Ildur

Ceruleum isn't just found in the Empire. Northern Thanalan has a large supply (the largest in Eorzea, if I recall correctly) of Ceruleum that is exploited by Ul'dah. There was a post somewhere in this forum explaining what Ceruleum was and how it was used (I can't find it, sadly), but the short version basically a refined form of aether. Aether is what is used by spell casters (and non-spell casters, too) to shape magical spells. So indeed, Garlean technology is basically magic. Hence the term 'magitek'. It's very hard to determine what is realistic (realistic for Eorzea´s universe, I mean) and what is just the 'Rule of Cool' or a balance made for gameplay's sake. But if we consider that gameplay is informed by the story, it does appear that a Garlean 'bullet' is as damaging as an arrow. And if Musketeers are going to be the next class (as rumors say), then any bullet will be as damaging as an arrow. For this reason, I'd say that Garlean weaponry is just if not more powerful than gunpowder weaponry, which is just as powerful as non gunpowder weaponry. So...yeah, I'd say we leave it at 'Rule of Cool'.

Ala Mhigo had a bad relationship with the other city states. There are no specifics, but it is said that they tried to invade the others a few times. There was apparently one attempt to recover the city from the Garleans by the local resistance, but it failed miserably. Those that fled the city are scatered between the Black Shroud (in Quarrymill, I think) and a town to the south of Ul'dah, Little Ala Mhigo (which is really a big cave). There's a lot of information about Ala Mhigo's fall in this thread.. The spoilers you want are the ones about the Fists of Rhalgr and the Last King of Ala Mhigo. The others are interesting lore but aren't related to the city state.

I know there was a guild in World of Warcraft that dedicated itself to capturing criminals in Stormwind. They were plagued with characters that got captured and promptly escaped (because nobody wants their characters to be unavailable for long periods of time). It was quite popular, however, or so I hear. I'll leave the other specific details for other, more knowledgable people, but that was the main thing I want to focus on: player charcaters won't stay in prison. Just like comic book villains, you could say. There's also the problem that there's no way to enforce any kind of law mechanically so ,in a way, you would still have no consequence for them unless they choose to accept them. It's a problem of the player more than the character's. The Grand Companies don't act as a police for the different city states: they are the military branch. Each city has a 'police' of sorts: Ul'dah has the Brass Blades, Gridania has the Wood Wailers and Limsa Lominsa has the Yellow Jackets. Those groups dedicate to enforce the law and security inside the city's territory, while the Grand Companies dedicate theirselves to foreign threats (like the Garleans). So you could have characters being part of one of those groups (though I can assure you getting the proper uniform for the Brass Blades requires level 50), or you could have a Free Company to act as some sort of private security agency that is sometimes hired by the city states. Or plain old bounty hunters. Those are always fun. Not sure how well the idea would be received, though, since it's very dependant on the roleplaying community's acceptance. And not every roleplayer knows or visits the RPC regularly to give us their two cents.

I present you K'airos the Bootleg Blade! Not a Brass Blade, mind you, a Bootleg Blade. Here's a crappy comparison shot between her and a real Brass Blade NPC. As you can see, the hat is the wrong color. Sadly, that part is undyeable. Was it too hard to give us various dyeing channels, Squee, even though it´s obvious you have and use them? The other two harder differences to see: the scimitar is not the same nor is the shield. The scimitar can be acquired (I think), but it's quite expensive. The shield can also be acquired...but only for Thaumaturges and Black Mages. So yeah, a Bootleg Blade!

Remember that this is a fantasy world and an MMO: making guns realistic would make all other forms of combat obsolete on a large scale. Just like in the real world: pointing a gun and pressing the trigger takes much less training than any other weapon. It's also much more powerful and deadly. The only instance where Garleans firearms seem to do any kind of 'proper' damage is in the opening cinematic. And we all know what happens between cinematics and gameplay. So we have to accept that bows are just as powerful as guns for both matters of balance (it's a game) and of theme (it's a fantasy world). It doesn't make sense realistically, but that's how the game universe works. For those same reasons I'd avoid acknowledging weaponry that is not despicted in the game for the Garleans. It will create a lot of dissonance between theme, genre and the 'willing suspension of disbelief'.

As stated, there's nothing stopping us picking one point of the game's storyline or another to base our micro-canonical timelines on. It's a matter of perspective. For the sake of keeping this somewhat on-topic, I won't go at lenght about this matter. But I want to point out: I think you are missing the point. It's not about the game's storyline. It's about roleplay. We aren't talking about ignoring canon, but about picking a timeline that accomodates the greatest ammount of roleplayers. There are people who don't like spoilers because they ruin their enjoyement of the storyline. If I pick a post-storyline timeline, and these people roleplay with me unknowningly about my timeline, then there's a very big chance that I will effectively ruin their enjoyment of the storyline. Because, unless it's stated beforehand, chances are the big events of the storyline will be something your character knows and talks about. You can't actually give proof that the storyline has happened because the game's storyline is enterely dependant on each player's progress (from a mechanical point of view), of each player's selected timeline (from a roleplaying point of view) and because the game itself doesn't bother in enforcing that the storyline finished. Every region is locked in a status quo that won't change until the developers decide to do so. Your example about WoW is quite accurate about this, actually: the status quo only changed after a patch/expansion happened. What was the starting status quo of those patches or expansions? The starting point. Once a expansion launched, the story moved on. Picking the finishing point of the story-line is more practical than picking any intermediate point, but it isn't as practical as picking the initial point. You are implicitly forcing people into rushing to level 50 if they want to roleplay with you and enjoy a spoiler-free ride across the game's storyline. It is practical only for those who don't care about spoilers and those who reached level 50. Whereas the starting point is practical for everyone regardless of they levelling speed and resistance to spoilers. ------ Theodric's alternative is a good one: 'Fluid Time'! (Or as I call them, 'retro scenes'). You'll have to stablish OOCly beforehand at which point of the timeline every people you roleplay with is, and things might get confusing due to character development. Planning will be required, which might or might not be on everyone's alley. But it allows you to be on a post-storyline date while also allowing you roleplay with people who aren't there. So it's a good plan.

I have some reservations about using post main-storyline events as the basis for this. There are some logistic problems with it. For one, there are people who might not have reached that point yet. Then there are people who will have their roleplay in a completely incompatible chronology. I will wager that the great majority of the roleplayers will have their micro-canons locked in the status-quo stablished at the beggining of the storyline. Garleans have various outposts across Eorzea, they are preparing for war but haven't done anything more than skirmishes. And the Grand Companies are focusing on reconstruction. MMO roleplay is always placed in a limbo between some point before the start of the despicted in-game storyline and the start of the storyline itself. In part because not all players will finish the storyline at the same time but, more importantly, because post-storyline events are never reflected on the game world. Everything is in a sort of time stasis. Placing your own chronology anywhere after that stasis will be locking people out of your roleplay due to the clashing disparities between micro-canons: you will be way ahead of them chronologically speaking. This is why I have reseves about your proposed scenario, Theodric. I do think that it is an interesting one and that it would be great fun exploring it, mind. It's just that I think it has too much potential to lock people out of each other's roleplay.

You shouldn't feel too bad about the Garleans. They have a policy about exterminating the beast tribes, after all, so they are just as murderous as any of the city states. Though perhaps more so: some Eorzeans have partnerships with some of the beast tribes (Limsa has mamol'ja, goblins and qiqirns inside the city, for example). Ul'dah is the only city state that has forbidden dealing with the beast men at all. The Garleans don't deal with the beast tribes. They just kill them. At least officially.

I do not think 'cycle' is used anywhere in lore. It's just a logical conclusion about how the naming should work based on how everything is based around aetheric cycles. You can see here that the information was in-game at some point in 1.0. You can see that there's a section called "Years", when the sections corresponding to days and months are called "Suns" and "Moons" respectively. A member of my linkshell made a fancy guide about how Eorzea measures time. You can find it here. *shameless publicity*

Certain elements of the 'inner monologue' could have a visible or otherwise perceivable component. It depends on how the monologue is phrased and how each player decides to interpret it. There are other components, however, that cannot and should not be perceived by others. These components only exist for flavor or character stablishment or for humor, as some have pointed out. As a rule of thumb, I do not take inner monologues into account when roleplaying unless it has a direct action attached to it. For example, someone wondering if my character is mad and then frowning. My character can then react to the frowning and she can also interpret, based on the situation, why the frowning happened. If it matches or not what the monologue stablished is a completely different matter.

I have to wonder why the developers decided they needed 'new' words for the distance and weight measurements. I mean, look at them. They are basically the same word and fulfill the exact same purpose. Why change them at all? Immersion isn't a good answer: everything else Eorzeans say is translated into english (for practical OOC purposes). Except for those measurements. It -would- make sense if they weren't direct counterparts of real life measurements. But that is not the case: a yalm IS a yard. Why change its name if its the exact same thing? The same thing happens with anyroad/anyway and popotoes/potatoes. They are useless changes that reflect nothing about the world, unlike the time measurements. I just find it silly.

But WHY would you ever WANT to keep your COMPLETELY NORMAL AND NOT UNIQUE hair-do? Obviously, Lighting hair is very unique and will keep being unique even after everyone and their alts wear it! So unique! Sarcasm aside, I wouldn't put it beyond Squee to make the chestpiece change your hair and disallow headgear to be used with it. But we'll see!

I'm going to paraphrase something someone else in the forums said once: Remember that Player Characters are a subset of remarkable characters, who are a subset of all perceivable characters in the world, who are in turn a subset of all people living in Eorzea. So while it might be true that most of the old people in Eorzea aren't combat capable, it doesn't need to hold true to most of the Player Characters. Unless a player decides to purposedly play an unremarkable character (it happens), there's no lore reason to not have an old badass. In fact, there are plenty of lore reasons to do so: namely, aether. Except for those who have low aether naturally, everyone is able to use magic to some extent. That's why every class and job has a special and flashy effects, and that's the only way you can justify someone being able to punch Titan in the knees and cause damage. If everyone can use aether to enhance their capabilites beyond the norm, then it is very likely that the aged people of Eorzea would be able of many feats as long as they had the training during their youth or as long as they keep fit. For example, the leader of the Ala Mhigan refugees in Little Ala Mhigo is an old grizzled man. He wears an axe and he accompanies you in one particular quest to fight some enemies. He is not tired, winded nor wounded afterwards. What is true is that they probably will not be as effective as someone with the same ammount of experience who is also younger. But that's getting into technical disadvantages: the oldies can fight too, and the game supports that idea.

Communication is mighty important. Out-of-character chat is more important than in-character chat. Not only because you can't properly weight a player's intentions based only on their character reactions, but because you can't get to know the player behind the character. It might be more immersive to only have IC interactions, but you have a greater danger of misunderstanding each other.

Older people certainly can have conflicts, rivalries and character development. Just take a look at 'old' people of the real world. It all depends on how the player plays it.

There isn't. There's a mention about other continental masses and the mention that the Garleans invaded and fought the Primals of those lands. But nothing specific about culture, cities or races that you can find in them. So it's not a particularly good idea to create a character that comes from any of them, since there's nothing to work on and, if you made things up, you run a great risk of needing to retcon it at a later date (if the official lore ever decides to say anything that contradicts your backstory, basically).

We don't need an historical analogue. Eorzea is an amalgam of themes, times and cultures. You can't just pick a place and a time and draw conclusive paralels. The most accurate you could go, I believe, is saying that Eorzea's Japan when Christianity arrived there. You have some cultural analogies, but nothing else on , say, the way of health care. I mean, while the Dutch and Portuguese had gunpowder and probably very fancy ships, they didn't have self-powered robots. And Japan clearly did not have airships! Eorzea's has a medieval aesthetic. But nothing else. Oh, and to answer one of the questions on the OP: one of my character's is in his 60s.

There are no wolves that can be used as mounts or combat pets. The only creature that can be used as a combat companion is the chocobo. Other mounts include: Gobbues. Ahrimans. Unicorns. Reapers (Magitek armor). With that said, there are a few times where you fight attack dogs used by the Empire, so there's at least one kind of canine that is definitely tameable in-lore.

The chat woes could be somewhat lessened if ARR's chatbox didn't ALWAYS scroll all the way down whenever there's a new message. Having a massive ammount of players talking in the same location will always be a problem, though. It's one of the limitations of chat-based communication. How messy it will be depends on the nature of the event. 'Scenario' type events work better with large crowds: a small number of characters that interact with individuals of a large crowd, creating some sort of turn-based system. For example, imagine an auction: the host would present the item to be sold, then start getting the bids. Or an storytelling/theatre thing where the storyteller/actors are the ones who get most charbox space (so to speak) while the crowd limits itself to passing commetary and reactions. I do not think there's anything wrong with the player handwaving or making up reasons for having their character in the event. That is their choice, and no matter how much I think it doesn't makes sense for them to be there, they might have perfectly valid in-character reasons for it. Let's assume there's a character that hates Gridania and the Elementals, so he wouldn't normally go to, say, watch a play in the amphitheatre. But maybe he's going today anyway, pushed by a friend. Or maybe he has a crush for one of the actresses. Or maybe he was just struck with curiosity after reading a pamphlet. Maybe he has to meet a contact there for some shady business. Some of those reasons will be obvious for other players at the event, others won't be so. But the fact that they are not does not mean there is no reason for the character to be there. In fact, I'd say that having your character in an open event just for the reason of 'I, the player, want to be there' is a perfectly valid reason, too. Even if he hasn't OOCly come with an in-character reason, the other players will probably have no idea that he doesn't. And even if they do know he has no IC reason to be there, what is the problem? It's his choice and his fun. As long as he isn't trolling the event (which is an enterely different matter), let him be wherever he wants to be. On a personal note, I do try to avoid events with the ability to convene a large ammount of people at the same location at the same time. As you said, the chatbox gets messy, with lots of text being exchanged, making you very likely to miss people trying to talk with you or important details of the event. So basically I avoid them for technical reasons, not because of the event's quality (or lack thereof).

I hadn't unlocked dyes at the time of that screenshot, so I have no idea what color it is. Back in the betas, the color of quest reward armor was apparently random. Now they are set on stone, and I don't think I've seen that color on her 30 levels yet.

I think my characters don't have many weaknesses but, on the other side, they don't have many strengths either. Thiereia Elentre is an alcoholic who is a complete pushover in combat unless she's drunk. When drunk, she has a terrible tendency of being overly mean and jump into fights. When not drunk, she'll look for the fastest way of becoming so even if it is to the detriment of everyone, including herself. Ulanan Ulan has no martial ability whatsoever, and she has a strange tendency to yell at random times. K'airos Thalen is prone to being distracted and act with a general lack of seriousness until she runs away in shame. Ildur Vaernian is just and old man.

There's some positional lag in ARR, which causes the problem of being hit by AoEs even though you are out of their area. There are also some skills whose area is actually slightly wider than the marker, so you can't stay just out of the edges to avoid the damage. When combined with a fast charge, you get almost unavoidable attacks. When I tank, there are times where I run a whole screen worth of length to make sure I'm nowhere near the AoE when it goes off. My problem with tab-targetting combat systems is that they tend to devolve into a game of Cooldown-Babysitting. ARR did a good job of allowing me to look at the game instead of having to stare at the cooldowns until end-game. There are some fights there that require you to stare at the boss' charge meters (that is just on top of his health) and to watch the cooldowns to make sure you can stun/silence them. In those bosses, I stop looking at the game proper to stare at the bottom of my screen, where I had to move the boss' health bar so I could keep an eye on the hotbar too. In those bosses, I'm not playing ARR: I'm playing Hotbar: Watch for the Charge Attack Online.

Let's assume that the reason all this armors are undyeable is because they are iconic. Let's consider the following questions: Why can't we go against the icon? Does it harm the icon itself in any shape or form? Do White Mages stop being White Mages for not wearing white? Does a Paladin stop being a Paladin if he doesn't wear blue (or whatever color scheme they use)? Wouldn't it be like saying that the habit makes the monk? And, finally, if going against the icon does indeed harm the icon... is it a bad thing? Why? Personally, I think this whole 'they are icons and as such they should not be dyeable' seems like a personal aesthetic choice forced into everyone else. Having these items be dyeable doesn't affect your aesthetic choice at all (because, arguably, their original dye color would be the iconic one), but not having them does affect other people's aesthetic choice.

My problem with stopping interactions with 'MMO Hoppers' isn't strictly speaking the stop of interactions. That's, arguably, a sensible thing to do for the reasons that have been mentioned already. No, my problem with it is that some people seem to think there's a direct correlation and causation between the ammount of games played and MMO hopping. Or at least that was pretty much the interpretation I understood: that the time you spent on any game before moving on was meaningless as long as you have changed games at any point. I'm sorry you consider the word 'rude' as a personal attack, but I do consider judging people only on circumstantial evidence as an impolite thing to do.