Would you play on a pre-abyssea/adoulin stand alone server?

[Feary]

no. i wouldnt need to go back and play then, as i had already completed my goal and felt beat the content. all that was left was relic or mythic. i had maats cap and experienced all the jobs. i would do dynamis because i miss it but then again how hard would it be to make a decent group.

if s.e continued to develop the content under that model. maybe. however we've already been spoiled and going back to that would just make ppl quit.

[Raydeus]

@OP
The only way anyone would want to move to a server like that is if time travel was also included in the package.

Because it isn't just about the mechanics alone, but about how the community functioned at the time. That is why Abyssea was so devastating to the community because of how much it disrupted all of the systems that maintained player interaction as strong as it used to be.

So to answer your question no, I would not play in a server like that unless there was a guarantee (which no one could ever make) that the community would go back to the way it was 6 years ago.

PS > Although I do feel bad for the players that will never get to experience how good XI was back then. I mean it's still a better game than most ¨modern¨ WoW clones out there right now, but the experience is nowhere near as good as it used to be. /shrug

[bungiefanNA]

I would never want to go back to before Abyssea. It took me 8 years to get one job to 75 under the old system, when I had more time to play. Campaign allowed me to finish that up, but that was still slow going. I only ever got to do Dynamis about 4 times before Abyssea, and 2 Einherjar runs. I have more access to content now, and a server going back to that would erase that.

[Doombringer]

i'm reading a lot of no.

i'm gonna echo that no.

admittedly, ilvl feels shoehorned, and i hated voidwatch with a passion. but in general i'm enjoying the game.

abyssea may have been "too easy" but all that really DID was facilitate players broadening themselves. you could pick up new jobs, and gear them competently in a way that wouldn't have been possible before. (at least not for most of us)

delve may have been "too hard" at one point, but i actually enjoyed it. having something that required coordination, knowing that your performance mattered. it actually got me to sit up straight and turn off the T.V. while playing. not to mention that plasm is probably the fairest loot system we've ever had.

wildskeepers loot system is, taken on it's own a complete clusterfuck of frustration and woe. but that was eventually mitigated between the library and RoE quests.

and now you can even PICK your difficulty in the newest content. (i guess that solves the issue of aby to easy, delve to hard?)

games not perfect, but has it ever been? we call the current endgame restrictive, only a handful of jobs are useful. but has that ever NOT been the case? you must remember "loldrg" or "lolpup" hell, a lot of jobs couldn't even get into XP parties, let along endgame. at least now you can easily level other jobs, and if you really insist on using your beautiful unique snowflake of a job, you can just choose to turn down the difficulty?

we accuse groups of "requiring the drops from the content to do the content" but that's simply not true. your corsair doesn't need to have oatixurs to do tojil. lest we forget your monk never got to do anything in sky except chi cannon anyway, and you can sure as hell bet that if sky had been instanced, they would have just been left behind.



the issues with the community are the same that they've always been. if anything the GAME has gotten better.

[Crevox]

No I would not

[Leocon]

I'm inclined to agree with the whole 'no' brigade. The only thing I miss from those days is seeing lots of new players, but surprisingly I've been seeing a few new faces running around the starter cities over the last few weeks. Sure they aren't a slew of new members like you used to see dying all over Valkurm, but damn it's nice to see some level 50 no subs (man, who'd've thought that day would come lol) running around and checking every NPC out of curiosity. Instead of a "Glory Day Server", I'd rather see SE devote some money to an advertising campaign, but as many have pointed out in the past, the game supposedly isn't "in a state to accommodate new people."

Maybe it isn't, I personally wouldn't know since I've been playing non-stop since 2004, but I'm sure as hell willing to bring in new blood to my social shell and show them the ropes and make new friends.

[Ravenmore]

The reason a lot of people look back fondly on the "old days" is because the game was a lot harder back then and this difficulty forced people to team-up with complete strangers, and stay in parties for hours and hours. This led to you getting to know new people all the time, and talking with them at length. This created a sense of global community, you might be XPing etc. with people from allover the world. The only exception back in the old days was Bst, which you could solo on, but all other jobs required you to engage in teamwork. Regardless of how we feel about some of nightmare LFP times (ten hours flag up in dunes anyone?) the truth is that the rigid and challenging nature of the old game forced people to develop comradeship in adversity, and this led to lasting friendships and a server community. This existed until 2010 May~ when Aby arrived, things changed very fast after that, with FC's and Dom Ops. Trust NPC "army-of-one" options with a player and a train of NPCs running after him, is the coup-de-grace on the old game, the killshot. I see lots of people competing for crabs and flys and stuff, with their private Trust armies lol, when pre-Trust we could have just teamed up and not competed for the available sparks mobs. I haven't even unlocked any Trusts and don't want to, because I have my fellowship NPC from seven years ago and he rocks. But anyway I never use my NPC for farming sparks because I am always ready to team up with other players so we don't compete for the same handful of sparks mobs.
Re; the "time warp" idea in the OP, it would not work today. Most new FFXI players have got used to the casual and easymode nature of post-2010 FFXI, and would be horrified if they saw how the game was back in say 2006. And as mentioned above, the old game was teamwork because there was no alternative way to overcome obstacles, whereas now you can't even get people to drop their Trusts for ten minutes to farm some sparks in party. I'm not really saying the game is better or worse now (lets not go there), but it is a completely different game, the polar opposite, and most new players would hate the sort of rigid stratified heirarchy that the old game consisted of.

No they only did endgame with LSes and you only did missions with pugs out of sheer desperation. We had just the same crap we have now with need XYZ job or gtfo. Even grinding merits needed the top DDs with great gear or you weren't getting that one rdm and brd that was seeking and many a brd would drop party if you weren't hitting at least 20k a hour or if you broke the chain to many times for their liking. So you spent a massive amount of time standing around doing NOTHING.

Franky it wasn't no where near as hard as you seem to remember. Just like to day a couple days after new content was released the perfect strat and set up was posted on BG and if you followed it to a T you got the win(good luck fighting the RNG for drops and lots). Before the easy mode you are referring to came around every bit of HNM or endgame content was so well tread that the hardest part wasn't falling asleep while you waited on people to gather.

Once you understood the very simple system FFXI worked on it was child's play of kite and chip or zerg. I did the old endgame crap far more then I want to remember it was a mess of boredom and some how I convinced my self I was having fun.

[lllen]

Detlef you are so right, it was the people esp if you were on skype that drew us back to the game day/night after day/night. I had forgotten the great Puddings, omg I lived on those things. I was still doing them when Abyssea came out with the Strength weapons and so mad when the dd's would come in on Firesday to kill them.

[Imakun]

Only thing I miss about "those times" are my friends and my Linkshell. If I could wave a magic wand and bring all of them back, it wouldn't matter what type of XI we'd play.
So to answer your question, no. I would not go back to "old XI" just for sake of how it worked. It was all about friends, LS mates and community in general.

[WoW]

Well, I can recall the the old HNM spawn system and six man parties (These are just a few events that I have participated in). The game mechanics are still the same, with the exception of the stagger system (Which did not affect much imo). I still have friends and will occasionally join 6 man parties; but from my personal experience, ffxi is the same game it always was (Macro mashing), just less time consuming. I mean, a few friends quit, but I made some new ones.

Honestly, I cannot relate to the "well back in the day talk," it all feels the same to me. "Shrugs"