Of all the communities I can closely compare ffxiv’s to is their antics remind me of the Warrior Cats community. I could go into detail about that, but it’s the same generic shit you see everywhere in teenage fandoms like home stuck and hetalia. The thing that makes FFXIV’s worse is that at least with those groups, they’re kids and they of course are going to do dumb shit. These people are well in their 30’s and 40’s which amps up the insanity meter to me.
I lost some online friends to this behaviour. They were what I thought, pretty normal well rounded people that I had known through gaming for 3-4 years, asked them to play ff with me, they transformed into Limsa freaks it was honestly so crazy to see how quickly the brain rot set in and their entire personalities warp.
I remember a comment in a twitter argument one time regarding LazyPeon's early review of FFXIV where it said "People don't play this game anymore, they live their lives in this game now." That is an observation that is actually pretty accurate when you think about it; the RP community is giant in this game and it's aggressively horny too but that's beside the point. There are staggering amounts of rp venues advertised in party finder, there's a 'fake identity' complex that goes into a lot of these twitter accounts where people won't post pictures of themselves in real life anymore and they'll larp as their characters as if they are their characters, rather than go to a beach anymore they instead go to the moonfire faire along the beach. And there's no one to question you because of the authoritarian terms of service that broadly strokes every wrong doing. I don't know, it feels like people are 'escaping' reality these days because their own realities are pathetic. Ugly in real life? Just put your UwU waifu as your avatar and use that as your identity nowadays.
I *sorta* know the bench regular. They were kind of a meme because they were often found passed out under the bench and people like to say it's because of the housing crisis. Other than that, I don't really know much about them but an FC member claims they're a jerk. Whatever it is, I'm not involved.
I got the impression people ship him with Urianger because he seemed to be Ryne's other father figure.
Considering these people are likely afraid of covid, I can see how that's been heightened in recent years, why go to a beach irl (assuming you live near one anyway) when you can do it ingame and have attachments to whatever friend circle you are in.
Popular casual anime styled MMO with good outfit customization/variety (especially for female characters) and with good array of cute emotes is the tl;dr.
From experience, RP in-game is predominantly half-ERP, part-casual hangouts and in-character back-and-forths at venues, or partly people wanting to do nothing but dark, edgy, super serious, morally questionable "deep" plotlines that aren't well thought out or engaged in due to the limiting nature of the game format and in-game chat, and it really pisses people off when you won't kowtow to people outright presenting their characters as "This is a person you should automatically respect and fear even if your character may not know anything about them and would feasibly be under no reasonable obligation to put up with their bullshit if they're trying to act like an edgy shitter in-character". Bonus points if you won't let them "auto-win" some manner of conflict just by virtue of their character being "morally dubious".
Honestly if I wanted to do something more complicated then casual stuff, I'd just use the game as effectively a background to establish the scene and just type everything out from there with using "(cont)" to indicate my post isn't finished if needed. Basically text rp, just with nice visual backdrop and solid backbone to build around it as FFXIV is such a deep setting with solid rules that are relatively easy to follow. I used to do that with one person I RP'd through 3.0-4.0's MSQ with and it was nice to not feel so alone in the MSQ both narratively and literally. It added some much needed spice to 4.0 I'll say that much as we discussed what we thought of the events and our job story (I was Drk at the time which...oh boy that was fun to explain in-character) as we went through it.
Kind of reminder it took lots of digging for poor souls who Stan V-tubers and find out that they are either tranny or pro tranny.
I don't know if it's so much they can't read more so that they either don't socially interact with people IRL or they resign themselves to media consumption made for a younger demographic. Does that mean they can't read? Sure, but they most likely find comfort in a movie like "Avengers" then say "Se7en" or "Fight Club". As for the ERP aspect, I said before I don't really give a shit. I can think of a really fun game of "is this a guy or girl IRL" when they describe sexual acts because I can probably assure you these people who play as woman hookers in those venues have no clue what women feel during sexual intercourse so you'll get the most alien descriptions and it's just comedy gold.
The racial identity is weird because the races go all over the place basically. You can find just about every race ever in every major city and nation for the most part so culture seems to be mostly defined by the nation as opposed to race the majority of the time. Miqo'te who still live in their tribes have something of an identity and cultural lining, Elezen have their little scuffle with wildwood vs duskwight, and Viera have an implied culture that you basically never see due to them being isolated somewhere in Othard or something and they just take from everywhere else to fit in. It all gets roughly boiled down to where you live as opposed to what your race is, so I can understand what you mean by the races being underwhelming. I think the world itself is fine though and has things you can work within if you want to.
Oh, if only some of the shit I've seen was that tame in its cringe.
XIV is strict about harassment so they will hide behind a GM for any slight offense.
I always wondered how people manage to get all jobs to level 90, and then do it again a few more times on an alt on a different DC.
Subtlety of well organized group of targeted griefers/stalkers has worked since days of early MMOs.
I've lost some friends through this game too. I've made very little friends through it.
That's why you have so many losers trying to position themselves as community figures like Cole Evyx. Their world view is caged inside this game and so it means the world to them. I know some who have put all their chips into this game for their social life.
The difference with LARPs is that people have to show up in real life and there's a standard to it. In FFXIV you have roleplayers who just want to be an uwu cat and have no respect for established lore.
Game appeals to the socially isolated. Much like troons fucked over the SCP foundation, they've also taken over most big communities surrounding FFXIV. This in turn attracts more troons. You got guys pretending to be trans to get attention too.
We've talked before about how The Balance discord stalks and harasses people. There's cases of targeted harassment in this game. Back in Stormblood a few big free companies would have lists of people they don't like.
