bad, apart from the outside forces like pirates and beastmen, but Ul'dah introduces itself by having the guards attempt to mug you. Also, there will always be a garrulous old trader fellow who has a name starting with "Br", and two young(?) Elezen who don't talk at all. Back on my Arcanist main, all these random fainting spells cannot be healthy, convenient flashbacks or otherwise.

Code used, thanks.

A couple of days of intense playtime means I hit level 20, and had to make a decision on whether to buy the game. It was an easy decision, made when I hit 15 and discovered that I can fish. So now I've purchased the full game from the Square Enix online store (at a heavily discounted price, curiously not listed on the FF14 site itself), which apparently includes both the base game and Heavensward. (Yes, I triple-checked; it's all listed on my account details page.) While I wait for the servers to come back up, I should mention that I have the default 30 days of playtime for buying the game, but have not yet applied a subscription plan. From what I can see, if I get a Friend Code from another player, I'll be able to apply it and get a few goodies. Specifically, the "Friendship Band", which gives me some amount of extra experience at lower levels but more importantly it's a little feather tucked into my hair so cute. Hopefully someone here will help me? I'm also not sure if I should get the Standard Subscription right away, or try out the single-character (per World) Entry Subscription for now. Having done the big tour of the three starter cities and collected all the classes, I'm not sure I want to go through all that again on another character so soon. While technically I have 30 days before I have to decide, it does have implications on whether my first server transfer to Balmung is just the one character, or multiple.

Thanks, and yes, they're both female. (I like creating female characters in MMOs, because I love the female fashion options. Dresses for everyone! Ballgowns for all!) Part of my research into Not Being Stupid In FF14 while the game was installing was, indeed, checking out lore-valid stuff like names, which did lead me to that link. I was slightly disappointed that there isn't an Eorzean Dictionary or something, so I could have my Miqo'te names mean something proper instead of Monster Hunter references. Other than Hyurs (ie standard humans) and Miqo'te, I'm also interested in the expansion Au Ra race, but I'm not sure if I should buy the Heavensward expansion just for them, or even if I should buy the expansion immediately should I subscribe. Off-topic: I love the Arcanist. I love pet classes in general, especially if the pet is sturdy enough to give me plenty of warning if the fight is going badly. I'm a little worried about the mandatory story dungeons I hear about, though, as well as how the Arcanist is considered a DPS class, with the queue times that implies.

The two Miqo'te are on different servers, due to free trial restrictions. So I'll have to create new alts on Cactuar/Adamantoise anyway, and leave the other where she is. I admit I was surreptitiously checking to see whether anyone would complain about the names I gave, which were entirely "just let me into the game already" placeholders. (If anyone is wondering: Nargacuga and Palico.) Since they are thus far unremarked upon, I assume they're good enough to pass muster as lore-valid. Otherwise, I'm open to spending even more money for a character rename. Then again, I don't have any real inspirations for lore-friendly names, so it'll likely just be hitting the Random button until I see something I can tolerate the sound of. I'll try the right-click-on-self thing, thanks. I was looking through the various UI bits and menus, and didn't see anything like that, but I hadn't tried the Party option.

I was going to ask, yes. I'm not familiar with how FF14 handles multiple classes and alts (I only played a month of FF11 way back in the day, and only got up to level 10 or something), so I wasn't sure whether it's considered valid to create a whole bunch of characters. I mean, I did it for CoH and SWTOR (much, much more for CoH), but this is an entirely different game. I mean, most of the beginner's guides I've read tell me that alts are pointless, but checking random discussions on other forums about FF14, I see several people mention a variety of alts (usually three or four). I'll probably just start with the one character to transfer, though. I won't really know how I'll feel about FF14 (much less its RP scene) until I've really gotten farther into the game than the free trial lets me (level 20, one character per server). US$18 is a bit steep, but the lure of free open-world RP is strong. Also, I have trouble keeping track of more than three different characters' personalities for long-term RP purposes, so that's another limit. After three, they kind of bleed into each other by accident. EDIT: Completely off-topic additional questions, inspired by minor events when playing: firstly, is there any way to passively indicate to other players that I am on a free trial, and thus cannot reply to /tells inviting me to FCs? I feel kind of bad when I come back from a brief AFK only to see a nicely-worded /tell in my chat log, and no way of replying. Secondly, is there any sort of in-game user-editable profile that other players can check out? I'm not sure how to describe it; CoH had something like that where players can write backstories, descriptions, bad jokes etc, but I've not seen any other MMO do anything remotely similar.

It's weird, I know. I'll get to it after the introductory information. I'm new to FF14, and still on my early days of the free 14-day trial (second day today, probably third by the time I get back to this thread). I was waiting for the game to be officially available in my country (Singapore, GMT+8 for those wondering), and then put it off until now due to the 30GB install requirement. I've spent most of the past few days looking up "how not to be a complete idiot in gameplay" guides for FF14, which still does not seem adequate. I hope I won't stumble over any unseen pitfalls. My previous MMO experiences are myriad, but mostly keeping to myself in silent soloing, and usually no more than a few months before lapsing. The one exception was my very first MMO, and the reason I bounced around so many others: City of Heroes, of dearly departed memory and eight years' playtime. As fellow former CoH players might guess, I played on Virtue. One of the things I discovered there was that I'm simply not very good at RPing. As far as I know I wasn't actively terrible (at least, I never got any complaints), but more often than not actually participating stressed me out, and I ended up trying to fade back into the crowd rather than jumping in. However, I loved watching RP going on. It was like awesome stories and performances happening all around me that I can spectate and enjoy. Again, I never got any complaints about it, so I assume it's not a huge problem, but I don't know how FF14's RP etiquette works. I can roleplay if I have to, if that's what it takes, but I would much prefer to be a passive audience. And yet I find it helps my enjoyment immensely to know that other players around me actually care about the lore, and aren't just in it for the pursuit of bigger numbers. Which is one reason I'm trying out FF14; the lore of CoH was one of the main anchors for me, and I'm hoping the vast amount of story in the game so far will be the same. I'm currently playing on the Aether Datacentre, specifically Adamantoise and Cactuar, mostly to see what the game was like before making long-term decisions about whether to subscribe. I'm a bit worried that it took me several hours just to get to level 10, since it means rerolling on another server might be quite tedious. I didn't go to Balmung or Gilgamesh (the RP servers according to Google) because they appear to be locked to new characters, and I don't feel up to sniping maintenance times. (If you're wondering, Archer N'arga Cuga and Arcanist P'liko Cuga respectively, Miqo'te Keepers of the Sun. Having much more fun with P'liko, who hit level 10 just before I had to go to bed.) What else? I get slightly better pings from the NA Datacentres (282ms) than the EU (352ms) or JP (timed out) ones, but that's still not too good, so I'm taking it slow and careful. I'm still looking for more newbie guides, since a lot of what I found on Google suggested a site (ffxivrealms) which told me my IP address was blocked. Obviously not through any fault of mine, since I've never been there before. My tabletop RP experiences are probably irrelevant, since I mainly saw them as a way to hang out with friends, rather than get into character. D&D (3.5, 5) and nWoD, if it matters. I'm looking forward to seeing how this game goes. I'm leaning heavily towards subscribing; I'm giving it a few more days of gameplay first (or until I reach level 20, whichever is sooner), and then I'll see if Square Enix accepts my credit card.