Quote Originally Posted by Berethos View Post
According to this - http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post898626 - they're both proxy's for our own characters (for trailer and advertising purposes it would seem) as well as characters that exist in Eorzea on their own. Since they are confirmed to exist, and this party of five is identical across the board...unless we learn later that they are a twisted version based on them but with a different origin, it's the same set of characters.
That quote from Koji has always been very problematic though. He's speaking in the sense that Derplander is a real character in the same way that everyone else's WoLs are real characters even when perceived by another player; they're just not THE WoL in your version of the story. The easiest way to think of his statement is that Derplander is Koji's character. He exists in the world, but if he's not being played by you personally then he just another adventurer.

We saw Derplander go to Ishgard with Tataru and Alphinaud and become a dragoon in the trailers. If the WoD was the same Derplander then Alphinaud would have recognised him when we met them would he not? Of course as soon as we take control of our characters none of the stuff in those trailers ever actually happened to Derplander; it happened to OUR characters instead. This is why Koji's statement about Derplander being a real character can't be taken as literally as people would like: it's simply impossible for him to be real in that sense as soon as we players interact with the game as we replace Derplander in the story.