Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Amnmaat]

Fun thing! Yuri is a Male Russian name but Female Japanese name (or femenine but more gender-neutral, as there are Japanese men named Yuri), Andrea is a Male Italian Name but a Female Name elsewhere. Nicknames like Charlie, Sam, Bobby (Bobbie), Joey (Jo/Joe) and other are also pretty gender-neutral. So telling a person's gender just by their name is not as easy as you make it sound. Also, while the Viera are vaguely Icelandic-identified, they are explicitly a Fantasy race.

The Lore team could indeed choose to give them gendered names, and update the Naming Conventions appropriately, but so far there seems to be more evidence to them having mono-gendered names (What with the "Indistiguishable until puberty" thing) than the alternative. Unless, as Halivel mentioned, they forgo naming until adolescence/change their names upon adolescence.

That line about puberty applies to all races in fact or fiction. A lot of times you can't tell the gender of a pre-pubecent child. The mother knows the gender, they don't close their eyes when the child is born. The one that might not recognize the gender is the Viera father who leaves to ward the forest again.

That line about not knowing the gender is just a scapegoat statement to push the narrative of why they only added female Viera. Just like the BS they fed us with female hrothgar about how there's 1 female hrothgar birthing an entire generation of hrothgars alone, like a 1 to 9 ratio.
As for your Russia-japanese comparison; you're comparing two regions/races that have nothing to do with each other. It's like comparing Elezen names with Au ra names. You will never find me associating Lisa with a man here in North america.

PS. Fantasy is based on reality; else they wouldn't be tying race names to iceland or france.

[wereotter]

Fun thing! Yuri is a Male Russian name but Female Japanese name (or femenine but more gender-neutral, as there are Japanese men named Yuri), Andrea is a Male Italian Name but a Female Name elsewhere. Nicknames like Charlie, Sam, Bobby (Bobbie), Joey (Jo/Joe) and other are also pretty gender-neutral. So telling a person's gender just by their name is not as easy as you make it sound. Also, while the Viera are vaguely Icelandic-identified, they are explicitly a Fantasy race.

The Lore team could indeed choose to give them gendered names, and update the Naming Conventions appropriately, but so far there seems to be more evidence to them having mono-gendered names (What with the "Indistiguishable until puberty" thing) than the alternative. Unless, as Halivel mentioned, they forgo naming until adolescence/change their names upon adolescence.

If it's a spoken language, absolutely. Though in a game with text for everything, spelling tends to give the sex away...

Jo - female. Joe - male
Toni - female. Tony - male
Erin - female. Aaron - male
Bobbi - Female. Bobby - male

I only comment since one of your examples is my real world first name, and it frustrates me to no end when people use the wrong spelling, since I'm very clearly not the sex of the spelling they use.

In the case of Viera, though, if the lore does become that sex is indeterminate before puberty, then they could just use the same names for men as they do for women and call it a day. Or they could go with the option that they know which ones are the males, but they raise them anyway because that's what parents do. In pre-industrial societies like this game, infants are 100% reliant on their mothers for nourishment, so they could be raised by the ladies of the village before accepting their responsibilities to protect the wood when they come of age.

[Allegor]

I doubt name convention really matter when most people don't even use them. That said, I agree the whole "undetermined sex until puberty" sounds a little...contrived, if not redundant. I mean, even with human children you can pass them off as the other gender just by dressing them differently, because sexual dimorphism hasn't kicked in yet but still have different organs, unless it implies Viera are...for the sake of not going into nsfw territory, actually reptilian. Still doesn't invalidate gender neutral names though

[Halivel]

I doubt name convention really matter when most people don't even use them.

That's a bit of a weird logic. They did naming convention for Au Ra, male Hrothgars and female Viera, why it suddenly doesn't matter for missing genders (we didn't discuss potential female Hrothgars naming convention, but to be fair there's a separate thread for them)? There's still plenty of role players, this info has a big value at least for them (myself including). And in case with RP even forest names matter, because not everyone role plays as WoL, even if the go trough the main story as one.

And in terms of gender neutral names, my country has some. There aren't much of them, mind me, but they are there, and have same spelling and pronounciation. So it's not some kind of a weird thing even irl, and having it in game for a fictional race wouldn't be any weirder. But the decision is up to SE, of course.

[Theodric]

I can't say I care much for the idea of male viera being overly feminine or androgynous, be it in terms of their appearance or naming conventions. It just isn't interesting to me. Especially not as a guy who is into other guys.

[Allegor]

That's a bit of a weird logic. They did naming convention for Au Ra, male Hrothgars and female Viera, why it suddenly doesn't matter for missing genders (we didn't discuss potential female Hrothgars naming convention, but to be fair there's a separate thread for them)? There's still plenty of role players, this info has a big value at least for them (myself including). And in case with RP even forest names matter, because not everyone role plays as WoL, even if the go trough the main story as one.

And in terms of gender neutral names, my country has some. There aren't much of them, mind me, but they are there, and have same spelling and pronounciation. So it's not some kind of a weird thing even irl, and having it in game for a fictional race wouldn't be any weirder. But the decision is up to SE, of course.

Oh, what I meant was it's kind of a given they will have name conventions, but it's not big enough of a deal to make a debate out of it since most people don't even use lore-appropriate names to begin with (Roe and Lalas being the prime example). In short, if I don't like their name convention, nothing's stopping me from simply calling him Joe Smith and even coming up with a reason to be named as such /shrug

[Halivel]

Oh, what I meant was it's kind of a given they will have name conventions, but it's not big enough of a deal to make a debate out of it since most people don't even use lore-appropriate names to begin with (Roe and Lalas being the prime example). In short, if I don't like their name convention, nothing's stopping me from simply calling him Joe Smith and even coming up with a reason to be named as such /shrug

Ah okay, I got it wrong then, sorry. Well yeah, that's true as well. I saw plenty of role players who doesn't use lore-appropriate names either, and they just come up with backstories that back up their decisions.

[dezzmont]

While I think some of the claims about secret motivations are dubious, as well as the 'please no LGBTQ+' stuff being... icky... I think Amnmaat is correct that adding Male Viera and Female Hrothgar would STRONGLY signal an intent to keep FFXIV going and prioritizing keeping it good. The lack of them doesn't say the opposite though, we have known for a long time SE doesn't prioritize resources to XIV despite how much money it makes them.

I think it would be absurd not to notice XIV is in a good position to be the fabled 'WoW killer' MMOs have been chasing for over a decade because if you do that you make all the money, and invest harder into it on multiple levels. In a way they are doing that: reworking ARR indicates they think the game will live long enough the new player experience will matter, and potentially sets them up to extend the trial to all of ARR without turning people off. So I definitively think XIV has at LEAST 2 expansions left. The question is how SE will try to maintain their dominance of the MMO market, and new races are sign of growing prioritization of the game, more than if XIV is gunna die.

[SturmChurro]

Didn't Yoshi P say that he imagines a male Viera to have a Elezen body with a Miqo'te head? Excluding the chest hair that concept art does kind of look like how he imagine them to be

If they made it based off that concept... That one really is hideous..

I think it would be absurd not to notice XIV is in a good position to be the fabled 'WoW killer' MMOs have been chasing for over a decade because

Don't know about it being a WoW killer. Different niches and a lot of people still won't play this cause "weeb game". Popular MMORPG in it's own right, probably a lot due to the fact that there just aren't any good alternatives currently. To add, if anything WoW will probably kill itself.

[Awha]

Personally I think we need some body type representation, we need an overweight body type model for players. That said in this world of SE and their budget practices, I do think a valid question the community has to ask how bad do they want the missing genders, and what are they willing to give up for them to be added.

I do not think FFXIV will be going into maintenance mode anytime soon, nor do I think it would be wise of them to cannibalize their own cash cow with another MMO release. Though I do hope they allow FFXIV a large development budget over a marketing one.

Also the only WoW killer would be blizzard, the games are so far apart in terms of game play, encounter design etc. . . that they can largely survive in the same market space.