Ildur

Like Theodric said, a lot of people is locked out of the game thanks to the login errors and, those who ARE inside will be busy levelling up. Once the server issues are settled and people reach their desired levels, they'll start roleplaying more often. With that said, the best way to catch some on-the-field or random roleplay is to emote in-character. That will be just enough to indicate to others that you are now on 'roleplaying mode' and that they can join in. You have to be patient, though, since some people's characters might not be ICly in the area you are at and, for consistency reason, opt not to join in. Not to mention that some will take some time while they decide how they want to approach you. Because of these reasons, you must not just drop one single lonely emote but two or three before moving on. To increase your chances of success, you can emote around people who have lore-friendly names. You can also try taverns and inns. Tons of quest send players to those locations, so chances are -someone- will be a roleplayer. The problem is knowing if they are willing to interrupt their levelling for the roleplay.

Character death has to be controlled by the player of that character and him alone. This is also true of anything that would deprive the player from playing that character (like capture) and for anything that would change the character severely (like mutilation of body parts). You should state OOCly during the scene that you are okay with those things happening to your character.

There's no harm in not following naming conventions. However, note that if your character will not have a conventional name, you must be ready to justify why. You don't need it to be complex, convoluted or even to be interesting as long as it makes sense. It can be something as simple as that your lalafell's parents naming their son/daughter in honor of some friend who was not a lala himself; or something more complex like coming from a family of wannabe aristocrats that has shunned the race's traditions to differentiate theirselves from the rest.

Actually, people have made a wiki page for the Hipparion tribe right here. It's the result of discussion over chat and this same thread (I wasn't present for the chat). It includes a fancy genealogic tree including most (or all, maybe) player characters. I'm not sure if there has been any additions since it was last updated. Numbers might be a bit misleading at first glance because not every character in the tree has a player behind. I suggest you give it a read so you get to familiarize with that people have stablished up until now.

Patience. People have other things to do besides forum dwelling, you know. Specially now that the game's actually out. Not to mention they might be thinking before answering. I don't particularly see the problem of you being a nunh, per se, but people might want to see how many nunh are actually around at present (I think there's two already) and decide if the tribe is large enough to accomodate more than that. Of course, I guess you could always drop a lot of off-screen non player characters and justify it that way.

While I'm not very fond of the 'could be worse' argument, I do have to agree that MMO infrastructure is one of those humongous monsters hidden behind courtains, leaving players unaware of how complex the issue is. And sometimes, matters don't get fixed just by throwing at them more technology. There's also logistics. What I think happened here is that Squee either couldn't be arsed to upgrade the servers to meet demand, or that EU/NA didn't get enough money to do so at this point in time and tried to 'wing it' with what they had.

I'll be focusing first on getting my characters to the levels I want them at (essentially, it's just a search for armor sets that suit them) before spending time trying to 'fish' roleplay on the field. I will most likely jump at some of it if I find it before my OOC goals are achieved, though. Because time I spend having fun is time well spent!

That's pretty much it. There's also a statement that the garleans learnt about the primals there, when the local beast tribes tried (or succeeded, maybe?) to summon them. There's nothing else. I'd suggest you design your backstory to be inside Eorzea proper instead. There's more lore of the city-states and being from another continent will certainly come out during interaction from other players. They will ask about it and you will either have to make up information or you'll have to use the "I'm from a village/town that was secluded from the rest of the continent; the first is bad because official lore might come to light and clash with what you said, the second is bad because it puts in question why you chose to be from that continent if you weren't going to be really a part of it.

I'd argue that this question should be applied to anything in a character: yes, you can give your character exotic or not-in-game weapons, but should you? It's all a matter of what it gives the character from a storytelling perspective. For example, I do see the storytelling value of a pugilist that fights completely unarmed: it's an statement of his martial expertise, or maybe he dislikes to kill. However, a marauder that uses a broadsword would need a different justification. With that said, I do agree that stopping roleplay because of this is quite silly. Weapon choice is essentially flavor and, as long as it stays like flavor, I don't think complains or interruptions would be justified. On the other hand, giving your character something that cannot be despicted in game without a good reason is sillier.

A character backstory exists to give the player a base from where to start building him up. It's perfectly reasonable to give them a long backstory. Because it's all in the character's past, it makes sense for it to be set in stone. Additionally, a rich backstory will provides more RP hooks to other fellow players.

"It's cool!" is a perfectly valid reason for physical aesthetic choices, mostly because they don't ussually give anything to your character but flavor. Things like scars, tattoos, jewelry, skin marks, etcetera. This could apply to weapons: maybe your blade has an odd shape or something. However, every time you pick a 'trait' or 'asset' that is not superted by the game (like, say, having your character's head completely bandaged, or having a flintock) you have to be constantly reminding people about it, or at the very least every time someone joins the scene. On the specific subject of weapons, you have to consider what the weapon brings on the table both from a characterization/storyline point, as people have mentioned before me. But you also have to consider what, if any, power it will give the wielder, how powerful that is and then balance your character accordingly: if the weapon is too powerful or exotic, then you'll have to give your character some very glaring weaknesses to compensate. And, no, being 'an introverted and agressive loner' is not a weakness.

Seeing how some armors seem to be re-used after a few levels, I wouldn't be surprised if we got access to another acolyte set that is dyeable or that comes in a different color. I remember this quest in Ul'dah, where my pugilist got a fabolous pink jacket. Later on, however, I got the same model as a reward but this time it could be dyed.

As a rule of thumb, racial descriptions in any game are just guidelines for them, a way for the player to draw a mental picture beyond the physical appareance. You can deviate from it in any way you want, but always keep in mind you will need to have justifications for doing so, even if it's something as simple as "he grew up in the city-states" or "he was terrible at physical activities, prefering books and magic instead."

I remember this question was asked once before, and there was a lore tidbit where it was stated that lalafellin do have long lifespan. Something about an NPC being around 130 years old and still being pretty jovial. Not to mention they stop aging after the age of 20. I should probably dig around to see if I can find it.

By the wording of that sentence, I will say it depends. Probably people keep the name of their parents until they do something that makes other people call them on a specific way because of it ("Hrotgar Anklebreaker is my name! Because I broke lots of garlean ankles during my youth") or they start calling theirselves that way until it sticks.

Nobody has mentioned the lip sync when chatting? I'm gonna mention it: Lip sync when chatting!

From the Miqo'te Naming Convetion thread in the FF:XIV lore forum: EDIT: Ninja'ed by S'demyx.

Mixing lore is frowned upon. Blending different universes is a good way to get conflicting data and a good way to generally mess up things that work perfectly fine on their own. FF has a lot of things based on real world mythologies, like a lot of the Primals, but that's all there is to it: it's just something they used as a starting point to build their own lore.

Oh, yes. My on-topic opinion. Ahem... I think the combat systems will have no effect at all on roleplayers. This is because most roleplay doesn't happen in combat like situation and, even when it does, the roleplayer will only do so if they actually like the combat or if they can come with an alternative (text based combat with /rolls, for example). There is one advantage of tab-targetting systems over action-like ones, however: banter! You can't banter in combat if you have to constantly reposition yourself.With tab-targetting, you can sit in a location and shout a battle-taunt while your powers recharge. Or you can use all your 'invulnerability' skills to allow you a few seconds in which to write. Granted, that might not make you the best PvPer, but a roleplayer should have roleplay as the focus during roleplay anyway, not PvP.

I'd just like to point out that TERA's PVP stinks like a dead cow left to rot in a deep trench filled with other dead creatures for various reasons. The most obvious reason was that PvP was gear dependant, so getting punched in the face when you didn't have the top gear (which required a lot of defeat-grinds in battlegrounds) resulted in you being dead in one nanosecond. The other reason is that it sucks the same way First Person Shooters suck: if you had anything more than 100ms, you were at a disadvantage. If you were higher than 200, you were a serious liability. More than 300 and you were dead before being able to say "Dead!". Well, technically anything higher than 40ms is a disadvantage on hardcore PvP. But details. I think we have stablished that action combat isn't everyone's cup of tea, mostly thanks to how latency dependant it is.

My problem with GW2 is...well, not the combat. That was actually quite nice and fun. They screwed it up with dungeon design and the implementation of all those 'one hit kills' that are supposed to be telegraphed but you can't see. Why can't you see them? Because the animation gets buried into a pile of special FX.

I don't see how First Person Shooters are any different from MMOs: they still rely on not getting hit by the enemy by moving yourself away from wherever they are aiming, or backing off to avoid their grenades. The inferface is different, that's really it. See? I can also reduce all combat systems to 'don't get hit by the enemy'.

Not all people work on a min-maxing basis. If arcanist was somehow as effective as the other two classes put together, there's still people who will like Thaumaturge better from a design perspective (nukes) or from an aesthetic level (staffs and huge balls of fire/ice). The same applies to Conjurers. As far as I understand, Arcanists will be based on DoT and HoT effects. Some people don't like those (design). In some encounters it might be better to have the Conjurer's one-time big heal instead of a heal that works over time. So they wouldn't be making any class less relevant unless all you care are about is how classes compare to each other via DPS or Heal meters.

TERA was grindy, yes, but that had nothing to do with the combat and all to do with the quest design. There were only three things at which TERA was good: the combat, the art design and unique racial-gender animations/clothes. Quests were boring 'kill ten bears for their rears' which are a sad strapple of MMO games. I also don't know how you could get bored of circle straffing a mob to death unless all you played were warriors (and maybe slayers, but I never got the hang of slayers). The other classes had to kite, dodge, slow the enemy...the most boring class was probably lancer, because they could sit in a spot and block constantly. But even -them- had to turn around and block the other way when facing hyenas. Those friggin' hyenas. I accept that the reticle and camera controls could have been better, but a lot of action games (of the non mmo variety, like Dark Souls or Kingdoms of Amalur) also center the camera on the mob. I also think you could hold a directional key to force your character into attacking in a particular direction. I remember doing so constantly with my berserker, at least.

Ah, Dark Souls. I had to uninstall it because apparently my GPU is crap and the game isn't very well optimized. I'm playing Kingdoms of Amalur instead, now. It's less difficult and, in ways, much less satisfying. However, I never had any framerate issues and never had to ragequit because the particle effects were dropping me to 7 FPS.