I've noticed a good chunk of FFXIV's roleplayer base (and not ALL) take lore quite heavily into account. More often than not I see people use the argument, "Lore is to be followed not ignored" or, "Why Roleplay in a universe if all you're going to do is ignore the lore presented thereof". There have been times I often feel that its almost out of hand compared to most games and communities I've been a part of over the years. That said, I lean quite heavily to lore myself keeping fully in mind that the game wasn't created to be Roleplayer friendly, that it was a project initially meant to follow the spirit of the Final Fantasy Franchise despite being an MMO. Thus I quite happily glance over the more restrictive things or, work out ways around them like many have pointed out in this thread simply by avoiding use of job titles or even class titles, etc.
In my mind there is no wrong way to Roleplay. Everything has a place in the world of Roleplay, and while I may not appreciate or even want to acknowledge the existence of something brought into the world by another mind, I've no right to deny another Roleplayer anything. For me this includes use of jobs, the use of classes, importing non-existent or undefined elements, really anything that anyone else may bring into the game. No one can ruin my Roleplay or immersion but me, not even Narutoske Uzuhyuugalolsharingan desperately trying to tell me he's a Shinigami unless I really let it bother me. I'm not required to consider every encounter and ever Roleplay "canon" to my characters existence and it's very difficult to do so, however some do which is fine.
All of the jobs, including Ninja I imagine have the inherent issue that, the lore presented in them is information really only privy to the Player Character in their role as the Warrior of Light and Champion of Eorzea. Almost all of the classes involve the Player learning new things that aren't even predominantly known about. Most cases we're interacting with hard to find specialists who have spent their lives uncovering the information we're considering lore. Even the Paladin Storyline, which is probably the least restrictive of the Jobs that I can think of, still puts a heavy restriction on it's open Roleplay applications, especially with regard to Sultansworn. This I feel puts a restriction on what lore actually is, just because we know of it intricately from an OOC perspective does not mean we should really understand it from an IC perspective, further what do we get to consider IC worthy knowledge? FFXIV is especially complex for these types of questions.
In my mind there is no wrong way to Roleplay. Everything has a place in the world of Roleplay, and while I may not appreciate or even want to acknowledge the existence of something brought into the world by another mind, I've no right to deny another Roleplayer anything. For me this includes use of jobs, the use of classes, importing non-existent or undefined elements, really anything that anyone else may bring into the game. No one can ruin my Roleplay or immersion but me, not even Narutoske Uzuhyuugalolsharingan desperately trying to tell me he's a Shinigami unless I really let it bother me. I'm not required to consider every encounter and ever Roleplay "canon" to my characters existence and it's very difficult to do so, however some do which is fine.
All of the jobs, including Ninja I imagine have the inherent issue that, the lore presented in them is information really only privy to the Player Character in their role as the Warrior of Light and Champion of Eorzea. Almost all of the classes involve the Player learning new things that aren't even predominantly known about. Most cases we're interacting with hard to find specialists who have spent their lives uncovering the information we're considering lore. Even the Paladin Storyline, which is probably the least restrictive of the Jobs that I can think of, still puts a heavy restriction on it's open Roleplay applications, especially with regard to Sultansworn. This I feel puts a restriction on what lore actually is, just because we know of it intricately from an OOC perspective does not mean we should really understand it from an IC perspective, further what do we get to consider IC worthy knowledge? FFXIV is especially complex for these types of questions.
