Share the evolution of your character!

[Orlog]

Pretty simple one here. How much has your character changed since you first made them? Did they exist outside of FFXIV? Did they have a completely different look or personality? I'm curious!

 

Jacq (Joie, at the time) was a character I conceptualized come the launch of Wildstar. She was suppose to be this rough and tumble scavenging mechanic Aurin with a mouth that got her into waaay too much trouble.

 

[spoil][/spoil]

 

However, the game kind of bombed on me. I ended up moving over to ESO. Joie was turned in to Jacqueline to better suit the setting. This is where the character took a huge swing and ended up completely taking off from the original concept. Joie is now her own complete character that I'm using for Star Citizen. She's become my desert rat space trucker with some sweeeet, sweet cybernetics.

 

[spoil][/spoil]

 

In ESO, Jacq was a deckhand on a fishing boat. She lived for the sea and the companionship that came with living close quarters with an entire crew. She was jolly, still a tiny bit rough around the edges, but ultimately way more friendly than the original concept. She was also like 7 feet tall, golden and covered in tattoos.

 

[spoil][/spoil]

 

Now in FFXIV, I'm trying to keep the concepts similar, but I can ALREADY see them diverging from the experiences in ESO. Jacq was a barge worker, got pulled in to the war efforts by Misericorde. Completely inexperienced when it comes to combat, magic, and almost completely illiterate. She's currently going through tons of training regiments to fix all this, slowly taking up reading and writing, and finding a love to staking out new places that she's never seen before. Her maps are quickly filling up with markers!

 

Looks wise, she's about 6 feet tall. A bit broader than the character model would allow. She started off looking purposely pretty plain. I wanted her new experiences and outlook on life to be a visual thing you could mark.

 

[spoil] [/spoil]

[spoil][/spoil]

 

I'm sure there'll probably be more changes in the future, because you know... Character development. So... probably will add more in the future!

[Grott]

The first MMO I played was FFXI. I've always been really into myths and legends. At the time, I was kind of moving out of the myths and legends thing, and more into contemporary interests. I was completely obsessed with Ocarina of Time. 

 

I made a Hume warrior in FFXI so I could have a sword and shield like Link. (sword and shield is terrible for warriors, but I was like 13, I didn't know what I was doing.) I gave him red-brown shaggy hair and made him short. It was the first time I RP'd and I was terrible at it. When I hit level 30 and unlocked paladin, I realized in this game I had to wear heavy armor. I was in Ronfaure and the music, plus the distant view of San d'Oria as a big castle town, reminded me of the old Robin Hood and King Arthur stories. I started RPing him as a knight.

 

I loved it. Being a knight felt so cool. But then I played FF4 because a friend told me it was a cool game. I was inspired by that game to try Dragoon out. For the next few years I played my hume as almost exclusively Paladin and Dragoon, being as knightly in RP as I could. I was still terrible, and didn't really know anything about actual knights, for the record.

 

I let the game go after a few years, and moved to WoW with a friend of mine. I was getting older, and all high school edgy so I made my knight an undead knight instead.

 

 

It didn't make any sense, obviously, but in my head I kept thinking "He's like my FFXI paladin if he died and came back FOR REVENGGGGGE" (Side note: my main was actually a rogue, but this was the guy I RP'd with in that game) I kept him around for years and years, gradually growing out of my teen angst and trying to do some good story-telling about a fallen knight. I explored other games for RP, too, like LOTRO, where I had a dwarf who was a completely different character, but it gave me more ideas for this original one.

 

Finally, FFXIV was announced. I wasn't able to play more than about two weeks of 1.0, and then it went down. My dreams of "resurrecting" my paladin/dragoon were gone.

 

THEN 2.0 was announced and I signed up for the beta! I remade my character as a Hyur. pretty much looking exactly the same but with some scars and some facial hair, like it had been a rough few years.

 

 

Eventually I looked into the best option for playing a knight in FFXIV and I discovered Ishgard which fit perfectly into my love for both knights and dragoons. I turned Uther Skystrider (which was the name I chose for this game, after Uther Pendragon and the "Skystrider" lance from FFXI) into an Elezen, because it fit the idea of a noble more in this universe.

 

 

 

Two years out from making him an Elezen, and he's still going strong. His morals have become more gray, but he's still a good person. His character arc isn't one I would've expected, but that's the beauty of creating a character with a strong personality. They tend to make more choices than you do.

 

[Gegenji]

It's no surprise that I made Chachan as open and friendly and goodhearted as he is in no small part to being new to MMO RP and utterly terrified that I'd come in and no one would want to play with me. I even felt I had made a mistake that first day he entered Balmung and I was looking from the outside in on all the RP going on. Fortunately, I got into some RP with some nice people, made friends and now quite look forward to the end of the work day so I can pop on to either RP or just talk with the LSes and FC I've become a part of. :blush:

 

But because of that concern at the onset, I had a very simple concept for Chachan. The little hero wannabe. Left home to seek "ADVENTURE" and become a hero and hopefully make a bunch of friends along the way! He was slated to be basically friendly and cheerful and more or less a ray of sunshine amongst all the nitty-gritty of the setting.

 

Of course, on contact with actual other players, that definitely morphed some. Seeing and interacting with several Paladins - both Sultansworn and Free - gave a purpose to his initial heroic drive. It became the answer to how he would be helping people, along with the little odds and ends errands I started having him doing to pay for his lodging at the Hourglass.

 

But with it, though, came a great defining moment of "why" he wanted to become a Paladin, why he wanted to help people. The childish desire for heroism was still there somewhat, but it became tempered by the razing of Doma. While he, for the most part, got out of it fine - he wasn't there and family made it out, so all he lost was a home... though, that was definitely a poignant thought for him - it helped put some solidarity behind his heroic dreams that evolved beyond his childhood daydreaming.

 

And there's more, too. His friendly nature and desire to help ended up causing some changes as well. As his circle of friends of expanded and he became involved in a lot of their personal conflicts and peculiarities, he ran into situations where he didn't know how to help or his attempts to help only managed to make things worse. Not to mention all these situations kind of turned him into a bit of a worrywart - often being the first to ask if people are okay and to timidly offer his help when he can.

 

All the way through, I've wanted him to stay friendly and helpful... and that's been a surprising challenge at times, given the penchant for some dark stuff being thrown at him. Spiraling depression, irate spirits, conflicts between his friends, death. There have been quite a few sobering moments for the little guy who wanted to be like the storybook heroes. But it's also served as a fuel for that childishly stubborn drive of his to help people, and given him a bit of worldliness that helps him to do that.

 

And really, I think it makes his determination all the more inspiring (to me, at least :blush: ) considering all he's gone through... rather than it all just being wrought of fairy tales, daydreams, and story books.

[Cest]

Barnabaix is strictly new to FFXIV but my other character often known as Arimar has been around for awhile. Arimar has stayed largely the same through the many years of MMOs, starting out back in EQ1 as a simple blacksmith and slowly advancing and becoming a bit more complex as I grew more comfortable with RP. From the time between early WoW - Wildstar he went from a blacksmith to a mercenary and then to a business owner. Though his mood and demeanor always remained the same, despising everyone around him unless they offered coin.

 

I branched out a little bit with him on a few MMOs, such as Neverwinter & Rift where he was a bit more friendly and mischievous, which I believe eventually caused Barnabaix to be made here.

 

 

((I'm sadly terrible at remembering to take screenshots, so I am missing many versions of Arimar here.))

 

Arimar (LOTRO)

 

 

Arimar (Rift)

 

 

Arimar (World of Warcraft)

 

 

Arimar (Guild Wars 2)

 

 

Arimar (Tera Online)

 

 

Arimar (Neverwinter)

 

 

 

 

Arimar (Wildstar)

 

 

 

 

Arimar (TESO)

 

 

Arimar (FFXIV)

 

 

[Alothia]

So here are my evolutions of Aly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spethah]

I had a Norn smith in D&D simply named Lone Heart, who was a nomad smith and armourer whom went on a pilgrimage to follow his family's footsteps. In WoW he was an Orc, in TERA is was Aman and in GW2 he was of course a Norn. Sadly I don't have any screenshots as the PC I used to play those games is dead, which sucks. 

 

Anyway, I tried bringing him to FFXIV but no one was interested in the character at all despite him being a friendly Roe so I gave up on him. 

 

The end.

[cuideag]

Delial started out as a Forsaken warlock back in vanilla WoW. A daughter of Andorhal and a fierce loyalist to Lordaeron, she went from a staunch supporter of Sylvanas to a borderline traitor and back again, ultimately coming to work for the very organization she had come to loathe after the events at the Wrathgate. Along the way, she renounced her ties to the demonic arts and instead enveloped herself in the Shadow to become a priestess, albeit not the sort that her father probably once hoped her to become. She had hoped that a tour of Northrend would be what finally killed her. When it did not, she slipped away from society, succumbing to a madness that had been long in the making.

 

 

 

 

We didn't play Warhammer Online for very long because boy was that an awkward launch! But Delial made a very brief appearance there as .... I honestly don't remember what. But it had to do with Tzeentch. A Chaos Zealot I think? The only picture I can find is this icon.

 

 

 

 

 

Delial "Dee as in Dead" Garwater appeared in GW2 as a Mesmer with a love of petty crime, fond of using her clones as accomplices in muggings and the like. She was crude and abrasive, quick to judge and even quicker to draw blades. Sadly, she did not get a lot of development or RP as that was during a sort of low period in my life and I couldn't really get out of the shell I'd fallen in to. She was pretty dang cute though.

 

 

 

 

XIV Delial picks up where WoW Delial left off and shares quite a few traits with her, and her backstory has a few nods to events and people from her zombie days. I imagine Forsaken Delial occupying the place where the Witch of XIV's stands, so while they are not the same character, they share common ground and the latter is heavily influenced IC and OOC by the former.

[ArmachiA]

Oh Goodness...

 

Armi technically started as "Armachia" - a Lasombra Vampire in Vampire: The Masquerade that I rolled as a villain when I was new at the whole GMing thing. I say technically because everything about her is completely different, I mostly just derived Armi's name from Armachia's later when I started playing FFXI.

 

"Armi" as I basically know her today, started there in 2003:

2003, Armi Alliando, FFXI

It was my first time ever playing an MMO and, at the time, I just assumed everyone in MMO's RPed. Why wouldn't they? It's an RPG! I was very naive.

Anyway, at the time, my usual go-to RP characters were all Snarky, Femme Fatale types and I wanted to try something new, so I decided to roll a Yuna-esque character; very sweet, kind of quiet, total badass summoner. But, she was also the daughter of a pirate who died when she was young and she was raised by Galka in Bastok. Her personality was fine-ish - she was quiet and demure, nice and sweet, with a martyr complex that has transferred to each incarnation of her but as I learned about how MMO roleplaying worked, I began to despise her backstory. She was a complete Mary Sue/Special Snowflake and I really only got away with it because at the time I was running the only RP guild on the server (Quetz server what up?). She was basically a super powerful "Chosen one" summoner like Yuna, Heir to a Pirate throne in Norg because her dad was once a top dog Pirate captain, an ambassador between Hume and Galka relations because she was raised by them - the list goes on and on. After about a year, I realized that I had made my character so special she was overshadowing EVERYONE all the time and in MMOs we all kind of have to play on the same field, so I did everything I could to wipe the slate without retconning - taking away her summoner powers, making her a normal ass Red Mage and just becoming a pirate somewhere in Norg. I liked the new version a lot better, but it took so long to fix, by the time I liked her I was three and a half years into the game and was ready to move on. Killed her off and went to WoW.

Lesson Learned: No more special snowflakes! They can actually damage other people's stories rather than make them better and I vowed never to do that again. Kept her nice side and her Martyr tendencies in all future incarnations. If she isn't nice, she isn't Armi.

 

2007 - Armi Aethertide (WoW)

You probably noticed I wasn't on an RP server when this screenshot was taken. Well, that's because until I learned the actual rules on MMO RP, I decided to stay out of it. I didn't really want to make any mistakes like I did with Armi 1.0 and the LS that I ran (We RPed the story in FFXI, I learned thats a no-no in WoW), so we set up the Night Blades with a bunch of our friends on the Boulderfist server while I kept my eye on RP forums. Eventually, all of us decided to move to Emerald Dream so the ones who wanted to rp could. Armi in WoW was much less demure than her FFXI counterpart, I thought I made her too quiet in FFXI so I tried to shift away from that by making her a bit more outspoken. She was secretly against Kael'thas and didn't trust him, but didn't say anything because Silvermoon was downright scary for dissenters. She was still a nice person and had that eternal Martyr streak, but she was strong willed and independant. She was very much a loner and preferred the company of her Lion more than most people and though I played her for 2 years, she never romanced a soul. Some say this is my best incarnation of Armi, but honestly I found her just a touch too bratty and stand offish. However, I kind of liked she was a bit of a loner, so I pretty much kept that in al future incarnations.

Here I came to find a distaste for people who didn't follow lore. There were so many Blood Elf rpers who played High Elves, so many who were half-demons or half-angels, Fallen Angels, Vampires, Ghosts, Besties with Thrall, Immortal Highlanders, etc etc that finding people who just wanted to discuss Silvermoon politics as normal ass Blood Elves was hard to come by. RP outside Silvermoon was better, but for some reason ignoring lore was just completely common practice in WoW.

Lessoned Learned: I liked lore of games and decided after WoW I wanted to find people who also liked Lore in games to rp with. I also learned not to put my character too close to the main story, a lot of rp forums discussed it as something you didn't do and it made sense to me, so I stopped doing it from that point on. Kept Armi's more loner girl side from this incarnation, as I ended up enjoying that Armi lived off screen as well.

 

2008 - Armi (No last name) - Aion

Fun Fact: Asmodeans don't have last names unless their nobility.

I talked a little about her before, but this is my least favorite incarnation of Armi. The idea was she was going to be an immortal (As all characters in Aion are) who hated being an immortal and became obsessed with death. She became too morbid really, and eventually became really hard to play. She was morose, but extremely sarcastic and kind of snide. What I did end up liking was that she was a bit awkward in social interaction, having pretty much outcasted herself and so she didn't really understand social norms. I played this completely straight (While in FFXIV I tend to play it for laughs) and it worked well enough. This was my first attempt at a more damaged character, someone with a lot hiding underneath the surface and it had... varied results. She was deeply damaged, broke two mens hearts, was a constant source of drama to all those around her. It was an issue because I overplayed it, trying to push her "depths" in every conversation I had with ANYONE. Eventually I backed myself into a corner and after about 9 months just quit the game.

Lesson Learned: "Hidden Depths" is a term for a reason, and I learned subtly is a lot more effective than shoving it in everyones face all the time, after this, I started being a little more sly with my characters damages, letting people find out about them over time instead of shoving them down people's throats in the first meeting. This has worked so much better for me. I also took her social awkwardness with me to future games, that ending up being something I liked, and dropping the sarcastic nature permanently. Sarcasm isn't Armi. Also purple eyes became a must from here on out! I just fell in love with Armi having violet eyes from then on.

 

2010 - Armi Duvignau - FFXIV

Same Armi, before some racial Retconning. 1.0's Armi was a priestess of Nymeia and an extremely devout one at that. She believed that free will was a complete myth and everything we did was the will of the Twelve. She wasn't a person in her mind, she was a vessel. Because of how unshakable her faith was, she didn't have many friends - only used to studying scripture or praying - so she didn't understand social norms, but she didn't mind that. She was fine being alone. She was alright to play in 1.0, but she was extremely restrictive, since she was so devout and didn't really want or need friends she mostly kept to herself and I could only pull her out when it made sense. This made her awkward to play - while she had all the traits I liked (Nice, Awkward, Martyr Complex, kind of a loner) her backstory made her less fluid and more like a rock. I enjoyed her, but couldn't really bring her out as much as I wanted to, making Loki my main so I could be more open. Her 1.0 story made for a really good backstory, but as a current story it was just too hard to RP.

Lesson Learned: Restricting your own character is kind of a downer, I decided to try to find ways to keep them open no matter the backstory.

 

2011 - Armi Aethertide - Star Wars: The Old Republic

I think I was really starting to find Armi's stride here, though honestly the character will never be perfect. I decided to make Armi a force user who was for the Republic, but against the Jedi which made her a Grey Jedi but for fun I made her a bit dark sided. This caused a lot of interesting interaction with her with Jedi since they were either trying to get her to join the Jedi Order or just trying to kill her. She was extremely guarded because of it, but was generally very nice - she just didn't like talking about herself just in case. She was quite serious here, not really getting jokes (Which I ended up really liking) and not really understanding how to unwind. Watching her at a bar was unintentionally hilarious. I think though, I made her too serious, really. Like the Armi Aethertide before her, she never romances anyone, she was just too serious for that nonsense.

Lesson Learned: I didn't really like how serious Armi had gotten through the different incarnations, but I also wasn't really sure I could change that and pull it off well enough.

 

2013 - Armi Alliando - FFXIV: ARR

And here we are now. I took all of her backstory from 1.0 and kept it, only changing her race (and therefore last name) because I ended up not liking the Elezen animations in Beta. However, I turned it into a complete backstory, after Carteneau she left the Priesthood and dedicated herself to finding out who SHE was. I was going to play Armi completely straight like previous incarnations, but right at the last minute (Really, right as I was going to rp with her in game the first time) I decided to make her a goofball. She's shy (Something new, I never really rolled shy before), awkward, kind of a Martyr, Talks to plants like their people, doesn't understand social norms, is completely nice and sweet, genuine to a fault, has a lot of damage from things in her past, kind of loner. She's everything I've been building up to in past games and, so far, she's my favorite incarnation. This isn't to say she's done, I already have ideas for the next Armi in any other MMOs I play to refine her even more.

 

It's been a long strange trip.

[Nebbs]

SWTOR Beta

Then the real game

 

She was also made on Imperial side

 

She's still active today

 

 

Wildstar - art only I never really played past Beta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Telluride]

I lack a LOT of pictures right now, but what the heck.

 

LOTRO:

 

My first dip into MMO RP was a Hobbit Minstrel, one Nedwyrd Rednettle, an adventurous but soft-spoken individual who spent much of his time gazing up at an admiring the taller, stronger folk who took him in and gave him a place in the world. He would later acquire a larger family -his father, his sister, the Human girl they adopted, and the smirking guardsman who took a shine to them. This started my trend of forming entire families and being a terrible altoholic. But it was this game that made me take seriously RPing a bard - I loved the game's music system, and led a number of concerts with my guildies, as well as spent a lot of nights at the Prancing Pony sharing tunes and hobnobbing with other musicians.

 

AGE OF CONAN.

 

Ok, this game was a little bit more on the gritty side, and that's being conservative. Nedwyrd became Nedrigan, the son of a Cimmerian man and a hardbitten Aquilonian woman with a nasty past of dark magics. He was trained as a killer (I chose Assassin as my class, since there was no bard), but had always been rather thin and delicate compared to his sister, who their mother had been imbuing secretly with enhancement magic since the two were young. The boy fled home after besting his sister in a street argument using trickery and agility, and ran off, taking up a lute and learning songs to create a new life for himself that did not involve black magic and murder. The siblings were reunited later, and reconciled, becoming finally very protective of each other, and joined a mercenary company, making gil off their combat training and finding friends and sometimes too-close companions in the group. The server I was on, Wiccana, offered up a weekly storytelling contest, and I spent many a night telling stories and pretending NOT to be a knife-wielding killer.

 

FALLEN EARTH.

 

It was here that the Telluride name was born, in this post-apocalyptic setting. I needed a change. Enter Nathan Edward "Ned" Telluride, a former Army Ranger / Combat Medic who had died in his 90's, and found himself cloned as a 25-year-old man again, remembering his old skills to survive and find allies among a group of survivalists determined to carve some order out of the chaotic society humanity had become. "Ned" Telluride was not a bard, but a voice of reason among his companions, and who became more so after finding romance with a troubled and young woman, and reuniting with his daughter, who had likewise lived into her seventies before being reborn as a young woman again.

 

RIFT

 

The fantasy pendulum swung back, and the call of the bard grew too powerful to ignore, and the Guardian bard Gellor (a reference to a character from the GORD THE ROGUE series, by Gary Gygax) was born, spinning tales and charming his way into a group of misfits, finally finding romance with a lovely priestess, though not without having to do a LOT of convincing of her that he wasn't just another pain-in-the-arse. The RP scene dried up, and I created a new character on the Defiant side, a lecherous gem-thief who used his clerical gifts for building wealth and meeting women, but before I could really get a good feel for him, it was time for a new game.

 

SWTOR

 

It was time for a new start. Enter the Falstaff Siblings - Weyd and Wyra, a pair of gifted technicians determined to build their family name into a tech empire. They started in an Imperial special Regiment, once formed to experiment in having Sith and Skilled military operatives working in tandem and as equals, offering their services as logistics officers. Weyd was essentially a mix of Tony Stark and Lando Calrissian, who nursed a resentment towards force-users, natural charm, and a talent for circuity and robotics into a lucrative career; his sister, Wyra, was a metallurgical prodigy who got off on engine oil and shipbuilding. When their regiment collapsed from Sith intrigues, they set off on their own, finding romance with another pair of siblings, from a family of Echani with talents in special ops. Between times, I ended up playing an Echani of my own - a smarmy singer/musician with a talent for lewdness and savoir faire - and a hulking Cybernetic Sith named Gorrd, who had once been an Alderaanian noble before being killed by a rival, revived and wired with a new personality, and later became a different sort of person entirely, a warrior-poet, trained in heretical force techniques, who made a living as a roving hunter. I had fun with all of them, but there were a lot of times I wished I could mix and match their personalities up a bit more, but then there was...

 

WILDSTAR

 

2.5 years in TOR left me wanting a new place to play, and in Wildstar, I could take what I liked from SWTOR and use it in another SciFi universe. The Falstaffs were reborn as a family of three siblings: Weyd and Wyra, lifted almost whole cloth from TOR; their brother Waylon, a mischievous computer guru and garage musician (molded by my Echani troublemaker), and F.I.N.N., a Mechari weapons instructor with a personality based loosely on my old Sith. It started out well, but Wildstar... well, it tanked. So, then I came to..

 

FFXIV

 

... and thus was born Nathan Telluride, who melded a LOT of these characters - The name from my Fallen Earth main, the imposing height and fondness for wandering of my old Sith, the pithy charm and composition skills of my previous bards and Weyd, and that touch of "Chivalrous Pervert" that defined my old Echani. Notably, I haven't really started a family in this game. My active alts are largely independent of one another, and though I am trying to start an association between some of them, I have been happy to have Nathan be his own self-contained agglomeration of years of character building.

[Renata Turner]

Renata's evolution is not a physical one....

 

When I brought her over to Balmung, I wrote her to be cold, distant, angry. She hated everyone and everything, with the exception of her cousin and her lifelong friend. She was this way even more with men, often aggressively hostile towards them. And if you were a Garlean, well, forget it. She got into a lot of fights at the beginning. She did have a soft spot for children, and as such, if a person was a child, or even a Lalafell, she was neutral. Never hostile, never angry, she was kind to them all. Except the one Lala who refused to get out from under her skirt because he was trying to peek at her underthings...he got punted across the Ul'dahn street. She was also very sensitive to the suffering of others, and if one carried such a burden, she would leave them be, choosing not to add to their suffering with her angry nature. 

 

She and her lifelong friend got into an argument, and things were said to her that wounded her deeply. She went to the Quicksand to drown her hurt in some strong drinks...and then a blonde-haired Midlander by the name of Percival said to her "I know that feeling..."

 

And as a little time began to pass, she began to thaw. She tried to resist. She got angry. He stayed calm in the face of her rage. She ran. He followed. She pushed, he stood his ground. And one night, she cried. Not a pretty, "Oh my god your tears are beautiful" type of way. She ugly-cried and told him that it would be best if he forgot he'd ever met her. He pretty much told her that was bullshit, and he'd never forget her, because he didn't want to. Though innuendos were exchanged, he never once tried to get into her pants. At that moment, he was exactly what Renata needed. A true, honest, loyal friend.

 

Ironically, it was Renata the snow-queen who first expressed that she was falling in love with him. They became a couple. And then, he told her he loved her.

 

Renata today is a different woman, though she is still made of steel and forged in fire. She is softer around the edges, but her temper is still nothing to be laughed at when it is provoked. She is still very uncomfortable around people she does not know, men in particular, though she is, if nothing else, calmly polite. The dynamic between Renata and Percival is truly wonderful to witness. He is not her white knight, because he knows his girl is no damsel in distress. Were it ever an issue, he would be quick to defend her honor...after he gave her the chance to defend it herself. Renata would have been offended if he treated her as fragile and weak...and she is grateful that he sees her strength and does not automatically attempt to swoop in and 'save the day'. She values his heart and mind (and thinks he's pretty damn good-looking to boot), and he's careful with her heart, the only part of her that truly might be considered fragile. Nothing was rushes, everything was allowed to unfold at their intended pace, and I see Ren and Perci as true equals, fortifying each other's weaknesses and enhancing each other's strengths. 

 

Renata's path has been NOTHING like I planned it for her, and watching it unfold has been an amazing and beautiful thing to watch.

[Otte]

Most of my characters are roughly inspired by alts I've played in other games, but I think Otte is the one that has evolved most of all.

 

He started being partly based on my blood elf alt from WoW, having the same short stature and young looks. He was even going to be as happy and ditzy as his elven counterpart, but after rolling him as an Arcanist on launch, he ended up being more book-smart, and a little withdrawn and shy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

During his time in the Traveller's guild and gaining some friends and confidence, he grew to be more serious than I expected, though also easily excited and even pushy. Pouting also came his signature move, and he still had childish streak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After certain circumstances he seemed to "grow up", and his old seriousness turned into plain grumpiness. He smiles rarely nowadays, and has grown jaded during his experiences. He also lost most of his shyness on the way, and doesn't hesitate voicing his opinions now. And he stopped wearing his tribal paint.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dravus]

I suppose I'm in the minority but I don't generally 'recycle' my characters. As an actor I detest being limited to one specific type of role so I deliberately step out of my comfort zone by ensuring each role I embrace is different to the last.

 

If I devote to a new MMO I examine the game's lore and build up a fresh character from scratch. Sometimes I use the same name - especially for alts - but that is where the similarities end.

 

Back in WoW my primary character for role-play was Solbranthius Dawnsurge - a seasoned soldier utterly devoted to protecting his people and homeland no matter the cost:

 

 

He became increasingly cynical over time, especially since he believed that his people would be better off by distancing themselves from their treacherous allies. It didn't help that almost every major force in the setting sought to stab his people in the back either.

 

In FFXIV I eventually settled on Graeham, a well meaning yet decadent youth conflicted by the Garlean blood flowing through his veins:

 

 

Graeham's become a bit more serious since I started role-playing him. He didn't feel like he had much of a purpose beyond wandering and doing odd jobs in exchange for coin. He also considered becoming a diplomat - but that didn't work out - and now he's learning how to fight with a sword and shield so that he can protect those he has come to trust.

 

I also dabbled in GW2, ESO and Wildstar but none of those MMO's managed to lure me into investing on a long term basis. I've since given up on WoW entirely due to disliking the direction of...pretty much everything related to it so FFXIV is my primary MMO and I find myself very enthusiastic about the game's future so chances are I'll be around for a long time!

[Gegenji]

I suppose I'm in the minority but I don't generally 'recycle' my characters. As an actor I detest being limited to one specific type of role so I deliberately step out of my comfort zone by ensuring each role I embrace is different to the last.

 

I... sorta fall under the same scope? I like to think each new game - whether it be MMO or pen-and-paper or what-have-you - is a chance for a new story with a new character. It also doesn't help that I usually have, like, twenty million character ideas floating around in my head that I just can't wait to use.

 

Still, it's really neat to see how people adapt one character to a number of different games, molding and refining them based on the setting and what they've learned from playing them before. The closest I've done is adapt a goofball hero character from Champions online for a one-shot superhero game, which was quite fun. Lard Almighty is still my favorite superhero.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I'm the same way. I've never really understood how you can take a character through multiple games like that (I'm not making a value judgement on people who do that, mind you. I simply don't understand it). Instead, I like making characters who have some deep connection to the setting, and they tend to evolve in pretty drastic directions. I'm also pretty in-depth when I play them, which is why I tend not to play alts. I also tend to avoid sweeping changes to my characters as I play them. Instead, I refine things, or fill in things in their past. This definitely applies with C'kayah.

 

For C'kayah, he started out as a sort of combination of the Grey Mouser and Casanova. I'd been reading Casanova's autobiography, and I loved the idea of this adventurer who lived by his wits and skill and charisma. The original C'kayah was a smuggler who carried small cargos around Eorzea. This was something I threw in to explain how he was involved with my first FC here: They were these "ends justify the means" types, and C'kayah supplied them with explosives. His conjury came into play with C'kayah serving as a combination guard and medic on trade caravans in his past.

 

Now, C'kayah was originally an archer, and later a conjurer, so he started in Gridania. At the same time, I'd been reading a bunch of the Coeurl tribe stuff that the old C-tribe RPers generated, and I wanted to place him as coming from the Sagolii. The sept that C'kayah came from had a tradition of going walkabout, like the Quarians in Mass Effect. I decided that C'kayah went to Ul'dah and became a thief. He pissed off the wrong underground family and got himself exiled from the city, hence his arrival in the Black Shroud some twelve years ago.

 

This led to me deciding that this was how he got into smuggling. He lived in the Shroud and made connections with a lot of the Moonkeeper and Duskwight clans in the area, and parlayed those contracts into a meager business moving things between the clans and Thanalan.

 

When Ul'dah opened up to me, I decided I liked it and wanted C'kayah to live there. I'd done a forum RP at the time with some folks that ended up with C'kayah stealing an Ishgardian diplomatic seal. That led to me creating the head of the family C'kayah had upset, and the story of how he'd bought his way into their forgiveness with (among other things) the seal.

 

On a whim I decided that he'd freed a slave on his way out of Ul'dah, and that the two had become lovers in the Black Shroud. His lover was later killed in the Calamity, giving him a good and personal reason to hate both slavery and Garleans.

 

Later I started fleshing out his original past in Ul'dah, and decided that he'd been taken as a sort of cabana boy slave when he'd first arrived. This gave him a taste for luxury, as well as playing into his personality. His owner was an older woman who had fickle tastes, so when she tired of him and freed him, he turned to crime as the easiest way he could think of to gain the luxuries he loved for himself.

 

Meanwhile, I started dabbling in creating and running RP groups myself. This led to the creation of (first) the NHSC and (now) Tylwyth Narah. ICly, this allowed me to build on C'kayah's natural charisma, which led to this very natural-feeling progression where he just built and grew the criminal enterprise he finds himself at the head of.

[Viola]

Memenu (the visual looks) was first conceptualised during phase 3 beta. Unsurprisingly, her look changed rather drastically, and one of her earliest looks can actually be found as an NPC in the Amal'jaa camp in South Thanalan (A lalafell gladiator talking to one of the Amal'jaa), however this NPC is purely coincidental despite the almost exact visual likeness to her first concept.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Lk10V3y.jpg

Memenu's first picture as of Phase 4 Beta. Noticeable differences are hair color, earrings, pale skin and differently shaped eyes.

 

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/37489778539836445/D43EDC9043734A8944A2FF766E272F339B3B642B/

Here's her current and and probably final incarnation. There's other differences, but they're minute compared to her Phase 4 version.

 

Originally, Memenu was a "Pint-sized yet silly hero", but this was changed due to being fairly cliche, yet was still adorable because Lalafell emotes. During the time of 2.1, she shifted from being a hero to being a Pope. This was changed once more because I couldn't get it to feasibly work in-universe due to obvious reasons.

 

Her current Backstory evolved around the time Moggle Mog (2.2?) came out, liking the idea that a being could be summoned into existence (without any elemental link, unlike Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, etc) if a large enough group both wished and believed in it, this sparked the start of her remold.

 

"The pleas and cries of countless Lalafell fell on deaf ears, those suffering at the hands of others banded together; wishing for both a savior and safety. They believed in a protector who would save them from their hardships, from the Garleans, from the beastmen. They called forth a being formed of the unbridled rage of countless other Lalafell who both suffered and died at the hands of their foes."

 

The thing is, if Moggle Mog isn't a Primal, then neither is Memenu. She'd just be a "Guardian" with Primal-like traits (IE being summoned by those who believe). However, unlike the Good King, she wasn't stopped by the Scions upon her first creation.

 

That isn't to say she's an "antagonist", she's done a lot of good for the Realm. Helping crush the Garleans, the Primals, clear the Crystal Tower of defenses and has even clashed with Nael Van Darneus several times. She's violent, yes, but only to those that not only pose a threat to her Lalafellin protectees, but to that of the Realm itself.

 

Personality-wise, being fueled by the rage of countless Lalafell makes for an interesting character. She's outright vicious in a fight, and the fury that fuels her shows it. She's angry. Like Hulk. More like Akuma. With Cirno from Touhou in the mix. However, the limits of the flesh are impressive, and she cannot go to full strength without the body decaying within mere seconds. (in layman's turns, her power is vastly limited, and if she ever remotely attempts full strength, back to the Aether she goes without posing much of a threat, ever.)

 

She's really childish, and due to her (very limited) time on Eorzea, sometimes very naive and easily tricked. Her intelligence is fairly high, but when it comes to things like every day things, she's completely aloof. Apparently the ones who summoned her didn't think about her need to cook.

 

 

Unlike the Primals, she cannot increase her strength. She cannot utilize crystals like the Primals, she cannot Temper others. Her strength is based around those who believe in her, and even that has its limits (as stated above).

 

-edit-

 

That's cool, I posted and it ate my entire post. -sighs-

 

Though she's still a bit rough around the edges, personality and whatnot-wise, I'm always open for suggestions on improving.

[Xivrez'to]

When I created Xiv he was a rather goofy character that seems to be a little to high to be sane. He is a man who follows his heart in every way and aspect and he always speaks his mind.

 

Currently, Xiv is a rather goofy character that might be a smidge saner compared to when I created him. He still follows his heart and speaks his mind. And he has learned some healing magic too.

[Caspar]

Like a lot of my characters, Virara is a re-framing of a previously made character from pen and paper or forum rp. When I made her, she initially was a D&D rogue, a child assassin raised by a corrupt but faintly paternal arms merchant in a decadent, Venice-style city. Disguised as his daughter, she was highly dependent upon his 'love' and expressed genuine affection towards her father figure by murdering others for him, since that was her primary form of communication. When karma finally found him, she was let loose in the seedy back alleys and crawlspaces of the city as a serial killer. The party adopted her largely to avoid the ugly issue of killing her and to keep her from causing more problems. Looking back she was a bit of a derivative character, and what I ended up with was something between Gunslinger Girl and that one movie Dog or Unchained or whatever starring Jet Li. My characteristic behavior for her was always walking in the steps of one of the larger party members like a trained pet, conveniently within range of her kukris. The campaign dissolved long before I had an opportunity to detail her development.

 

Virara is a bit more conventionally heroic, but shares a lot of the same themes, which I'll admit I'm often a little overeager to exploit. Their background, age and mental maturity aren't really the same though. Virara isn't quite as blatantly childlike as Vira was. (Since Vira was literally a child...)

[Naunet]

@Memenu: Bold character! I approve.  And I have to wonder what would happen to Memenu should her people stop "needing" her so much...

 

I'll just introduce Antimony, as she was/is my main character in FFXIV.

 

This is her original incarnation:

 

 

 

Forsaken for life? She started out as a bank alt with a nerdy name and then grew into an actual rp character. And then some time during ICC, she became my actual main... This one set the base trend for all future Antimony's. She is a manager of client goods and finances ICly, as well as an amateur mathematician who enjoys applying mathematical principals to magic. She's also extremely proper, motherly, and far too ambitious when it comes to science for her own good. I race changed her a couple times in WoW - to Tauren when Tauren could finally become priests, then back again to Forsaken, and then later to Pandaren for a while before returning to Forsaken - though those were never IC.

 

Antimony skipped an incarnation in Rift. The next time she came up was in TERA.

 

 

 

Here she developed a ruthless streak. I played up the scientist aspect of the original Antimony until it warped into someone whose drive for discovering telling the truth governed her every move. She lost her motherly nature; instead she was a child who excelled staggeringly in a few things but never lived up to her parents' wishes and so struck out on her own. She was self-sufficient, wanting to do good but lacking a certain level of compassion, and willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve her goals. I say "was" because a series of very awful events have broken her down to someone almost unrecognizable.

 

During TERA, we dabbled in GW2 as well, and another Antimony was born:

 

 

 

She took the socially awkward and highly intellectual traits of TERA Antimony, but wrapped them in a more friendly package. I didn't RP her for very long (though I'm always willing to continue the RP at some point), so I didn't get to fully explore her character.

 

And then there was K'piru! Otherwise known as Antimony.

 

 

 

I dug up those motherly instincts that were a minor aspect of the original Antimony's character and really explored them. I built her a family, and then got friends to RP that family, and then I took that family away from her. Family - blood or otherwise - has been a huge theme in her roleplay, and it plays a large role in her motivations. Before the start of the game, she was isolated, socially and culturally. I took advantage of the potential in Seeker lore to craft up an entire tribe sub-culture, and I've had a grand time weaving that into K'piru's character. She is also very other-focused, her every action taken so as to better the life of those remnants of family she's managed to salvage. The intellectual nature that seems to have become a common thread across incarnations is still there, but it's colored and altered by a very different background. While, say, TERA!Antimony would scoff at superstition, K'piru has a whole host of beliefs that influence her day-to-day life and behaviors. She is also more emotionally demonstrative and extremely anxious.

 

Aaaaaand most recently, WildStar has held my attention for the past year and a half:

 

 

 

I love everything about this game and the character I've created. Although visually she takes her queues from the original WoW!Antimony, this incarnation is probably the biggest outlier of them all in terms of personality. Anne (as her friend Jack calls her) is staggeringly intelligent but has the emotional capacity and understanding of something along the lines of a 4 year old. She spent the vast majority of her life first isolated from her people (stowed away as a little kid on a small research vessel back when the Exiles made first contact with Arboria) and then isolated from all sentient contact whatsoever (the two scientists ended up dying in a pretty awful research accident). She doesn't handle people well, is extremely self-centered in a childish way, and grapples with a very simplistic understanding of right and wrong. Still, she craves some kind of personal connection even if she doesn't want to admit it, even as she's yelling at Jack and Spiderbot and Twig to just go away, let her stay on her crashed Spaceship alone forever, she doesn't need anyone, all she needs is her science stuff and herself.

 

She's a blast.

[Darien Cadell]

I... sorta fall under the same scope? I like to think each new game - whether it be MMO or pen-and-paper or what-have-you - is a chance for a new story with a new character. It also doesn't help that I usually have, like, twenty million character ideas floating around in my head that I just can't wait to use.

 

Still, it's really neat to see how people adapt one character to a number of different games, molding and refining them based on the setting and what they've learned from playing them before. The closest I've done is adapt a goofball hero character from Champions online for a one-shot superhero game, which was quite fun. Lard Almighty is still my favorite superhero.

 

Echoing this, except the Lard Almighty thing, which I am still laughing at.

 

I've played some form of the emokid girlrogue thing from... oh, way back when, probably Neverwinter Nights was my first go at it, but they've never been the same person, never had the same name, nor even been similar enough to really invoke variations on a theme. FFXI was my first MMO, and I played a Tarutaru Ninja girl, so there are probably echoes even there, but every time a new game has come up, I've been too excited about trying something new to really draw someone out of the past and reconstruct them. My favorite characters have tended to be the ones who are completely out of my comfort zone that make me work at making them special in new ways.

[Kellach Woods]

So first I made Kell on FFXIV.

 

Das it mane. I don't reuse characters through games, except maybe in looks and even then, because the games' storylines are so different.

[Grott]

So first I made Kell on FFXIV.

 

[Shuck]

So check this out. No, for real, check it out:

 

A solidly constructed character is not dependent on setting. Captain Nemo is Captain Nemo no matter what the setting may be. King Arthur is King Arthur, even if you call him something else, and throw him into the far future.

 

A narrative starring a character that is entirely dependent on setting and namedrops is fanfiction. There's nothing wrong with fanfiction, people love it, whatever. But, like...let's not pretend that FFXIV is an entirely original setting. It's Fantasy World #3000.

 

There's swords. There's magic. They got goofy names for gods and stuff. Just now, someone's decided guns are cool, and magic guns are cooler still. We've all done this a million times. The only thing that changes is the names of the cities, and what you call the races. Little details. A core personality is not details. Details, when regarding people, are measured in experiences.

 

In summary: Making a new character every single time doesn't make you cool or interesting. Not making a new character every single time doesn't make you cool or interesting.

 

None of you people are cool or interesting, and neither am I.

 

Ok, so on topic:

 

Isaac Jacobi, my character in 1.0 and into 2.whogivesafuck is basically Captain Nemo. I'm not lying, he's a guy with a head for building shit that was adamantly against imperialism and oligarchal governments.

 

Through repeated attempts to share what was basically an expression of hope with the rest of the world, and being told, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn't wanted because of his station/background/upbringing/doesn't matter, he retreated inward, and set on a goal to build himself what was basically to be his own little microcosm.

 

Experiences saw him shoved down the road of a violent, ruthless freedom fighter, and eventual inventor recluse.

 

You see this? You see this shit above? This is called brevity.

 

On Clementine:

 

Really, I just wanted to do a different thing with ESO, so I watched The Raid instead of thinking super hard about things, because that's exactly how you end up with overwrought, impossibly boring and hard to believe characters. I decided she would be a kind of lawman, and that her experiences growing up would've been as a kind of lazy fuckabout who like to drink, fight, and was grudgingly put through school.

 

Such was her spite that she did very well, in an effort to never see any kind of schooling again.

 

Experiences in XIV have taken her into military service, and now she heads Misericorde.

 

Again. Motherfucking brevity. You use...you know, you use fewer words to convey basic ideas, because it's fucking impossible to sum up a character with a D&D alignment and a bunch of pictures.

 

Ya'll feel me? Don't you worry. You will.

[Orlog]

So first I made Kell on FFXIV.

 

Das it mane. I don't reuse characters through games, except maybe in looks and even then, because the games' storylines are so different.

 

Okay... Thanks for that fine contribution, I guess? I'm not really sure what the point of this post was other than to jump on the train of people saying they don't re-use characters for their MMOs.

 

I mean, it's fine if you don't. But at least everyone else gave two shits enough to actually contribute to the thread itself in their own way.

 

[Kellach Woods]

Saw the first post and answered.

If you want the actual evolution from the initial roll to now I can definitely write that up, but I don't think I have the proper screenshots from back then to properly explain it.

 

I saw the original cutscene having the adventurer come from a ship in Limsa Lominsa, I figured "Hm that sounds like a good hook". Asked around, saw it was a feasible thing in lore, so I just made up the rest of the lore.

 

As Kell grew into his own character the lore itself surrounding the character grew. I'd say it stands on its own two feet but definitely needs crutches. Some stuff I need to fix.

 

It's really in looks that he evolved though - Used to be I'd have purple/magenta highlights, or monocolored highlights matching his pants with dark lipstick, and try to play up the effeminate nature of the character.

 

Naturally nobody liked it, or the few who did weren't vocal enough, so while I didn't change the character all that much (he's still very, VERY effeminate if he wants to), he's a lot more serious after a "life" changing event. Still got long hair, but ties it in a more masculine ponytail. He only wears lipgloss now, and even his outfits haven't changed much these days, keeping the "gladiator superhero" outfit as many hated it in open defiance of their taste and a way to affirm himself, which he hadn't exactly done at the time. 

 

From there, I started tying his outfits to his own personal lore as an attempt to keep close to home while he can no longer visit or get letters from it.