Naunet

K'deiki shifted on the woven mat she sat upon until she was fully facing K'ailia, fingers folded together, hands resting in her lap. "K'luha's influence still yet touches you, I see," she observed and then fell quiet, closing her eyes and taking a moment to breathe. There was a rattling in her chest that hadn't been there a year ago. Enough time passed that one might think she had fallen asleep. "I remember being young and unhappy with the decisions of the elders," she finally spoke, voice thin and crackly like old paper. Thin lips smiled. "Yes, if you can believe something, believe that that has not changed across our generations. And yet..." Another pause for a breath. "We have always trusted the elders in their decisions, trusted them with the health and security of the tribe, and I have felt the weight of that burden ever since my own returned to the aether." K'deiki reached out with one hand, gesturing for K'ailia to come closer, seeking a more personal connection. "It has always been our responsibility, and ours alone." It was difficult to see in the shadows of the tent, lit only by a small oil lamp, but her aged eyes could make out the vague, wavering outline of her great-granddaughter. She breathed as deep as her old lungs would allow and spoke looking up at the shadow of that young face, "But this is a matter of our home, and I would not take that decision away from those to whom it matters most. Let the tribe decide, not just us old decrepits with our wandering minds yearning for nostalgia." She chuckled at that, coughed, and then smiled.

Most MMOs can't seem to get male humans right. So sad. WildStar has managed, male midlanders and miqo'te look fine, and male castanics in TERA are amazeballs, but for some reason men tend to end up just looking... like awkward steroid machines more often than not. Biceps as big as their head and no neck to speak of.

[edit] Why did the quote I was trying to quote disappear. Well, it was for: Heh, I will readily admit I'm extremely shallow when it comes to MMOs and creating a character. Looks are everything. It's why I rolled almost exclusively Forsaken in WoW. Why I adore Kelari in Rift. Or, yes, Miqo'te in ARR. It's why I made pretty much every single cosmetic choice when creating characters in every MMO I've played. I start out with "What looks cool?" and go from there. So I get things like this or this or this (sorry, too lazy to find individual pictures of my zombies, so you get some mash-ups I made for another thread elsewhere haha). And those are just my primary RP characters. A lot of my alts I make just because I think to myself, "I want a new character. Let's make something awesome!" So I end up with characters like this or this or this sexy thing. Sometimes they end up developing personalities or even grow into full characters! But for me, it always starts with the looks.

And like "must needs", I dearly wish it didn't exist. I don't know why it grates on me so, but it really does. >_<

Only the higher ranking Garlean soliders seem to come equipped with those personal energy guns - at least that's what I've noticed. Every other use of that tech seems tied to their ships or other mounted systems. It's possible they either don't have a means to mass produce these smaller energy guns, or are deliberately withholding them from lower ranking soldiers (perhaps as for self-protection - maybe they don't trust those they've conquered enough? I dunno).

The grounds had been oddly silent today to K'deiki's ears - such as they were in her age. There had been the usual bustle of huntresses in and out in the morning and early afternoon, and the steady chattering of tias and others taking care of other chores and preparations, but there had been no laughter of children, no shrieks as the ran pell-mell through the cluster of tents, tearing up sand and bowling over any unsuspecting brother or sister who happened to be in their path, and no youthful cheers at the return of the huntresses. The silence had weighed on K'deiki's heart, and so the calm, youthful voice that called into her tent filled her with warmth down to every aching joint. She turned rheumy eyes towards the door and crinkled her face into a smile. "Come in, dear. Tell me what you and your sisters have been up to today."

Think of games like SWTOR, in which EA/Bioware hired over 200 voice actors for 200,000 lines of dialogue. The amount spent on that was obscene, but did it actually give any lasting power to the MMO? Nope. Voice acting is like the little sprinkles on top of the detailing on top of the icing on the cake. In terms of what it lends to a game in the long term, it really doesn't matter.

Honestly? For this reason alone I am 100% fine with the voice acting. I don't give a rat's patootie how many fancy stars a video game hired to voice their characters' lines, because that kind of expenditure is a symptom of a serious problem plaguing the game industry: treating video games, a niche market, as though they were Hollywood blockbusters. Spending millions upon millions upon millions on voice acting (or super fancy CGI, or whatever) is one of the reasons a game can sell over a million copies and still be considered a "failure". It is the cancer of the industry. Now if only Squee had taken the money they saved on voice acting and spent it on developing actually interesting game mechanics.

Antimony might be described as a deer. Quiet, thoughtful, preferring to be left alone to do her thing, and easily stressed/skittish. At the same time, she's as stubborn as a ram when it comes to certain things, so... some kind of deer-ram hybrid?

Not certain what diluted story would mean in this context, but I'll just say - not necessarily! Also, there are RP linkshells out there (including my own), and since you can be in multiple linkshells, they are a very easy way to ICly network.

Maloriak and Putricide always made me giggle with glee. I love the VAs in Blizzard works.

The RP tag doesn't mean those folks won't come there. A lot of PvE and PvPers go to RP-tagged servers not to RP but because they like the atmosphere. The presence of an RP tag and the diversity of a server are not correlated. What an RP tag does do is give us recourse when being griefed and serve as a beacon for anyone picking up the game and interested in RP (or the atmosphere of an RP server). Ultimately though, this is a moot argument. Squee has clearly made their decision. Though I strongly disagree with it, it is what it is. And my this thread has gone off topic.

And in both situations, I would say: We should not feel as though we have to hide.

I know modern MMOs that do just this, though the GMs aren't specifically assigned to look after roleplayers; it's just one of their duties to handle name reports and incidents of griefing. To say they don't is rather disingenuous. I really don't understand the negative attitude towards RP-labeled servers that so many in this particular community have. I've never seen that elsewhere, and in the MMOs I played that didn't have an officially designated RP server, there was much complaint of wanting one. It's not a bad thing; it is a useful tool to solidify a community.

Anything pre-plot-cap has already happened. I'll disclose now that I haven't yet reached the end of the storyline (just turned 50 last night and worked my way up to Castrum Meridianum), and what I do know I don't want to give away to anyone who may be reading this and not wishing spoilers, so I'm still talking in some vagueries, but everything prior to the endgame in ARR can be said to have already happened. It doesn't matter how spaced apart things are 1-50. At least, that's how I treat it, and how the communities I've been involved with in the past would treat it.

I've always treated story lead-up during a patch as the "current" situation, but whatever "end boss" there is in the patch, he or she or it doesn't actually die or resolve something or whatever until the next patch hits. Ragnaros wasn't beaten back until the next tier released. The Lich King wasn't defeated and summarily usurped until the day the Cataclysm patch hit. Each of the dragons in Rift were not officially dead until the next patch. Shandra Manaya did not truly die until the Alliance patch launched. But all the events and dungeons and various plotsy whatnots leading up to those moments are either in some vague "process" of happening or have already happened (depending on the thing). It's what the RP communities I've been involved with in the past seem to have settled upon, and I think it's a pretty good rule as far as RP goes.

One character of mine, Sah'ot Kith, was a Garlean spy embedded in one of the many poacher groups within the Shroud. There was an incident, things went wrong, and certain interests stepped in just in time to save her cover from being blown. She's currently serving as the Commerce Regulation Agency's primary "eyes and ears" in the Shroud and is very much a Garlean loyalist. It's entirely possible your character would have regular but secret contact with her - or the other "top" members of the CRA (Illira Carceri, Ildur Vaernian, and D'hein Tia) - to get updates from the field, intel, plan and plot, and maybe even just commiserate every so often. I also have another character, Naunet Brandt, who was a native Ala Mhigan involved in the insurrection that toppled the ruler of the city-state and put the Empire in his place. She is currently on the run after deserting her legion following an incident that left her feeling ashamed and unfit to serve. Obviously the Empire doesn't take kindly to deserters, so she is doing her best to blend in with Eorzeans. However, she still maintains loyalty to Garlemond and though she is in hiding, she is ever looking for a way to get "back" with the Empire that wouldn't leave her shot dead. So yea, definitely interested in making connections ICly!

This is a little off-topic, but jeezus what the frak is up with names for anime. So many just sound like a bunch of random words mushed together haha.

Nope. I expect everyone to RP in dolphin trinary and will shun those who fail to live up to my reasonable but exacting standards.

I just wanted to point out that this is exactly what I was saying. >_>; Not sure why Salty seemed to think otherwise.

As a former TERA player, I get very strange images in my head every time I see this word in-game.

I don't really see anything wrong with selling runs as long as everything is on the up-and-up (clear rules laid down, everyone is treated respectfully, etc). It's just something to do to raise money for a guild, and it can help get people access to things who might otherwise never get it. Selling achievement, mount, or boss clears was a common thing in my time in WoW, and I never batted an eye. Things become not-okay when someone decides to sabotage other groups to stir up demand for their for-sale runs.

I dunno... Cat ears tend to be very triangular and upward pointing. Miqo'te ears are far more elongated, angle almost straight out from the skull. They actually remind me more of fennec fox ears. Not a perfect match, but closer than actual cat ears for sure.

I'll just say that this makes me extremely sad. I look forward to RPing with everyone, but... Well, this post right here makes me feel extremely unwelcome to RP with you. Incidentally, I'm the kind of person and I have experienced the kind of people quite often who do listen to other people's conversations out in the world, even if just idly, and who do strike up interactions on a regular basis. But even ignoring that... It's rather depressing that you would voluntarily cut yourself off from so much potential roleplay - and so many potential roleplayers.

*squeals*