Help Choosing a Server

[Jeeqbit]

I made research and decided that Coeurl (Crystal DC) was possibly best suited to my playstyle. I have some background with RPing (mostly from tabletop RPGs) and I feel a bit too casual for the competitive mindset that pushes people toward the Aether DC.

You're right that people often go to Aether for raiding, and that Crystal is seen as the roleplaying data center. And while Coeurl is on Crystal, the roleplaying started from Balmung and leaked outward to worlds like Mateus, so Coeurl will have some but not necessarily as much as the others.

I could not recreate my character to fix character creation mistakes.

It's actually possible to get a Fantasia from a quest which allow you to remake the character. You can also pay for a character rename.

Which server(s) would be a good place to give this game an honest go around?

As long as it's not the Dynamis data center, you're good. That data center was brand new and never was able to establish a strong playerbase, so queues are difficult.

It's probably also good if a given world isn't locked that often, because it causes it to be too full of veteran players and you need that mix of old and new players for things to feel healthy. I don't think Coeurl has ever been locked too often and when I used to hang there for a while 5-6 years ago, it was really nice there, but can't say how it is now.

It is to note that I have only vague memories of the story.

For what it's worth, I did the story as each patch came out. That means there is 4 months between each patch story, and around 2 years between each expansion story. So you can imagine how I, having played since ARR, have to routinely remember what the story was about and only have vague memories of it whenever a new patch comes out.

Usually, the vague memories come back just enough. What the NPCs say jog your memory to an extent, and it might be very vague and you might forget/miss things for a bit, but it's just going to happen no matter what. The story is too complex to truly remember and comprehend all of it, all of the time, especially on the first playthrough. All you can do is try your best.

New Game+ is certainly an option. You can also watch through cutscenes of the quests and the duties via "The Unending Journey" at an Inn. Another option is to read through the quest journal, which provides a historical summary of each quest you did, if you click the Complete button on the Journal. However, this is very tedious to read through and takes a long time, compared to just watching cutscenes or replaying it, although I personally use it when reminding myself of what happened in class/job quests.