SE, please designate a Role Play friendly server!

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

The RP community will probably have to stay a subcommunity within one of the 10 worlds. The RP community is entirely too small atm to be designated their own server.

[Fensfield]

The RP community will probably have to stay a subcommunity within one of the 10 worlds. The RP community is entirely too small atm to be designated their own server.

To briefly reiterate a point once more:

This thread is not demanding the RP community get a server all its own. It's asking the developers to officially suggest a server we ought be congregating on along with anyone else fancies playing there (and so that you lot 'don't like us terribly much know where you ought be avoiding, without having to bother looking it up as you do now).

Nobody in this thread wants a server to ourselves, as far as I can tell, but rather is asking for an official, permanent suggestion both to resolve the short term issue of potentially being split up by the server merge, and the long-term issue of disseminating to potential new roleplayers where to find people with similar interests now that the likelihood of the gaming media doing it for us as they did in the past is extremely low.

This is being asked now, size of the community (which is actually quite large, coherent and diverse compared to many larger pay-to-play MMOs I've tried to find roleplay on) aside, for the above reasons and also because Naoki Yoshida has said he recognises the need for such a server. This merge presents him with a very good opportunity to act on that recognition.

[Rhomagus]

The RP community will probably have to stay a subcommunity within one of the 10 worlds. The RP community is entirely too small atm to be designated their own server.

To be honest the same could be said about the EU community but the suggestion for a server was made to help alleviate that problem. The EU community still has the option to congregate on whatever server they choose.

The concessions are being made for the reasons of language barriers and low population among those languages. I see nothing wrong with making a similar suggestion. I don't advocate an RP only server though, that would help no one.

[Mychael]

To be honest the same could be said about the EU community but the suggestion for a server was made to help alleviate that problem. The EU community still has the option to congregate on whatever server they choose.

The concessions are being made for the reasons of language barriers and low population among those languages. I see nothing wrong with making a similar suggestion. I don't advocate an RP only server though, that would help no one.

The EU server was made not in interest of language barriers, but because of the unique time zone. Despite the early mistranslation, it is a time zone-specific server, not language-specific. Because there was a minority of them across all servers, it was substantially more difficult to find a group of people, of any subcategory (and speaking any language) willing to parcipate in events other than at weird hours of the morning or during work hours. This was because there are not enough of them to keep the population up across servers, and this merge is to increase the population of worlds.

The English-speaking RP community, however, plays at the same time as other time zones, and a server for RP would have practically no EU or JP players, and comparably few NA players. I'm sorry Fensfield, I'm sure there are a lot of you guys closer to GMT, but I just don't think an entire server is necessary or would flourish. I realize that some members of the RP and non-RP community prefer to ignore each other, but the efforts of both are of equal necessity for a world to flourish.

Sorry for the ninja edit, I hope it's not too late. :<

[Fensfield]

<Above>

Just so as not to appear the un-sympathetic US-timezoner with the following..

I'm in England, and four of the seven people I roleplay with the most in FF XIV are from England as well >.>

Anyway, you are right that the RP community is somewhat skewed toward the US timezone, but insofar as that is true I can assure you, a lot of us EU-RP'ers are pretty used to accommodating the timezone preferences of US players when it comes to event scheduling and stuff =.= And a lot of us aren't native English speakers either - two of my closest friends in the RP community natively speak German (which itself seems to be a country with a remarkably large online interest in RP) and generally profess to preferring more people to play with over being able to play in their home language (heck, one of them hates playing in German).

Honestly I really don't know what to say about your argument though, Mychael. Compulsive need to assert my own timezone aside.. I'll leave that to the more informed and able or something. But I seriously doubt any possible RP server would see a complete dearth of non-American players and strongly suspect most non-American roleplayers would sooner go where the majority of RP'ers are, regardless of timezone.

Heck, judging from my own, admittedly limited experience, I'd also not be terribly surprised if the majority of EU roleplayers that don't speak English well enough to play in it would still prefer to go to the primary roleplay server rather than one supposedly for their timezone, if only on the off-chance they'd be more likely to meet people that speak their language and share their interest there, anyway.

I guess.. my point really is that this particular aspect of the argument is really all too vague and hard to judge to have awfully much bearing on the discussion, whether for or against. Thanks for being so nice about it though!

[Ianeira]

Thank you Oskar for posting this. Sorry to be late to the party but I just wanted to chime in with my own thoughts, which I'm sure mirror many of the views already posted. I think that a designated role-play "friendly" server would be a good thing and don't think it to be too unreasonable a request, particularly since Yoshi-P has already spoken on the matter. This also seems like a particularly opportune time to address this, what with the server merges set up to happen soon.

As has already been stated, I don't think anyone wants a "RP only" server, nor do I think anyone has any expectations that everyone on the server must role-play or anything like that. But having a little arrow or something to indicate to not only existing RPers but also those who might be interested in participating with us that X server has an established community of role-players would be valuable.

This works the other way as well. I know there are people who have particular notions about RPers - whether from stereotypes or from personal experiences - and feel negatively about joining such a server. While I agree with the sentiment that the vast majority of us as RPers tend to be pretty low-key and avoiding excessive use of /say and /emote in public areas, this is not always the case. People who are easily annoyed by this sort of thing can see that such-and-such a server has been designated as being friendly to RPers and may opt to choose another server instead, so as to avoid it.

This is a wonderful idea and I hope that it is given the consideration that it deserves.

[Coglin]

This thread is not demanding the RP community get a server all its own.

Actually, the problem is the fools here demanding that they do get a server all there own. Its an attept by a small section of the community who are anti-RPer for no distinct reason. At least they have provided no reason, other then that they hate them for playing differently then they do. I have yet to encounter anyone on besaid (having played there for quit some time myself) who had any issues with it. They are being borderline bigots, absolute sectarians, and appear to supremistically believe they are better then those who play differently. What those here who bash them blindly fail to compreend, is how they darken there own image to the community by blindly hating that group, and subsequently bashing them all over the forums.

The EU server was made not in interest of language barriers, but because of the unique time zone. Despite the early mistranslation, it is a time zone-specific server, not language-specific.

I am not so sure I buy that. If it were the case, they would chose to segregate the english speaking EU regions from the Americas english speaking community for the sake of time zones.

I for one work rotating swing shift. Thus, I play various hours, depending on what shift I am working. COnsequently, I play with alot of EU players in my LS who speak english, yet are in a completely diferent time zone. So the logic of seperating regions due to time ones vs. Language doesn't seem to be justified.

[Mychael]

I'm sorry if I came off as rude to anyone outside of the US. The reason why I mentioned you specifically was because I know you are from England (or at least I knew you were somewhere in the European Union ;>) and didn't want to step on your toes by pretending I knew exactly how you felt. My intention was only partially trying to point out that an RP server would be skewed toward the US time zone. I also have no ability to predict what effect that would have on peoples' server choices.

The point I originally was trying to make was simply that the creation of a server recommended for a specific time zone didn't have any relevance to the argument of creating a server for a specific community; someone before me had attempted to justify an RP server because of the EU server's existence. What happened when I tried to write it out spun off in a different direction.

To try again, the Server 10 recommendation was, as far as I can tell, because there are so few players near GMT that they had to bend their hours to be able to have access to as much activity as the US or JP players had; whether or not you guys minded that is something I can't say, but I believe that SE's primary goal in this merge was to make sure there was always someone for everyone to play with.

The idea of a role-play server is a slightly different boat. In my experience, the Role-playing community on Besaid does not have a shortage of players to play with, unless they limit themselves to only playing with other RPers. And even then, the items and achievements of the non-RP community do somewhat affect the RP community. I somehow managed in that last post to get off onto the topic of one of my other posts, which was that I don't think the RP community is large enough to flourish without the help of non-RPers.

I also maintain one of my previous points, that I feel that whether it's a "suggestion" or an official label, there will be a large majority of non-RP players who avoid that server so long as SE recognizes it. While a lot of people will avoid the RPC's choice, that will most likely be viewed as a sub-community, much like it is now. If SE says anything at all regarding which server is the RP server, the community will begin to view it as a server dedicated to role-players. Then, even those who would happily co-exist with you and probably (possibly) make your world a better place will be deterred. I don't agree with this mindset, but I do believe it would emerge. Coincidentally, that's just a gut feeling, and may be far-fetched.

That said, I'm not able to say certainly whether an officially-recognized server is good or bad.. I just have a bad feeling about it.

I am not so sure I buy that. If it were the case, they would chose to segregate the english speaking EU regions from the Americas english speaking community for the sake of time zones.

I for one work rotating swing shift. Thus, I play various hours, depending on what shift I am working. COnsequently, I play with alot of EU players in my LS who speak english, yet are in a completely diferent time zone. So the logic of seperating regions due to time ones vs. Language doesn't seem to be justified.

I don't like the idea either. I can't claim to have "international" LSs, but one of mine does have an unusually high number of UK residents, and I play with them often as I have three mornings a week with no classes, but can't help waking up at 5am. I know that a lot of people from other time zones are up during a "EU peak time" as well, so I'm not sure the servers are "barren." Nonetheless, SE chose to correct the page to say "EU time zone" instead of "FR/GE players," so I have to assume that their goal was to have one server with a high population during that "peak," and let the rest suffer. I'm not sure that's a good idea either. I think I actually preferred the language grouping, but I'm just referring to what SE said and how I interpreted it. I'm probably wrong.

[Kyri]

What I have been looking for on the side of FFXIV and FFXI is indeed a official roleplay server. I will admit im not in character often but I would be if that was the case. I do see that this would start out as a small community but I also see prospect for it as well. Roleplay in Besaid is dying.. I know many friends would disagree but half the RPC linkshells are gone and it is almost impossible to even find a ls that roleplays in linkshell anymore. I blame a lot of this on people quitting but mostly the harassment they get from the people in their non rp shells.

Have any of you played a MuD? A game like Lusternia for instance. right there. that's what I am looking for, but not as a text based game. I want a community to roleplay, I want people to log on out of character and be politely pm'ed that this is just how it goes. I am -dying- for a game that plays this way and in fairness games like lusternia did very well, and still do to a extent. You would be surprised how many non roleplayers get into this groove on games like that. people who never thought about it love it and do it fairly often. Final fantasy's have always been my favorite genre of games and I seriously think they could pull of something like this, bring the world of MuD roleplay to a MMO standard better then anyone else could. That is the game im looking for.

[Nee]

I agree with Kyri, right now my one and only rp shell has been dead now for a couple of months and would like to get a new shell. With the merges this may be put off further. Having a server designated at least as rp friendly would help bring players together. Also it would be easier for us new to rp and considered as "light" rpers have an easier time trying to find like minded people. Also as has been said before, those who have an open hostility towards those who like rp, know what server to avoid, which is something both sides of the issue would prefer I think