Ildur

I'm quite sure the reason the Quicksand is so popular is that A) it's close to Coerthas and Vesper Bay, meaning roleplayers who are also levellign up can get easily jump from one to the other B) It has more available tables/seats than the other adventurer's guilds.

The only purpose of this vanity system seems to be allowing high level characters to use the looks of lower level gear on their level appropiate items. I doubt Squeenix even thought of alts, or even alt-classes for that matter. It's a thing for endgame. At least we won't lose our gear, I guess.

I am the kind of person that thinks that if a group is actively or passively ruining your enjoyment of the game you should leave and find something else. Specially when it seems like the group is only shunning you because they don't want to invest time in your gear/training for endgame. You can form a linkshell with your friends or join one they are already in to keep in touch with them in-game.

Makes their "Escape reality, live the fantasy" slogan pretty stupid, doesn't it?

I have no idea how anyone can make money in this game at a decent pace at endgame. During levelling I can figure people selling/buying the stuff one needs to level up (specially crafting classes), but after that? I have no idea. Whatever it is, though, it probably doesn't fall into my definition of fun. Otherwise I would have found out already.

The only MMO that has catched my eye right now is Wildstar, though people who have played the betas seem to be pretty unhappy about the combat system. So I will pass on it until I can actually try it (either by a trial system or sneaking into a beta period). City of Titans could also be a thing for me if they manage to keep City of Heroes crazy character customization and if they also implement a Champions Online-esque skill system. I will certainly check it out when it comes out if they do that.

I like my game mechanics to be married to my lore. With that in mind, and considering how during the initial Character Creation the game gives us a very wide selection of colors, I'd say all of those are natural hair colors. Or in other words, if there were any unnatural hair colors, they wouldn't be available in Character Creation.

Conjurer's who do not want to disrupt the enviorment have a very cheap and pretty useful resource: air. You can use it for anything: throw dirt into someone's eyes, deflect arrows, knock people back with a sudden burst, create a tiny tornado, etc. You could also have them restore the land after the battle, which seems like a thing they would do. That means you can be more wild with the elements. However, let me point out that, besides the general philosophy of Conjury, there's nothing stopping a Conjurer from destroying the land for a battle. That's really up to each individual. Though being destructive -will- be frowned upon by Gridanians and other denizens of the Black Shroud.

The main problem with the highlights isn't that they exist or that you can have the weirdest color combinations, but that Squee sucked incredibly at making them. Most of them look like they brushed the hair at absolute random. They are not proper highlights in most of the hairs: they are the result of someone dropping a tiny paint bucket on your character's head.

I place my bet on horns, because Squee hasn't covered the "horned playable race" checkbox yet. Also, I think that they gave her the Miqo'te character model. Mm? Oh, right! Everything else is cool and...other words, I guess.

The process to be forgiven by the Elementals requires a wooden mask and a ritual to absorb the "woodsin" into it. The initial 1.0 Gridania storyline was made around that, specifically. Though I seem to remember not everything can be forgiven like that: sometimes the Elementals are just so pissed off they might even claim your soul if you die in the Shroud and make you into a Wildling (which is basically a thrall). There was a thread somewhre around here discussing the Greenwrath and the Elementals that discussed those things, if you need more information.

I don't see why not. Lore is there to be used and exploited by roleplayers. That's how we keep consistency with the game world. There are at least three cases of void-sents messing people up by controlling them: you have Cocobusi's story, Haukke Manor and a FATE where one Lamb of Dalamud kills herself to let a succubus into the world. How your character gets to be affected by one (possesion is not needed, though it might be the cheapest and easiest route) is up to you, but it's not like it's thematically against the game or not supported by the lore.

I think you are confusing Conjury with Succor. Conjury is elemental magic with the environment as the source of aether (in contrast with Thaumaturgy, whose source is the caster himself). Succor is a special type of magic granted directly by the Elementals and, because of that, the only branch of magic that can be actively denied (in theory, anyway). In other words, your character can go mad (no pun intented) with Conjury as much as you want her to. It is not a type of magic that requires intervention from the Elemental: it's just extraciton of aether from the environment. If she is a White Mage, though, the Elementals may step in and turn her (white mage) powers off. You could maybe come up with ways for your character to fool the Elementals thanks to them being weak after the Calamity, but that might irk some people. Or, if what Noeh is true about the Elementals not turning off Succor ever, then your character will be subject to the Woodwrath: they basically turn the whole Black Shroud against you if you step in it. The weak lalafell in the THM storyline is a character who is stated to have a low internal aether level. Basically, the reason he is 'weak' is because he lacks the necessary magical energies to cast spells. Trying to do so could result in death. As for reasons for your character to go evil...well, that depends on your character's personal story and the best person to come up with that would be you. Just remember that you can have more mundane reasons to steer your character in that direction. No need for fancy evil spirits or artifacts or magical nonsense. Old psychology can work well, if not better. Aether sickness is a phenomenom caused by the shift in the aetherial flow of the world, something that occurred thanks to the Calamity. You'll suffer it if you are in an area with high levels of aether, though apparently you can get used to it (the Player Character never suffers from it again after the intro). I also vaguely remember it can make certain creatures more agressive, which I guess is a good way to justify all the aggresive mobs in the world. But don't quote me on that.

Another skill you get is Infuriate at level 50. This gives you 5 stacks of Wrath instantly (or...well...kinda-sorta instantly because Squee's "instant" abilities are weird). So you can use one of the three skills mentioned above by Sounsyy and then pop Infuriate. I am a bit rusty, but I remember each stack of Wrath also increases the ammount of healing your receive. That is the main reason to havethe stack at 5 all the time. Unless Squee changed that in one of the patches and I missed it, which would not be surprising given my attention span.

It's been a while since I did any content in this game with my tanks, but I remmeber this: Paladins are better at mitigation of damage thanks to Shield Oath and their rotation is really simple (spam the aggro rotation); Warriors have lots of health, they are better at handling groups of mobs, and they have two skill combos: the aggro one and the debuff one. You want to keep aggro, but you also want to keep Storm Path's debuff on the boss. Their Defiance mechanic is also a pretty interesting thing once you get Infuriate (which gives you 5 stacks of Wrath instantly), but that's at level 50. Until then, you want to keep all those stacks with you. Actually, you want those stacks all the time after, too, but you can use Infuriate right after depleting your Wrath in any of the other Wrath-based skills (Unchained is pretty good for recovering aggro, for example). I have no idea how Warriors work on the raiding scene, since I do not raid at all. But I think Marauders might be better suited for off-tanking. That lets them apply the debuffs from Storm's Eye/Path without having to worry about pulling aggro.

As I have pointed out before, that is so only for Ul'dahn nobility because that's how the game defined the concept for that place. Ishgard's system, as per lore, has a system based on the middle ages where being a noble has nothing to do with wealth.

Pretty much what Sounsyy said above. I'm not really sure why it wasn't clear enough. We all can agree that character reality has nothing to do with player reality.

Good work with the lore hunting! With all that in mind, I have to agree that Gridania doesn't have a proper nobility system in place.

Those weren't two cents, Entity: it was more like a whole wallet. Kind of a long post, so I'll only answer to very particular thingg that interest me: The limits imposed by lore create consistency. You can bend them and go farther than them as long as it is coherent and consistent with the game universe. The moment you go too far (and where 'too far' lies might vary depending who you ask) you risk losing your character's credibility. There's nothing stopping you from making a character who is a Shogun, but it doesn't fit in the world. People will wonder: "Why does this particular character who is beyond the defined limits of the game universe exist"? In this particular case, because there's no nobility system in any of the canon city states that uses that terminology or even that particular kind of feudal system. A Shogun wouldn't be coherent with the world. Though if your particular RP group is okay with that kind of roleplaying then there's no problem. Just remember that most roleplayers like to work within a particular framework. Different groups will have different thresholds about how much bending (or breaking) they are willing to put up with. What REALLY matters is having fun. If creating characters that are consistent with the game world is not fun to you then, well, it is not fun to you and all discussions about lore will be useless as far as you are concerned. The reason those discussions exist, however, is because some of us like to create characters and stories that can fit properly in the world. And for that we have to know where the limits are.

I don't see the need for such a contrived reasoning for justifying playing in two servers. Just pretend that both Gilgamesh and Balmung exist in the same universe. It is no different than roleplaying with two groups of people with different micro-canons and themes. You don't need any reason to pretend they are separate entities in the same universe.

Ul'dah's nobility is tied to money. I think this is stated, and I'm quite sure it was mentioned before on this thread. If you are rich, you are a noble. Ishgard seems to follow a more traditional type of nobility. An Ishgardian noble can still be a noble even if he has no money; an Ul'dahn's nobility is directly tied to his pile of riches. The only city state without nobility seems to be Limsa Lominsa. Gridania does have nobility (as per the Haukke Manor quest), but the way in which one becomes a noble is not clear at all. Maybe the owner of the manor was the remnant of some old political system? Because I don't think you see any nobles mentioned in Gridania proper. Or maybe they were foreign nobles that somehow got ownership on the land. I forgot if the storyline ever mentioned how that lady got to become a noble in the first place.

I don't feel like linkpearls are advanced enough to be 'telepathic' or even include visual feedback. I do think that using them for tracking the location of the users could be a thing, though it probably wouldn't work properly if the user is in an area filled with envioremental aether (like Mor Dhona). The exactitude of the tracking can be anything from "he's in X region, in the backroom of Y's house" to "he's in Eorzea, yup!". Since that doesn't seem to be a thing in the lore (that I remember), I'd suggest requiring a long ritual or a very big and bulky device for the tracking. Depending on the exactitude, of course.

Ussually, most of my characters are born from the "I want an X class Y race character". This is true for ARR, but I also recycled a lot of characters from my TERA roster. Ildur is the most straightforward port, followed by Thiereia and then K'airos. My other characters, Aiswys and Qion, are mash ups of older characters. On the other hand, Ulanan was born in the beta because I wanted to try roleplaying an alliterating lalafell (and it kind of won me over). Amaury exists because a friend wanted her character's brother to be around for roleplay rather than be a nebolous entity only reserved for backstories.

Sadly, the timer pretty much takes long roleplaying sessions out of the equation. Roleplaying will always be secondary when you have a time limit to complete content instead of doing it at your own pace and stop at whatever places you want to stop for a scene.

Eorzea's a pretty diverse continent, so you can have your character be born anywhere. While some races and clans are more likely to be found in certain places, they don't have distinct nations like they do in, for example, World of Warcraft. With that said, it seems Keepers of the Moon are more numerous in the Black Shroud/Gridania and maybe La Noscea/Limsa Lominsa. Still, seeing how the city states are friendly to each other, it shouldn't be hard to come with reasons why your Keeper was born in Ul'dah or Thanalan. I don't see why a Miqo'te couldn't want to be an arcanist. The arcanist guild-master is a Miqo'te (I think Sun-Seeker, but he appears exactly once), and the "second in command" is a Roegadyn. There's no lore forbidding races from being certain classes. So go wild with that!