(01-28-2015, 11:50 AM)Graeham Ridgefield Wrote: I don't think there's anything wrong with picking a race based on whether or not it's conventionally attractive. I do think it raises alarm bells when a character has no depth beyond 'look how hot I am' though.*Crai*
Final Fantasy is an original MMO world, which means.. I think.. that the lore will always be lacking. How can culture and lore be deeply established with nuance, tradition, history, and all of the depth of human cultures, without being written on the pages of books? All an MMO can present are vignettes and superficial glimpses. I think with that limitation drawing from stereotypical Fantasy tropes (based upon easy to recognize human cultural cues) makes an incredible amount of sense. They've given us enough bread crumbs to fill in the gaps ourselves, while throwing in enough unexpected twists that no one outside of Midlanders seem bland. (Now why have they left Midlanders so bland? I really can't tell you).
I have a suspicion that the originally quoted text was a statement born largely out of frustration at a certain interpretation of Miqo'te characters by the playerbase at large. No doubt much of this interpretation is due to the legion of ERP-characters parading about the QS and its environs (though I would like to note that Highlanders ladies are nearly as common as Miqo'te). I certainly understand that frustration!
Still, although I don't think it was really meant literally, the idea of looking down upon someone for not explicitly paying detailed attention to the tail and ears of a Miqo'te character is a little silly. Are they really that important? And if they are, what is a Hyur to do without them? Certainly the full range of emotional response should be expressible without any reference to either... I'm not even convinced that Miqo'te can twitch their ears like cats, and if they can.. I find that really disturbing!
But, the bottom line is that Balmung is full of serious and interesting RPers (along with those who are less serious and less interesting). This population does not cleave to the understood in-game population at all. There are vastly more Miqo'te, vastly more male Miqo'te in particular, and nowhere near as many Lalafel and Hyur as would be expected. Trying to force the playerbase into even a lore-founded conception of what the people of Eorzea should be like is going to be a fool's game.
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