Verranicus

I'm going to be one of the forest Elezan, and my girlfriend is reserving her decision until she can play and decide what she thinks is prettiest.

You can't assume the worst of the people who don't stick to the mission plotlines like glue. Not everyone who RPs without using the quests/missions as a backbone pretends they're Sephiroth's half brother. All of my characters in any MMORPG have been reasonable and flawed. None of them had superhuman strength or any powers that wouldn't fit with the game lore. I never had any trouble coming up with my own ideas for long term stories, and when my friends and I did do missions while in-character we would tweak them to be more reasonable, like Castiel mentioned with the 5-1 lich. And even if someone was running around pretending to be Goku trapped in a Lalafell's body, you can at least talk to people like that and explain to them (most of the time) why they're being ridiculous. I'd rather deal with people like that the the insular groups that act as if they personally slew the Shadowlord and are personal friends of Aldo and the President of Bastok, etc.

Pretty much. People complain when a person's RP gets too outlandish or their characters become "godly" but what's more out there than your character being the hero of all the mission stories in FFXI?

It's cool that it works for you, but that style of RP just sort of screams exclusive to me, and if anything with this new game coming out we should do everything we can to maintain an open and easily accessible RP community to all of the people who are newer to it. It's small cliques of people doing their own little RP's away from everyone else that kill off the sense of community.

Castiel's got it right, and I think what you did with the 5-1 fight is great. I totally understand how the above LS' usage of the missions for their RP is cool now that RP is essentially limited to one or two groups per server, but when we go to XIV the situation would simply be too chaotic for everyone to maintain their own "canon" in regards to the game plot. EDIT: And in regards to people coming up with crazier and crazier stories of their own when not relying on the established game canon, the best thing to do if they take it "too far" is just talk to them. I know when I was newer to RP I was always trying to be the darkest guy out there, and over the years I realized how much that puts a lot of people off and mellowed out.

There's a huge difference between making your character fit the setting and established lore of the game (which is a good thing and I 100% expect of any serious RPer) and using actual in-game missions and quests to RP around. In my experience it's always been best to keep a fair amount of distance between roleplay events and ongoing story events in the game itself. Reference stuff in passing, mention people or places off hand but always avoid putting yourself in the place of a "main character". "We just defeated the Shadow Lord! We're heroes!" If you walk around town claiming you just did in the big baddie or just saved Eorzea from certain doom at the hands of whatever villain we're up against, what happens when someone from another group happening to be running the same sort of gimmick wants to RP with you guys? It becomes awkward and convoluted. The best way to avoid stuff like that is to make your own stories from scratch. A seasoned roleplayer should never have trouble taking what he sees around him and turning it into an engaging plot without having to rely so heavily on the game script that it becomes the focal point.

I took a look at the sites for the two that were already advertised here, and the fact that they base their RP around missions and such makes me wary. I've always found LS' using too many of the games characters and events in their own RP to be nothing but trouble. I remember back when I used to play there was an LS RPing their way through the CoP storyline and would snub anyone that tried to RP with them who didn't accept -their- canon. They then had the nerve to complain about lack of RP on the server. It's always been my stance that while you can reference some major happenings in the game, you should do so sparingly and rely only on your own ideas for the majority of your RP, otherwise your group becomes cut off and inaccesible to everyone else. And just think about how stupid a community looks to prospective new RPers when 10 different RP LS' have 10 completely different stories wound so tightly around the ingame missions that you either a) Simply can't RP with them or b) Would need to alter your own character so drastically it wouldn't be worth it. Just my 2 cents.

None of my friends play anymore, so I was wondering if any of you were part of active linkshells that would be willing to take me in? RP is a plus, but not required, and you'd like need to put up with me asking a ton of dumb questions since it's been ages since I last played.