Fire, Fira, Firaga?

[Anonymoose]

Back in Beta, if I'm remembering it right, they explained it mainly as one of those things where the localizations got to make a judgment call.

In Japanese, they are still called Fire, Fira, Firaga. German went with Feuer, Feura, Feuga. French went with Feu, Extra Feu, and Mega Feu.

English was chosen as I II III basically because it's just as easy to pick out of a list as the JP version, where only the last symbol changes, and won't be confusing to anyone when you're looking at them in an out-of-order list such as a hotbar (though, I would argue that if the icons are easily identifiable, it doesn't matter what they're called. We know the icons better than the skill names.)

"Function over form," I think is the best explanation of the judgment call. It's easy to read, easy to learn, easy to explain. (Even if not as fancy.)

Maybe this'll be the first time we get to discuss it without SE shutting it down after personal attacks pepper several rounds of:

"Fire, Fira, Firaga are tradition!"
"Actually, it was originally I II III."
"Numbers are ugly!"
"Didn't FFXI do both based on AoE?"
"They think Americans are stupid!"
"Team made a decision I don't like, they are teh sux as a whole now."