MMOs are like a buffet right? gotta really rack up those hours to get your subs worth...

As a coming of age story Alphinaud is a great example. He's young, and awkward and maybe too idealistic but he has a good heart and is the WoL's hype man from the very beginning. He will always have a special place in my heart for keeping hope in me (&my WoL) when it was hard to for myself.

His personal self reflection and growth was inspiring, to be able to look inward and find the flaws he had. His naiveté was exploited and he didn't deserve to be betrayed as annoying or insufferable as some might find him. Even after all of that he keeps a good heart and fights for a better world.

Around the time I was starting HW I was legitimately dealing with some rough IRL stuff. The bloody banquet and being banished to a cold and snowy desolate city was a hard mirror to my personal life and having that familiar fictional shoulder to lean on was nice.