Why did you pick so and so character/name and nation?

[Sunrider]

I chose my original name(BurningPanther), because my desired(Sunrider), was unavailable, which made me emo inside . At any rate, I like the species(Genus? I forget the order) pantera, and had an obsession with the symbology of fire, and so there you have it.

Five years later, I say "fuck it, I want my original name," and created a BurningPanther mule, swapped servers, induced the name conflict, and finally got Sunrider. Back in 1993, I was fiddling online looking at varying characters from the Star Wars expanded universe(Particularly "Tales of the Jedi,") coming across the Jedi couple of Nomi and Andur Sunrider. The name just clicked with me, and I've used the handle ever since.

Sometimes you choose your name, and sometimes, your name chooses you.


The nation was a toss-up. I'd gotten the lolBrady Guide about a month before finally installing the game, and had spent time mulling over my starting job, nation, etc,. I knew instantly that I loathed Windurst and Tarutaru, and was torn between the "Industrial Revolution" feel of Bastok, and San d'Oria rather romantic "Camalot" style. I wound up flipping a coin, which started be in Bastok. I'll probably employ the same decision-making process after I've gotten Rank 10 in all three and want to decide on a nation to settle in.


Race was also a toss-up between Elvaan and Hume. Again, I loathed Tarutaru, bore an indifference to Galka, and had had no interest in roleplaying a vagina(Mithra). Elvaan appeal to me much more, for no other reason than style, but I settled on Hume thanks to the impression that racial stats actually mattered. The face I chose(6B), was about the closest thing you could get to a black man in this game, and had extra sentimental value since it's hair resembles the the dreadlocks I used to have. It's the one decision I wish I could amend.


I started out on Kujata server, which lasted for all of about a week before meeting a former coworker that played and convinced me to move to Ragnarok. Instead of waiting on a WorldPass from the guy(who turned out to be incredibly inconsistent), I just created, deleted, and recreated my character until I landed on Ragnarok(which actually had the highest population at the time). The funny part is that the coworker(previously mentioned) and I never actually met in game until a level 75 experience party... four years later.


I was in love with the romantic, Musketeer-esque style of Red Mage, and have always held an interest in frontline hybrid classes. Imagine my surprise that it winds up playing as anything but, most of the time(and doesn't even get access to anything resembling a musket, to boot).

[Hellfury]

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But I come pretty close!
I always found that statement very amusing (not to mention accurate).

I went with Elvaan because I first started as a tarutaru blm, and realised pretty quickly "these dudes are squishy", went out and did "research", and decided Elvaan and Red Mage would probably be better for me, so of course I went with Sandy, being Elvaan and all, later made my way through windy missionstorylines, and then went with Bastok where I am now for easy smithing access and N.gustaberg OP being retarded.

[Acturus]

My wife (then girlfriend) picked my name. I don't remember the hows and whys about it, but she came up with "Acturus".

It wasn't until well after I had been playing that I discovered that "Arcturus" exists in several forms, including a star name, some anime character, and once back in 04 some guy asked if I named myself "after that comedian" who to this day I know nothing about.

As for San d'Oria, it was more that I picked the red-headed spikey haired elvaan because he looked most like me, so I followed the RP story and put the Elvaan in San d'Oria.

I know, nothing terribly imaginative.

As for my wife, she wanted to be a Mithra, and curse of the Brady Guide told us that Mithra make great THFs, so I said, "Name her Klepti," after a variation of Kleptomaniac. Needless to say, her THF is 15, her WHM is 75, and she hates her character nowadays.

[Eruantalon]

Name came from a book called "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin. My favorite character from the book. (Unfortunately that didnt last, if you have read the books you know what I mean )

^They're making a movie of the book.

So I chose Eruantalon because it's my real name translated into Tolkien Elvish. Since it's an Elvish name, I choose Elvaan. My brother was already in Bastok, so I went there. I chose blm because I wanted to blow stuff up. I think I just wanted something as close to a Wizard.

My mules I placed in different cities for whichever craft they were to be taking up. One I ended up leveling to 66pld/66mnk but retired her back to being a crafting mule again. Each mule is just my favorite face/hair of each race.

Ekibyougami - Japanese for "Angel of Death". kinda funny when I see the mithra "Angel of Death" running around.
Kwisatzhaderach - From the Dune book series.
Twod - acronym that was used by Spikedragon which meant "TARUTARU WARCRY OF DOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

If I ever make another mule, I'll name it Kyloke. I used a random generator for naming a dragon and abbreviated it to Kyloke. Hopefully it won't be taken when I make the character.

[Xanthe]

I used Xanthe as my Counter Strike alias way back in the day. I had picked that name by thumbing through my copy of Hesiod's Theogony (catalog of Greek mythological figures) looking for names that sounded good. In spite of my manhood I picked the feminine name. It worked out down the line for FFXI though when I chose to play a Mithra. I went with Mithra because I was originally going to be a THF or NIN and Mithra had the best stats for those, but that was before I was exposed to the awesomeness that is DRG.

[Teryn]

Name: Teryn
Was a friend from HS i liked the name and used it in game since everything else I tried was taken.

Race: Hume F
1) I couldn't use a chicks name on a guy model, 2) if im staring at a pixel ass It may as well be a chicks and not a guys.

Town: Sandy
Bastok seemed to industrial, Windy to cutesy/big, Sandy was a nice medieval look which suited my tastes best.

Started out as a sword and shield warrior got to 18 unlocked SJ and did whm/blm to 75.

[Achika]

It's fairly easy to tell what I've been doing when I make names of characters that I actually play.

My first character was a Taru F named Selan. At the time, I was playing Lufia II. I chose Taru because I wanted to annoy my one friend who I started the game with (He dropped the game not long after I started. D= Oh well, no loss). I started in Bastok cause various friends started there. I started as a WHM because I wanted to be one, but found out that WHM soloing sucks before subjob. So I decided I'd be safer with a sword, and leveled RDM with intents to switch back to WHM at 18. I never did.

My second character (And present main) is Achika. Wasn't so much that I was watching the Tenchi Muyo series at the time as my gf wouldn't not talk about how awesome Achika is. Her first incarnation was a Windurstian Mithra, which I mostly made to see what Windurst was like, and she became my Jeuno mule. Later, I was leveling clothcraft and decided the best place to bazaar fletchings was San d'Oria, outside the woodworking guild. I decided to remake Achika as a San d'Orian Hume F, because I had seen some cute styles and I wanted one. Achika was made as a BLM because I figured she'd have more survivability than Selan did, but I changed her to WAR planning to take her to 75 when WARs above 37 were fairly rare. I then decided to cap my MNK sub. At 75. I really should level her SAM to be closer to character, but meh.

My third character, my WHM mule, is Paksenarrion. I was currently reading The Deed of Paksenarrion series, so I stole that name. She's an Elvaan because the character in the book was tall, blonde, and had a braid. I have so many people that yell at me for choosing Elvaan since she wasn't an elf in the book. D= I also get yelled at for being a WHM and not a PLD. I'm currently debating if I want to level her PLD to 60ish for the AF, but undecided. She started in San d'Oria because I knew that nation like the back of my hand at that point.

Interestingly enough, with the exception of one of my mules on Achika's account, all are original names. Paks's accounts mules are all named after relic and mythic weapons, because that account was originally made so I didn't have to switch chars constantly when muling and I wanted a naming convention.

[Khajit]

Random name generator ftw. The names i wanted were taken so i kept on cylcing through them all until it picked a nice sounding name.
Originally I was a bastokan hume named shadi. In the opening cutscenes im basically finding myself the target of an angry galka. he is wearing body armour but gives the impression that it's not for his protection. It is really so that he can have a portable hard surface to smash my head in with. I go outside after being lost as hell. I see a nuclear wasteland. Eventually I have to logout and then i finally get the worldpass # from my friends so it's delete shadi and off to a new server.
Windy sounds alot better and i jion there. the random name generator gives me the name khajit. I was considering being a mithra but a catgirl in a japanese rpg setting with possibly a bunch of immature teenagers around seemed like a recipe for sexual harrassment.(there are also way too many tentacles in this game and this is a japanese one to boot) I settle on hume and pick the one with the cornrows cause this one looks like me alot except he's got bigger muscles.
Azamaria- the anime/mange chrno crusade, white hair(so gotta pick the clonethra)- i was going to level this character as either a brd or whm mule and considering that the character she is based off of can heal and raise the dead via singing the job selection was quite fitting.
orihime- I was a bleach fan
hedetsugu- I was having a friend get introduced to the game while my internet connection was down via borrowing my ps2. he misspelled the name of a magic the gathering character "Hetetsugu the heartless"(it's been so long i probably just mispelled it too) a large extremely bloodthirsty and powerful ogre shaman whom worships chaos and is capable of taking gods on in fights(melee and magical).

[isladar]

Race: Elvaan, this was an easy choice. I'm 5'11" in RL so went with the tallest model as well.

Did the exact. Same. Thing. I'm 6'0". I love not only being an Elvaan bitchqueen, but being probably the only tall one ever. Every time I see someone with my face model they're the short version, and therefore inherently inferior.

"Isladar" is the name of one of the kialli (demon lords) from my favorite book series. My first choice was "Gethsemane", but it had been taken. I have it as a mule name now. I chose the black-haired version as one of my girlfriends who played was the white-haired one; she was leveling DRK so I thought I'd go for PLD. Unfortunately I got to 25 on WAR, got Sturmwind, and changed history, etc.

The nation wasn't really even a choice; I hate short people. Though I'll probably eventually switch to Windy just to get the Queen of Swords card for my collection of Shit I Has What Takes Up Inventory Space.

[Max™]

Also: I got hard hearing Isladar talking about getting Sturmwind.

I also got hard when Isladar got sturmwind, though I did not know who Isladar was at the time, it was just that bitchin'.

Name/Nation? Um...

I'm the Great Axe Guru?

Windurst is obviously the best Nation?

My name is Max, so Maxaru... but that was taken on this server, so Gaxeguru it is.

[Vigilia]

Did the exact. Same. Thing. I'm 6'0". I love not only being an Elvaan bitchqueen, but being probably the only tall one ever. Every time I see someone with my face model they're the short version, and therefore inherently inferior.

Haha awesome. There are NO other tall elvaan Fs that I've ever met, everyone's shorter than me. Even my husband's character is medium elvaan male and I'm taller than him which irks him to no end but we were too far in the game before he realised.

[Lexa]

I picked hume, because I was lame and modeled my character after my first D&D character. Wish I hadn't. If I'd known I'd come to lovvvve PLD, I'd have picked Elvaan instead.

I started in Sandy because that's where my friends, who got me started in the game, were from. Later switched to Bastok, though, and apart from a brief period where I was Windurstian for the missions/flag, I <3 Bastok.

[isladar]

Haha awesome. There are NO other tall elvaan Fs that I've ever met, everyone's shorter than me. Even my husband's character is medium elvaan male and I'm taller than him which irks him to no end but we were too far in the game before he realised.

I collect small Elvaan males for just that reason! I'll have to show you my Valor Surcoat Boys' Choir some time.

[ringthree]

For my name? As a true nerd, I played a bunch of D & D when I was younger, and I had quite the Rogue named Lief Rocl. Lief was taken, and since I enjoyed the last name so much (being of my own creation), I just went with that. I didn't want to put in Liefrocl or some silly like that. Had I been able to, I would've been Lief or Lief Rocl, but squishing it and without caps makes it look so uncivilized! I also liked short names since my own is exceptionally long. Each one is nine letters >_> (I used to get a kick out of that, 9-9-9, the birth certificate was capped on the amount of letters, etc)

I decided that I wanted to be a Red Mage first and foremost, they were my favourite class in the original Final Fantasy- so I thought the in the vein of most "balanced". I then tried to pick my race around the idea of having a balanced character. Galkas seemed too melee for my mage, Tarutaru too mage for my melee, Mithra too girly for my manhood, and Elvaan too manhood for my girly- thus it was determined I would be hume. I chose the model that most represented what I looked like at the time, however the hair on the character creation screen is most definitely brown and not the auburn it is in game. It likened myself to the Al Bhed from FFX which I always liked though, so I kept it.

When reading the instruction manual I saw that Elvaan were "skilled in swordplay", and not being Elvaan I decided to start in their town in hopes of getting some sort of sword-related bonus. Most unfortunately, I didn't, I stayed since it was very Medieval Europe which I absolutely adored. Plus, everyone is so freaking arrogant- just like me! It's awesome.

>.> What edition did you start on? I figure everyone here is exceptionally younger than me, so no one played or understood AD&D, they all played Second Edition forward...

[Isiolia]

My name comes from the Neverwinter Nights random name generator. My first NWN character was Isiolia Marner, which I multiclassed to much with, making her a bit too weak (apparent when I couldn't use the ol' warp back the temple to heal trick with the final boss)...buuut, she was my first real kinda custom D&D type character, so the name stood out to me, despite not being one I came up with myself.

When I started FFXI, I actually tried to use other names, mostly Norse mythology names due to Valkyrie Profile. Alas, every Freya permutation I thought of was taken, etc. The real life friends that I was playing with bought the game on launch, whereas I didn't get it until a few days later...so they knew I was installing, and were waiting on me to get on. So rather than keep them waiting, I just went with a name I knew offhand.

I went with Mithra because I tend to play female characters in RPGs. More fun to play dress-up with a female, stare at female character for hours on end, etc. In part, the choice of Mithra had to do with choosing RDM. A more balanced race for what I saw as a hybrid job. Humes are boring, Elvaan are (outside of the faces) not appealing (*cough*elephant women*cough*), and Taru aren't exactly what I mean when I say "play a female"...
So Mithra, the petite, tomboyish female race, worked for both aesthetic and stat reasons.

RDM I picked because of a few things, not one of them having anything to do with Convert, Refresh, or the AF. For one, the friends I was starting with were already playing WHM and MNK. So, thinking I would be playing mostly with them, a full on mage or melee seemed to be out. From single player RPGs (again, Neverwinter mostly), I didn't want to rely entirely on magic, and thus be defenseless with no MP, but in turn I didn't want to be stuck buying potions to heal myself (showing just how much I knew about the game).
So RDM made sense to me, basically for self-sufficiency...which, it wound up being an excellent choice for anyway, just not for the reasons I originally thought it would be =P

Windurst I went with because I was playing Mithra, and because both of my friends started there.

[Rainewaters]

This is a very long story...
Not really.

Before I started the game, my username for aim was "A Raining Day" I got that cause I was in a trend where I made my usernames depending on the current weather. I was into RPing at the time, and once someone called me "Raine" and it sticked.

Eventually decided to start ffxi and wanted to name my char Raine, but it was taken. So...thought of something to do with rain...waters seemed to work. I chose female elf at the time cause I loved drawing elfs. Still do. Their ears are easier to draw than human ears. I didn't know what job I wanted to be so picked the jack of all trades: RDM. Really liked it. Picked Sandy cause of the entire elfs being from there and me still being into rping.

Around lvl 10 though, wanted to delete my char cause I didn't like the model, but 10 seconds before it was permanent, changed my mind. Don't know what made me do it, but glad I didn't. Besides, if I ever do get bored of female elvaan again, always plastic surgeon.

[alt]

I used the random name generator and picked the first elvaan name i could pronounce....

and i wanted the starter ring so i picked sandoria.

[Charismatic]

Model: Elvaan F 3A
Because she's got a bangin' body and looks fuckin' hot son, what other reason do you need?
Name: Believe it or not I was planning on being a Lv75 BRD & BST (after playing both to 66 I doubt I ever will take them to 75)

Nation: MOTHERFUCKIN SAN D'ORIA BECAUSE IT'S THE BEST GODDAMN NATION IN THE FUCKING GAME SHITCOCKSFUCKINGBITCHES.
No, really... it was just for the ring.


Oh yeah, small model because it's cute.

[Elesar]

My friends were playing this game when it first came out in Japan on PC. They convinced me to join them during the PlayStation2 release of the game. We all decided to create new characters together. So, we went online to get some cool ideas for our characters' names and ended up on a English to Elvish translator. Two of my friends named their characters after some translation for the word "Blood" which ended up being Sereg and Rauko. My other friend named his character Vorundor which was a translation to a I forgot. I decided to translate my name and got the translation to Emmanuel was "Elessar". The name "Elessar" was taken so I then tried "Elesar" and got it.

At the time that I started I played Phantasy Star Online a lot. I wanted my FFXI character to be something similar to the character I used in PSO which was a Elvan Female hunter so I decided to make my FFXI character a Mithran Red Mage in hopes of being able to beat stuff up with weapons and cast magic.

We all decided to start in Bahamut server because one of my friends was already on that server and we heard most of the people that play the game pick that server. The more the merrier right?

I decided to join Windurst because it seemed like the coolest looking place to be between a gray looking kingdom or a town in rocks. So my friends and me joined Windurst while my other friend Vorundor joined San d'Oria.

After playing Red Mage till about level 7 I realized that Red Mage was nothing like I was hoping it would be. So I changed to Monk and have been a Monk as my main job for over 4 years.

[Mabubeezareel]

Whenever I've had the choice, I've always gone for female avatars purely for aesthetics. I figure that if I have to stare at an ass for hours on end, it might as well be a chick's. Hence I went for hume F, and in turn Bastok because that's their starting nation.

As far as my name, it dates back to D2 when I was trying to think of a good name for an assassin. I was going for something that sounded sorta biblical at first glance, but was actually fairly comical if you take the time to pronounce it slowly. What I came up with was simply perfect:

Spoiler: show

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...nalMabuSig.jpg

I STILL get random /tells from people who I've known for almost 5 years saying that they finally "got" my name.