Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
*Big ol' snip so my post box/reply thing isn't unnecessarily long!*
First of all, nice to see a fellow CoX player!

Anyway, from a mechanics perspective as FFXIV now, I definitely get it! It would be a massive headache and the game itself would need a massive overhaul / redevelopment entirely. But I wouldn't be opposed to a Garlemald start having been an option. The introduction to ARR is somewhat different depending on the city you start in anyhow and it could have gone from there I suppose. From an RP perspective though, I absolutely never take what a person's character does or what they enjoy RPing and impose that onto them as a person. My main character for instance is an absolute kupo of a bandit that regularly steals from and victimizes innocent folk. Another character of mine is a blatantly racist (especially towards Au'ra) and very aggressive Ishgardian inquisitor, a fundamentalist who wants to return to how Ishgard was before the "heretics" got their way who's very set in his ways and believes in instant "justice" by way of flintlock pistol.

Despite these characters certainly being on the darker end of the spectrum, it says nothing about me as a person. I'm a complete softy IRL and try to be kind to an actual fault. These sorts of things writing concepts a person wants to tap into should never be used to judge a person as first glance and IC actions should never be taken OOC. It's an extremely unhealthy mindset. Last year there was a massive thread in which an OP actually posed a somewhat similar question to this thread. They asked about playing a die-hard Pro-Garlean character and the amount of venom and rudeness this person suffered just for daring to ask about playing such a character was insane. People were treating them like a monster just for even wanting to have such a character and quite frankly anyone who can't separate IC from OOC has no business role-playing in general.

It is one thing to be uncomfortable with certain concepts and to prefer not to interact with it, that's perfectly fine and everyone is entitled to play as they're most comfortable! It's another to begin questioning, hating, or avoiding a person and taking it personally because of what they want to play. That post below me talking about genociding beastmen? I do not immediately see a terrible person, an extremist wanting to act out a fantasy. I am not concerned about them at all. They want to roleplay a particularly dark concept and there is nothing wrong with that any more than a person who enjoys playing Grand Theft Auto or playing as Principality of Zeon (literal space nazis) in the old PS2 Gundam games.

In any case, I think it would be cool if we could join the Empire but it will never happen as the game is now, nor should it without the necessary rework to accompany it. But if it did I don't see a problem with it, nor do I think we should actively fight against it being an option.