Personally speaking, if someone can find at least one example of a race/nation combination in-game, I'm usually okay with it. Even if not - if someone can spin a decent, plausible narrative on why the're an unusual combination, I'll roll with that too.
Worst comes to worst - I don't agree with them and we just don't wind up RPing together all that much, but there's plenty of other roleplayers in the community for us to choose from so it's not really a huge loss for either of us. I'll play with the people my RP values align with, and they can play with theirs.
In regards to the whole "Authentic Ala Mhigans should be Highlander" bit:
For my part, I was part of the initial 1.0 crowd. I was playing FFXIV back in the beta when I was raging at SE for making the least intuitive cumbersome mind-numbingly awful UI/controls/etc I'd ever seen in an MMO - and doing jack all to fix it because they were really only using the US beta test to stress-test the servers rather than get actual feedback.
My one and only character back then was Lurial because I had played a mithra with the same first name and appearance in FFXI, and I wanted to repeat it just for nostalgia purposes. I decided upon making her Ala Mhigan, because at the time, being a miqo'te Ala Mhigan refugee wasn't really a big deal. At least not to anyone I RPed with back then - and I was literally in an all Ala Mhigan 'guild'.
As Sounsyy pointed out, there were plenty of examples in 1.0 of Ala Mhigans of various races, from midlanders to roegadyns to lalafell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfxBo5lQ97s
Then there's J'moldva - the Hellfire Phoenix - the Ala Mhigan miqo'te champion Sounsyy mentioned from the 1.0 Gladiator quests.
When 2.0 came out, we got a whole influx of new folks who weren't able to experience all of the things in the 1.0 storyline. Because of this, I get why most folks would initially quirk a brow at "Ala Mhigan" and "miqo'te" being next to each other in the same sentence. The majority of Ala Mhigans seen in 2.0 are both highlander and midlander hyur with a smattering of roegadyns.
That said - none of that lore from 1.0 just evaporated. The Hellfire Phoenix is still in the game and even shows up in the Blacksmithing quest-chain. She has a specific breed of Ala Mhigan fighting fish named after her - The Moldva ("This Ala Mhigan fighting fish has never known defeat, and for this remarkable feat folk have named it for the celebrated gladiator.") And there are roegadyns IN little Ala Mhigo dressed in a way that implies they're also Ala Mhigan refugees and not visiting adventurers. Minfillia - as annoying as she is - is Ala Mhigan despite being a midlander.
It's admittedly a little frustrating that Sounsyy and other folks have presented this information before, yet some people still harp on about how it's 'not authentic' to play anything other than a highlander if you're Ala Mhigan - even with game lore staring them in the face.
What I feel this actually boils down to is frustration with the miqo'te race and miqo'te players period. And honestly? I get it. We're goddamn everywhere. You can't throw a rock in Ul'dah without hitting a scantily clad cat person. And because there's such a massive pool of miqo'te players in comparison to the other races, there's also a proportionally larger pool of shitty ones, ones that do nothing but dump you with unsolicited ERP requests, and ones that are so ridiculously over-the-top and lore-breaking that you can't help but roll your eyes so far back you can see your brain.
It might even be annoying for some folks to see a miqo'te for every single character type and backstory known to man -- from book worm scientists to blood-crazed gladiators, to erudite mages to Ishgardian knights and Ala Mhigan refugees. There are ones that RP really unorthodox concepts really well, but chances are, you're probably going to remember the ones who pull it off really horribly a lot more clearly. We've all got a story about that 'one really weird creepy miqo'te' player who made you really bloody uncomfortable in RP.
However, the sheer number of miqo'te players and how irritating it might be that there's a miqo'te for basically everything doesn't invalidate how 'authentic' it is for someone to play a certain character type if the game itself has provided a precedent for it.
Worst comes to worst - I don't agree with them and we just don't wind up RPing together all that much, but there's plenty of other roleplayers in the community for us to choose from so it's not really a huge loss for either of us. I'll play with the people my RP values align with, and they can play with theirs.
In regards to the whole "Authentic Ala Mhigans should be Highlander" bit:
For my part, I was part of the initial 1.0 crowd. I was playing FFXIV back in the beta when I was raging at SE for making the least intuitive cumbersome mind-numbingly awful UI/controls/etc I'd ever seen in an MMO - and doing jack all to fix it because they were really only using the US beta test to stress-test the servers rather than get actual feedback.
My one and only character back then was Lurial because I had played a mithra with the same first name and appearance in FFXI, and I wanted to repeat it just for nostalgia purposes. I decided upon making her Ala Mhigan, because at the time, being a miqo'te Ala Mhigan refugee wasn't really a big deal. At least not to anyone I RPed with back then - and I was literally in an all Ala Mhigan 'guild'.
As Sounsyy pointed out, there were plenty of examples in 1.0 of Ala Mhigans of various races, from midlanders to roegadyns to lalafell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfxBo5lQ97s
Then there's J'moldva - the Hellfire Phoenix - the Ala Mhigan miqo'te champion Sounsyy mentioned from the 1.0 Gladiator quests.
When 2.0 came out, we got a whole influx of new folks who weren't able to experience all of the things in the 1.0 storyline. Because of this, I get why most folks would initially quirk a brow at "Ala Mhigan" and "miqo'te" being next to each other in the same sentence. The majority of Ala Mhigans seen in 2.0 are both highlander and midlander hyur with a smattering of roegadyns.
That said - none of that lore from 1.0 just evaporated. The Hellfire Phoenix is still in the game and even shows up in the Blacksmithing quest-chain. She has a specific breed of Ala Mhigan fighting fish named after her - The Moldva ("This Ala Mhigan fighting fish has never known defeat, and for this remarkable feat folk have named it for the celebrated gladiator.") And there are roegadyns IN little Ala Mhigo dressed in a way that implies they're also Ala Mhigan refugees and not visiting adventurers. Minfillia - as annoying as she is - is Ala Mhigan despite being a midlander.
It's admittedly a little frustrating that Sounsyy and other folks have presented this information before, yet some people still harp on about how it's 'not authentic' to play anything other than a highlander if you're Ala Mhigan - even with game lore staring them in the face.
What I feel this actually boils down to is frustration with the miqo'te race and miqo'te players period. And honestly? I get it. We're goddamn everywhere. You can't throw a rock in Ul'dah without hitting a scantily clad cat person. And because there's such a massive pool of miqo'te players in comparison to the other races, there's also a proportionally larger pool of shitty ones, ones that do nothing but dump you with unsolicited ERP requests, and ones that are so ridiculously over-the-top and lore-breaking that you can't help but roll your eyes so far back you can see your brain.
It might even be annoying for some folks to see a miqo'te for every single character type and backstory known to man -- from book worm scientists to blood-crazed gladiators, to erudite mages to Ishgardian knights and Ala Mhigan refugees. There are ones that RP really unorthodox concepts really well, but chances are, you're probably going to remember the ones who pull it off really horribly a lot more clearly. We've all got a story about that 'one really weird creepy miqo'te' player who made you really bloody uncomfortable in RP.
However, the sheer number of miqo'te players and how irritating it might be that there's a miqo'te for basically everything doesn't invalidate how 'authentic' it is for someone to play a certain character type if the game itself has provided a precedent for it.
