Ildur

There's no in-game RP hub as of now, though I've seen a fair number of people in Costal del Sol (beaches are always popular). The best bet is to get into an RP linkshell or Free Company. But if what you want is 'on the field' or 'random' roleplay, just emote in-chacater during questing/travelling/gathering/whatever. You will have higher chances if you do so in 'pretty' locales or places where people will naturally gather (like taverns, quest hubs, FATEs...)

Based on how our characters raise their hands and place their fingers somewhere on the top side of the ear, I'd say they are earrings of some sort. I treat linkpearls as tiny radios. You can change their 'frequency', so to speak, and get to hear and talk in different channels with minimal fuzz as long as you are told how to do so (it probably involves some magic capabilities, but this is a high-magic world). To be a bit more specific and lore-worthy, I consider that linkpearls are attuned to each other, pretty much the same way a person can attune theirselves to the aetherytes. It's just a matter of tapping into the aether inside the pearl to change which one it gets to gear, as long as it has been attuned to the others. Having them on a purse can probably work, too, but it's more messy of a justification. Eorzea has airships and very complex contraptions. It stands to reason that the cities (except Gridania) would have at the very least basic plumbing. It depends on the character. The existence of the aetherytes is a bit confusing: they are obviously pretty damn important, with nations placing them on critical locations. However, it's not clear what the payment needed to teleport from one to the other really means. (Is it just a gameplay gilsink? A representation of reagents needed?) It's also obvious that not every avereage Joe use them, as there's still carts, chocobo routes, airships and ferries that transport people around. This tells me two things: First, there's some sort of economic or knowledge 'gate' that avoids common people from using them on a regular basis. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the payment is a representation of a tax the character pays when arriving at the location. The aetherytes probably have a limited (if large) pool of aether from which their teleportation capabilities are extracted from, and this tax would be used to mantain the aetheryte working. Second, it tells me that any common Joe can use the aetherytes, at least with training. If common troops require years of magical expertise to be able to use them, then the city-states would have no reason at all to keep the aetherytes around (since it's implied they are used by adventurers and troops to move around quickly). It's implied in the main storyline that the Garleans have electricity (and even radio signals), though it's tied to the Thunder aspect of aether. So, in Eorzea, electricity is an element and, as such, it can be used for all kinds of things and contraptions. With that said, Eorzea, contrary to the Empire, is a bit low on the technology end, so it's unlikely you'll see electricity/thunder powered contraptions... On the other hand, mages can probably make them and just zap them with lighting everytime they want to use them.

Kylin's advice is quite sound and good. I'll endorse it with this sticker of a shinny and long beard, and give him a crumpet! Except for the "MMO Hopping" section, which I don't personally think makes any degree of sense. To blame 'big names' dissapearing on the influx of 'new people' into the community is a bit silly. The simpler answers are the most probably correct: If I had to blame their dissapearance on anything, I'd blame the game. Levelling, dungeoning and RPing in-game is probably what they wanted to do in the first place, so they might be doing that. Or perhaps they played and decided that ARR's design wasn't for them. The bulk of that section seems to imply there's a correlation between having played a lot of games and being a storyline abandoner. This might happen in some cases, but labelling a whole section of the playerbase (those who have played more than X MMOs before, where X is whatever you consider 'a lot') because they might abandon the game is excessive. You don't find out if a person has investment in the game by looking at a list of games they have played: you find out by interacting with them. Talking with them. Playing with them. Learning what they think of the game and the community. By getting to know them, basically. You can certainly decide arbitrarily to not include someone in your storylines. You have a right to decide who you spend time with, and nobody can force you to spend time with them if you don't want to. But writting someone off only because of their gaming habits is very rude. It's better to write them off because they are conscious and persistent Mary Sues, godmodders or outright nasty people of any other variety.

I did not play 1.0, but I did hear the problem with it was that it was big and repetitive. If you are going to have a big world, you have to pack it full with locations, sights, odditites, NPCs, encounters...and to not place invisible walls everywhere. Zones in ARR do feel kind of small and full. This was a design choice made to counteract the point above: a large game world feels empty if you don't invest enough time to place enough unique features in it. Just take a look at Skyrim for how a big world full of things to explore is done right. But even then, you have the problem that, no matter how big the devs make the world, it will still be smaller than it should be in a realistic sense. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of unexplained things: like who can there be twenty NPCs living in a town when there's only three houses with two beds each; goods that exist and are items in-game but that have no production facilities in the game's despicted regions; farmlands that are too small to produce food for the towns and cities, etcetera.

Not all Miqo'te are despicted that way, though. There's a number of Miqo'te soliders in the Maelstorm who hand out quests. The commander of that Company is in fact a female Miqo'te. There's also the U tribe in the Sagolii Desert, where most females are huntresses. In the Black Shroud, you have the Coeurlclaw Poachers, who are mostly females too. Though in those two last cases we have the Unfortunate Implication of them being patriarchal societies: in the U tribe, the only position of power seems to be the Nunh (which kind of goes a bit against lore, ironically) and the other two males act as 'wise men' and sub-leaders. In the case of the Poachers, you get a FATE where a male names himself "King" and you have to slay him. Which, again, is a bit odd because the lore we had stablished Moon Keepers as being matriarchal. We could argue that in those case there's the justification that tribal Miqo'te society is probably much less advanced and modern that those of the city-states, so I guess nobody would be surprised. The problem with Miqo'te concubines seems to be mostly a problem in the Ul'dahn regions and Costa del Sol, where the mentioned FATE takes place. Though if you look around the town and in far to the north, you'll see there are some Roegadyn females around, too. Of course, they are outnumbered by Hyur and Miqo'te females. All things considered, I'd say it's a stupid case of fanservice.

In the case of furniture made with body parts of the Primals, I'd say that's impossible physically. As far as I recall, the Primals vanish after they die, so there would be no body left to butcher. However, you can still have that furniture ICly. The justification for their existence is that they aren't made with a piece of the Primal. Maybe there's a carpenter, sculptor or what have you out there with a weird sense of aesthetics that uses the Primals as his inspiration. On the matter of slaying of Primals IC, I'd say that's possible but probably not a very good idea. Later on in the storyline, you meet a group of adventurers who slayed Titan. They are quite famous in-universe, so slaying a Primal is no small feat. What's more, in the main storyline you, the player, are considered quite an extraordinary fellow for having defeated Ifrit. There's also the matter of tempering Zarek mentioned (which, by the way, to be tempered the Primal has to directly try to do so: it's not enough to be in their pressence). Only users of the Echo or those tempered by another Primal are immune to it. Unless it's a a cover operation (meaning maybe no one but your group knows about it), I would suggest against Primal slaying in-character. Even if the lore supports the idea of slaying the Primals multiple times, there's the implication that you should become pretty damn famous for that.

As a rule of thumb, all the spaces depicted in the game world should be considered much larger than they are despicted in game. Otherwise, we would have things like Ul'dah having exactly one tavern and exactly one merchant street even though it's a commercial city. Or outer 'towns' and 'villages' that are only two or three houses. The reason the game is despicted smaller than it is is for gameplay and design reasons: making a world based on reality's scales would not only take a long time to fill up (meaning you would have long spaces of uninteresting locales), but would also mean the players have to spend more time travelling than actually playing. So, yes, it's safe to assume that the Sagolii desert is much bigger than shown.

I have not noticed any direct or indirect mention of racial ages during questing yet, and my highest level character has reached level 49 already.

Ony of my characters posing as an Immortal Flame with lowbie gear. Go ahead and try to spot all the differences! The real plan was for her to be part of the Brass Blades ICly, but the set similar to theirs is level 50. So instead, I'm, she'll be wearing this until I can get it: ...which is less Brass Blade and more travelling swashbuckler, but oh well!

I have found that the most reliable way to avoid AoE's of any kind is to strafe to a side in a straight line as soon as the AoE shape appears. Stunning is possible in most cases, but sometimes it is resisted (or the boss is plainly immune, like Titan), so I don't rely on stuns at all. Just strafing.

There's no realistic reason for not picking a common name. The only reason is to claim originality. But that only works if how uncommon it is has any effect on how much you like the name. With that said, Aedan Mathis sounds good to me.

That is true. You can infer what is possible in the game-universe by looking at their spells and skills. That is quite fine and I actually do it a lot. But I ask: what lore do character levels entail? There are some mechanics that are only constructs with the intention of creating gameplay, not lore. I wouldn't try to infer the in-character power of someone by looking at their level. It doesn't tell me anything, character-wise. It only tells me the players has time to play. Communication and common sense is what solves most of problems with 'power levels': don't go around making shows of incredible powers in the street to any random passerby. Save that for when you are acquitained and are relatively sure they won't mind you casting a meteor on their head. Or even better: use the common sense and consider why you gave your character the ability to summon meteors out of nowhere.

Except you are not measuring the character: you are measuring the player's time. That's not a good reason to have your character be more powerful or as powerful as anyone else's. It's just an arbitrary gate placed upon the player. Consider: what if I can't play more than a few hours per week? What if I dedicate them mostly to roleplay, so my in-game level is pretty low? Or what if I have multiple characters? What if I spend most of my time leveling my warrior, but prefer roleplay with my lalafell eft-hunter? Should I be locked out of playing and exploring certain character concepts because, for whatever reason, I cannot dedicate enough time to gameplay? Should I make them all a wimp until I can get enough time to get to the 'proper' level? Why would I waste time on that if, for example I don't like the class from a gameplay point of view ? Is my character's worth proportional somehow to the ammount of time I've spent running dungeons with him? If you take into account the character level to measure their power, skill or knowledge, all you are doing is placing an arbitrary gate based on playing time. Not character development time, nor anything else time. Playing time that is directly proportional to the time the player has. You are not measuring the character's power: only the player's commitment with gameplay. At the end, I think our disagreement comes from what our purpose is when we roleplay. For me, it is about cooperative storytelling. There's no reason why your character's in-game level should be proportional in some way to his in-story skills. If it's about the story, then you can have a character that is powerful during roleplay but level 6 in gameplay. Is it hard to balance? No. No it is not. You make a character that is sensible. You make sure to not use outrageous powers with people who you do not know or that you know to not be okay with those. You use common sense. You communicate. You do all this so that everyone can take a worthy part of a story worth telling. I prefer dealing with OOC arguments than to deal with an artificial and arbitrary barrier that measures the player's time. Certainly using over-the-top spells or skills during random roleplay is a bit distasteful, but I don't agree that the time and place for those high-powered moments are away from roleplay situations. There's plenty of ways in which calling forth a meteor to whack someone in the head could come into play during roleplay. For example, maybe I'm breaking into his underground inner sanctum and, because the party doesn't have time to get the keys to the door, decide that making a hole in the roof with a meteor is the best way. Once again, and what I always say: common sense. Don't cast a meteor on someone's head because they looked at you funny in the tavern. Don't cast an highly contagious and deadly version of Virus on that one Roegadyn for calling you a milk-drinker. Basically, you don't do anything outrageously powerful when people (players) you don't know are involved, because you don't know what their threshold for power is. Once you know those people, or maybe once you join a Free Company or a linkshell, you might find that they are okay. Or not. But for that you have to communicate. And that is, funnily enough, the second thing I always say. Things that cannot be easily countered (either because of their scale or because of their nature) should require consent. Unless you are organizing an event for your guild/roleplay group: then you probabably have the way free to do all kinds of crazy stuff in the name of fun.

I do not think that it is wise to make your character power or skill directly related to the game mechanics. While it is true that it provides a certain common be for everyone to measure their power, it does not always work on the consistency department. Let us assume that my characteer is a proficient swordman, veteran of many battles and relatively old. But, for whatever reason, I do not level that character up beyond level 15. Then, due to reasons, he gets in a fight with someone else who happens to be level 50. How do I explain in a consistent manner with my backstory that he was little more than a piece of cake to defeat? Or how does the young level 50 justify that he raised from no skill at all (level 1) to being the best of the best (level 50) in such a short time? The only way to do so is to fall into Mary Sue-ism. Additionaly, when magic is involved, using only spells that are allowed mechanically will result in cornering yourself and closing the door to interesting plot developments. Not to mention modt if not all of the magic skills are combat oriented as far as gameplay is concerned. The best way to use magic spells and keep them lore-friendly is to see what is possible within lore. If the storyline shows that some odd mage can summon a demon from the void, then summoning demons from the void is stablished as possible in the universe. This does not mean it should be easy; only that it can be done. Another thing you can do is take the mechanic skills and extrapolate them. If your thaumaturge can cast a fireball, he probably can cast a small flame to light the candles of his library. If your arcanist can use mathematics to cause biological damage to his enemies, then maybe he can give someone a cold with it. Or you could go bigger: if the thaumaturge can cast a fireballs, maybe he could cause a massive explosion, strong enough to level a whole building. Or to freeze it. The problem with moving spells up in scale is that you have to come up with disadvantages. Maybe to level a whole building in one cast he has to prepare the spell with a ritual. Get reagents that are not easily obtainable. And then of course you have what other charactes might do to stop your thaumaturge. Maybe a conjurerr could prepare a ritual to cast a Turned Up To Eleven Protect spell to counter it, quiring his own long preparation. You cannot do any of that if you stick to game mechanics as the one and only source of what is possible. This leaves us with a problem: how do we measure character power, level or skill? How do we compare it to other characters for the purposes of roleplaying a fight? The only solution is for the players to be on the same page, for them to have the same goal (storytelling), to know about each other's characters (hopefully by having roleplayed together before)... But more importantly to communicate and to use common sense. I have found that using that last thing is ussually enough to warrant friendly interactions wiht everyone. Though there is always the problem of people who do not follow it. But then you try to communicate and come up with a resolution that will satisfy everyone.

As Asyria said, the Armoury System is just a tool to change sets of armor quickly. It's not a costume system at all. Squee said they would eventually implement one of those. The only way to get other clothes is to do quests or buy them from vendors. Treasure chests in dungeons have a chance to give you a unique looking armor set, but it comes with a fixed color.

I too have the 'tradition' of reaching the level cap before starting to roleplay in any significant ammount. Though I tend to jump on randon on-the-field roleplay every now and then. If I see it. I think the main reason there's not much roleplaying going around is, besides that the non-roleplayers probably outnumber us greatly, that all outfits are locked behind a level. If you want your character to be a business man that dresses well, first you have to level up to at least 15-25 (depending on if you are a mage or not) before seeing any nice, 'high' class outfits. Otherwise, you are stuck wearing the potato sacks, pirate shirt or full suit of bronze armor which are all fine and all, but not all characters would wear them ICly. This would be somewhat alleviated if we had an outfit tab.

The tribe is ruled by a Council of Elders which, I assume, are the oldest members of the tribe. This also answers question two. The official lore implies that nunh almost never take on positions of leadership. I don't think we have decided to move away from that, so nunh have no role in running the tribe. Their role in the tribe is to be chosen by the females for mating. No idea if we have assigned a shaman/s. A Non-Player-Character, maybe? Remember that the timeline and the family tree only involve characters made by players (as they are the only ones relevant for other players, really), so there's probably a bunch of other members of the tribe around. They are just not listed.

The solution to that is to not have an actual piece of the main storyline as part of your micro-canon. The game might force a certain line of events when you play through content, but there are ways in which you can handwave, reinterpret or ultimately completely change it for roleplaying purposes. For example, let's consider the Sastasha dungeon. You can easily ignore the in-game information and simply have an IC run of it as if it was just one of many pirate hideouts. If you run the dungeon IC and also using the storyline proposed by the game then you are effectively, as you say, preventing other people from doing that content as far as your micro-canon is concerned. If you transform the content into a 'generic' version, however, you don't. You can in fact run Sastasha in-character as many times as you want because, as far as your micro-canon is concerned, you are raiding pirate hideouts that are unrelated to the game's storyline. If you don't give them authority, then we cannot call them leaders at all. If you give them authority, they are not simple guides anymore since they will have the power, implicit or explicit, direct or indirect, to decide on matters of what is 'canonicaly' correct for the community or for a subset of players. For example, someone who 'canonicaly' (as decided by the RPC) is the highest officer of the Immoral Flames below Rhaubaun: he has power over everyone inferior in ranks to him. The only way for characters to ignore his orders in-character is to imply that someone who is 'higher' than him ordered him otherwise. Except the only one higher than him is an NPC who cannot be spoken to without trampling on everyone else's toes. This positions of power only work well in guilds/free companies/linkshells, because people implicitly place theirselves under the leadership by joining. It can also work in community driven events when the position of leadership is temporal, a consequence of the event and when obedience is optional. None of that is true if you appoint players or characters as the higher-ups of canonical organizations.

I tanked for a PuG in the Deepcroft where the arcanist kept his topaz carbuncle out the whole time. I asked him why he was using it, and his answer was twofold: "He deals the same damage as the other" and "It spreads aggro across enemies." So, based on this extremely scientific statistical data of exactly one person, I induct that people think that Topy makes Emy redundant. The second argument has some merit in that it can be used as a form of crowd control if Topy is micromanaged. This could come handy in later dungeons; I've heard the difficulty ramps a lot suddenly.

There's a big boss in the East Shroud that is basically a really, really big micochu with a bunch of really sturdy fungi as bodyguards. If you manage to have a gold medal on it, you get something like 10k experience points at level 26. It might be higher at lower levels. I stayed in the East Shroud for about one/two hours doing the quest lines there and only saw him once. Maybe there's another boss in the higher level section of the area, but I haven't reached that far yet. But I have the feeling that the 'he spawns every 20-30 minutes' is a confusion: FATEs involving this bosses seem to have a 30 minute timer instead of the normal 15.

Remember that the power a Primal has is directly proportional with how many aether they have 'eaten' (how many crystals were used in their summoning, basically). Also, different Primals have different powers: Bahamut ripped the world apart because he's the most powerful one, probably related to being the Primal of dragons. The other Primals have their own gimmicks (like Ramuh being extremely territorial), but their raw power is different from each other.

I was unaware of the information located in K'raqi's wiki page. If it's accurate and everyone agreed to it (I wasn't present for the discussions that took place over Skype), it should be rephrased for the tribe's main wiki page since the escape from the desert and the obliteration of the rest of the tribe is a pretty significant event. Of course, maybe K'raqi's is implying that only some escaped with him while others escaped by other means?

If you read the wiki page, you'll see: If you wonder where that is exactly in-game, that's in Eastern Thanalan, somewhere around where Camp Drybone is. There's a FATE that mentions some creatures coming or living there (I forgot the exact wording).

The greatest problem of using alts is that you have to repeat the storyline (and the unavoidable click-fest cutscenes) with each one in order to unlock the features like the retainer (bank) and the chocobos. If you have only one character, you only unlock those once and you are done: you can switch from your level 49 Archer to your level 1 Gladiator and not only access your retainer but also mount your chocobo. Not to mention you can hold on some loot with your higher level class to outfit your lower level ones. The second problem is that all classes benefit from cross-class skills, so chances are your alts will end up with three classes anyway (specially true if you want them to reach a Job, as those only can grab skills from other two specific classes, as far as I understand). The greatest problem of using one single main is that you'll have to rely on leves, FATEs and dungeon runs (and to some minor extent, the hunting log) to level up, as you won't have as many quests available. However, because you get a bonus to experience depending on how much of a difference there is in levels between your current class and your highest class, you will level up faster. Its second problem is that you are stuck with the same guy/gal all the time. But that might not be a problem at all; it's very subjective. For all these reasons, I'd say that logistically ARR is not alt-friendly.

I have to agree with the "A Hero Did It" approach, for the most part. I'm actually of the school of thought (and if it isn't a school, it is now!) that the main storyline exists in its own vacuum. The game universe is frozen on stasis until the developers release a new expansion. The problem comes from knowing where, chronologically speaking, the roleplayers stand in the current frozen storyline. From what I've seen in other games, it seems like the common thing to do is to infer from the storyline the state of events of each area and merge them together in some sort of massive concurrent story.