Any HW 3.0-3.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

Can be any, like something fun/weird/annoying/stressfull/boring/etc experience and transition from ARR to HW.

Also something that you missed during those times, like systems/job skill/etc

(2.0-2.55 post) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-those-times.

Bard had casting time.... it was not fun

lonely blunt damage job, easily replaced by drk
sadge

Cross class skills were very interesting but I ended up looking up what's a good job to start off with since I wanted to make a mnk that can tank. TP was the resource everyone begrudgingly accept as part of the game and it made things feel slower in retrospect. I never knew it was possible to play an mmo with a controller until I played it initially on one. And finding out that crafting is its own thing all together got me really excited before it dawned on me that there must be a lot of crafting jobs in the game. I didn't really last that long at the time - can't really afford consistent sub and steam had no regional pricing for australia at the time. I was a poor uni student. But those had been essentially my impressions of when I started. Cross class was still one of the most interesting thing I've seen in the game. Kinda sad we've got a set role skills but eh, I understand why it is what it is.

I know it's more of arr to hw experience and it really was so much of a drag going from arr to hw that it's one of the reasons I stopped for years. I do not miss it all. And I hated that I forgot how bad it was until I remade a new character much later on.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Bard had casting time.... it was not fun

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Ah yeah, Wanderer's Minuet changed you into a caster. No one liked that lol.

Watching Idyllshire (then affectionately called Lagshire) get built up like Mor Dhona did was pretty cool, but some people would log in stuck in the environment because of where they logged out before a patch! I do wish they would go back and phase those areas so new players could see how they got built up over time, much like Doman Restoration is done, because it was really neat to see places like Mor Dhona and Idyllshire go from nothing to what they are now.

Also, Idyllshire was supposed to be part of the Hinterlands zone itself, but it was changed to its own zone because they didn't want people to not be able to get in to do the final HW story quests out there from lagging out or too much congestion as it was an endgame zone.

Thordan had actual mechanics :D it's too bad he's a joke now, the fight was super epic when everyone was in crappy gear and it was a true threat, but seeing his special attack is always really cool, even if he melts now.

Dusk Vigil was the worst dungeon, it hit hard and if you got sucked into the whirlwind from the boss you were likely just dead. It's survivable now, but I hated getting that dungeon in roulette.

I loved the gearsets out of most of the dungeons. The Sohm Al sets were incredibly popular for glamour, and the sets out of Aery were really nice too. I believe HW was the first xpac to have minions drop from the final chests instead of the random chests everyone always ran past in ARR (Amdapor Keep, Aurum Vale, Wanderer's Palace) and boy did I run Aery a lot for the red panda haha. Eventually one of my friends got the drop and gave it to me :D still one of my fave minions, so cute!

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Originally Posted by Illmaeran

Transitioning to ARR gathering to timed-nodes was a huge adjustment and at the time I hated it. The idea of having to be in the right place at the right time, and hope my skill was enough to extract the resource, was a massive pain in the butt. These days we have things like Garlond Tools to tell us when and what, and the collectible menu that's dramatically improved the process made it a lot less painful. Being one of the people who love(d) crafting and being a self-sufficient omnicrafter/gatherer capable of making all but the highest-end items, this change really pissed me off and I stopped engaging at the levels which required items from those timed nodes, never to look back. I'm still an omnicrafter/gatherer out of habit and enjoyment of the "slow life" game play, but I've never engaged in higher end stuff to make money with since.

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GOD. I didn't craft much in HW, but I did the sprint during Ishgard Restoration and leveled all my crafters/gatherers then, and the HW crafting stuff was THE WORST. The 60 quests were annoying and I wanted to pull my hair out most of the time because I also didn't want to pay money for timed node items for the craft, or even more money for the item already crafted for the quests. It's less irritating in the newer xpacs, but HW was so bad.

Transitioning from ARR gathering to timed-nodes was a huge adjustment and at the time I hated it. The idea of having to be in the right place at the right time, and hope my skill was enough to extract the resource, was a massive pain in the butt. These days we have things like Garlond Tools to tell us when and what, and the collectible menu that's dramatically improved the process made it a lot less painful. Being one of the people who love(d) crafting and being a self-sufficient omnicrafter/gatherer capable of making all but the highest-end items, this change really pissed me off and I stopped engaging at the levels which required items from those timed nodes, never to look back. I'm still an omnicrafter/gatherer out of habit and enjoyment of the "slow life" game play, but I've never engaged in higher end stuff to make money with since.

The advent of positionals being a significant thing was another major adjustment. Having to get behind or to the side of a boss based on skill procs increased complexity quite a bit. Coming from ARR where things were a bit more static and mostly revolved around hitting your rotation and avoiding what we would consider today to be easy mechanics and moving to a more location and proc-based game play took a while to adjust to. The increased difficulty of dungeons and raids only compounded that. Some felt this was a major improvement due to increased engagement with a fight but others saw it as a too-steep increase and railed against it. Ultimately, SE chose to decrease difficulty to a relative sweet spot.

My happiest memories of HW are character story based. When I made my guy, an Elezen Dragoon with the Fury Matron, HW wasn't even in the public eye. Going into Ishgard where all of those major aspects of my character were front-and-center was MASSIVE for his story development and increasing my attachment to him. The only way I could have made the situation better was to have rolled him as a light-skinned, rather than grey-skinned guy so he looked like the rest of the characters.

Then there was the music...aside from Unchanging, Ever-changing in ShB, the music from HW is my favorite, way above all the others. Night in the Brume, Painted Skies, and Contention are on all of my Orchestrion play lists.

I had aero III and stone III.
But forced to go ast for the balance card:(

Also HW had unqiue feel to it. there was war, dragons, «holy people», goblins and some steam punk vibe of enviroment. A very fun mix! Also to see Idyllshire to see it build, grow and expand! HW ofc had this dumb «era» of meta cuse some jobs werent viable… (pld, whm, mnk and sometimes blm).

Sohm Al imo got the best dungeon enviroment + the music as u begin to move forward. Truly an epic moment!
Weeping city too had the best enviroment for 24 man raid.
Alexander raids were fun and that steam punk vibe really added «something» into the game!

We got infact 2 diadems. 1st one was kind of broken(those damn pink gear) 2nd one was just fate farming xD i got a feeling that it was a beta for eureka.

I dont know what i hate about HW.. i feel like i only experienced it with open mind and sin idk lol.

I say it again: HW had a very unique «feel».

The Steps of Faith and Chrysalis at the time were very hard instances and skill-gated a lot of people from doing further content. Typically at least one person would know what to do in the Steps of Faith and order people around to specific weapons but they often went off at the wrong time and there were a lot of abandons.

Flying completely changed the game since up to that point we were stuck on the ground.

Most importantly for me was actually being able to go to Ishgard because I had been stuck outside its gates since 1.0 and always wondered what is was like inside and they just kept teasing us with it with hamlets and camps in 1.0 (RIP Owlnest) and the forts in 2.0.

I started playing in one of the HW patches (Im not sure which, I know it was before Dun Scaith was put in because that was my first on content raid). Things that I remember:
- Idylshire took FOREVER to load into some days. Like upwards of a minute sometimes. We'd always have a rule that you couldn't queue for anything while there because loading in was a crap shoot. I miss the end game areas having the ability to be on mounts, though, I liked going into Idylshire and Reach (during Stormblood) looking at people who got through Savage or whatever the hot new content was and looking at their mounts. (I really love Radz though so I'm not too upset).
- I did my first ever Savage fight (A1S) solely because I wanted to light farm for the BLM anima weapon, which then I was in a party for 24 hours with only a break for a small sleep that everyone in the group took before coming back and some food breaks. That was the first time I ever did something like that, XIV being the first time i was really into an mmo.
- Hanging around in Quarrymill was a thing for me as well, cause I was almost always in PotD lol.

In short, the HW story for me didn't really do much... to much about Crusades and the likes... for side content such as dungeons and raids it was ok.