I would in a heartbeat. I find it weird how all these NPC player characters are in a company that the player themself is unable to join. Why is that? Why are we forced to witness the story of Final Fantasy 14 and fight for causes we might not necessarily believe in? What if we side with the Empire?

To be more practical, it's due to development costs probably and would take some time, so obviously there was no chance of this ever happening at launch. But for a future expansion (FF14 has a 10 year dev cycle, remember, lots of things could happen!) the ability to join the Empire would be pretty neat. Wielding those gunblades, fancy class names, cool looking gear, a unique storyline from a different perspective, add in some pvp features, and what's not to love really?

I like being in the Maelstrom and all, but if we could join the Empire like all these other Eorzeans can, but not us for some reason because the developers don't want us to, I would drop it and dash to the Emperor in a second!

My life for the Empire!