Legacy 1.23b story

I finally got around to watching the E3 Q&A, in particular the question about remaking the FF14 patch 1.23b server to allow players to experience the story. Yoshida's response was basically that the old server was scrapped and it would need to be recreated almost from scratch and that doing so would go counter to one of their goals of providing a closing experience for the existing fans of that time.

It made me think about how much effort and development time would go into that and I wonder if there's a different way to achieve the same result that wouldn't infringe upon what they did before.

What about instead of rebuilding the old server code they made a movie for it in the same vein as Kingsglaive or the Brotherhood short series? It wouldn't be the same as being there and participating but it could effectively tell the story of 1.0.

Probably not a huge moneymaker for them but I'd be interested in watching it.

Thoughts?

People will be up in arms because their character design isn't in the movie though.

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Originally Posted by tymora

People will be up in arms because their character design isn't in the movie though.

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Pretty much this. If I can't experience it through my own character there's no point, there'd be no difference between that and watching someone else's playthrough on YouTube.

I'd be super into it though if they could release like a short solo player standalone game covering it, somehow.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

I'd be super into it though if they could release like a short solo player standalone game covering it, somehow.

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Actually, I have a different proposal. Since it seems almost guaranteed we're going to Garlemald next expansion and the Garleans were the force behind the meteor that finished off 1.0, I would like to propose this:
Consider that for HW 3.1-3.4 (I think 3.4, either that or 3.3) the story arc was about the Warriors of Darkness (completely unrelated to the previous parts of the main arc), and for SB 4.1-4.3 was about the aftermath of Doma, what about for 5.1-5.3 it's about the events that unfolded in 1.0-1.23 and how it has affected the present day, and how we move on from it. Tie it in that way. Make it a part of the game.

Take a page from XI like Wings of the Goddess? :p

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

Thoughts?

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I think the easier approach would be to release some official resources and reference docs, and leave it to modders. As I understand it, there are already groups aiming to reboot FFXIV 1.x on their own, without any assistance from SE whatsoever. Why not release the assets and such, boost their efforts? The whole thing would be nearly free-of-cost, and might even turn into a useful test bed for new ideas as modders play around and implement new things that could apply to modern-day XIV.

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Originally Posted by tymora

People will be up in arms because their character design isn't in the movie though.

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It'd make sense though.
Lorewise, if you never played 1.0, your character never experienced those events.

Personally I think it'd be fine if they made a cutscene compilation with the Derplander they use in the trailers, in fact I kind of wish someone (not necessarily Square) would do that even for the 2.0-4.0 stuff.

I'd like to experience it. But the best way would probably be as Vhailor suggested: release more source code so private servers can form. It wouldn't be the same if my character was illustrated as a Derplander fill-in. I couldn't play 1.0 despite owning a copy someone gave me because of system requirements so. Would still be nice to at least experience the story, and after watching a lot of the Speakers Network videos, to walk around the areas (particularly Coerthas) because I like that sort of thing.

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Originally Posted by tymora

People will be up in arms because their character design isn't in the movie though.

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I have yet to see any player express concern over any of the existing trailers or promotional movies using the derplander, I don't expect this to be different. The basic idea is to start with the existing cut scenes and add some scenes for things that weren't originally cut scenes so it all makes sense as a story. Overall its less work than rebuilding a server and you still get to experience the story.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

as Vhailor suggested: release more source code so private servers can form.

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I won't deny there are some talented modders out there that could do wonders with it but as ARR is still heavily based on the 1.0 server code I don't see this ever happening. Even if ARR was a brand new engine with no ties to 1.0 I would have a hard time believing SE would release their assets for free use like that.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

I have yet to see any player express concern over any of the existing trailers or promotional movies using the derplander, I don't expect this to be different. The basic idea is to start with the existing cut scenes and add some scenes for things that weren't originally cut scenes so it all makes sense as a story. Overall its less work than rebuilding a server and you still get to experience the story.

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I think for something personal like the End of 1.0, people may feel differently, especially if they would like to experience on an avatar more like their character as opposed to a fill-in. I’ve watched 1.0 cutscenes, and they just don’t feel the same with it being someone else’s character—I know a lot of people from 1.0 say the story was really lacking until about 1.2x, but I can’t help but be interested in it all the same.

At least for me. 1.23b was so pivotal and emotional in terms of the development of this game (and end of one era of it), that I think it would be a bit different than promo trailers.

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I won't deny there are some talented modders out there that could do wonders with it but as ARR is still heavily based on the 1.0 server code I don't see this ever happening. Even if ARR was a brand new engine with no ties to 1.0 I would have a hard time believing SE would release their assets for free use like that.

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Likewise it’s unlikely, I think, that they would ever provide a 1.23b experience for people, even if it was in high demand. Considering the impact 1.0 had on Square Enix as a company, and the Final Fantasy name. For the most organic of experiences, it would have to be a private server created by a third party, I think. There’s already a bunch of code that people have from the game files, and there have been quite a few attempts to get a Classic FFXIV server running. Sadly, I think they all lacked manpower, and have more or less died out because of that; or there are coding issues that they have attempted to work out that just take too much time to mess with (such as getting actual monsters to spawn on the map—I don’t know how complicated that actually is, but I remember reading a blog from someone trying to start a private server about having issues with that). I’m not heavily into any of this stuff, so I can’t say for certain. I’m just making assumptions based off of blogs I’ve read about it.

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Originally Posted by Ameela

It'd make sense though.
Lorewise, if you never played 1.0, your character never experienced those events.

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Which is exactly the point, I want to experience those events, even if I have to pay extra for it.
The only reason I didn't play 1.0 is because I couldn't- my PC at the time had less horsepower than my toaster.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

Which is exactly the point, I want to experience those events, even if I have to pay extra for it.
The only reason I didn't play 1.0 is because I couldn't- my PC at the time had less horsepower than my toaster.

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Same here. I had a good laptop, but my desktop was extremely dated. Between not having the kind of money to build a custom rig and two computers that, while they ran would have probably exploded under the load of 1.0, I wasn’t able to play it either. I don’t want to step on people’s toes with regards to Legacy stuff, but I still can’t help my desire to want the experience nonetheless.

I've already been able to get the gist of the story looking at the many videos pertaining to 1.x. A movie could still tell the story in a lesser amount of time, but either way, the interactive experience is not there and I think a lot of people would want that.

There are some really good things that could come of it even for those who already experienced 1.x. As an example many areas where left unfinished, and some even left a kind of indication that it could/would be expanded upon in future updates that would never come. Some storylines were also left unfinished. Expanding on these would provide some good incentive.

How would some mechanics be handled though? For example is it going to take away my ability to jump? If not, then a lot of areas will be able to be traversed with greater ease than those who played the old version.

It is intriguing to think about for sure, and I know I would love to experience the story even though the experience 1.x players had cannot be replicated.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

Which is exactly the point, I want to experience those events, even if I have to pay extra for it.
The only reason I didn't play 1.0 is because I couldn't- my PC at the time had less horsepower than my toaster.

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That's fair and all but my main point is that 2.0 and 1.0 characters have completely different backstories, at least when it comes to your status at the start of ARR.
One's a green adventurer whose feats come to match those of the warriors who fought during the Calamity, thus earning the title of Warrior of Light, while the other is just a Warrior of Light the whole time, simply forgotten by time (and some magic stuff).
I kind of look at the events of 1.0 the same way I do at stuff like the battle for Doma or Ala Mhigo, they're important events but we don't necessarily need to experience them as our character, especially when they aren't supposed to be there in the first place they just give context to the story currently unfolding.

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Originally Posted by Ameela

That's fair and all but my main point is that 2.0 and 1.0 characters have completely different backstories, at least when it comes to your status at the start of ARR.
One's a green adventurer whose feats come to match those of the warriors who fought during the Calamity, thus earning the title of Warrior of Light, while the other is just a Warrior of Light the whole time, simply forgotten by time (and some magic stuff).
I kind of look at the events of 1.0 the same way I do at stuff like the battle for Doma or Ala Mhigo, they're important events but we don't necessarily need to experience them as our character, especially when they aren't supposed to be there in the first place they just give context to the story currently unfolding.

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Another fair point, but my own still stands- the content was there and I didn't get to experience it, and in all likelihood never will. And for that, I just feel robbed. I EVEN had the game pre-ordered when they were talking about that console release that never happened. I don't care if that offends Legacy players, the game was there and I didn't get to play it. I don't even care about Legacy exclusive mounts or the stupid tattoo, I would gladly shovel out whatever they would charge to experience it, regardless of how bad of a game people say it was.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

I think the easier approach would be to release some official resources and reference docs, and leave it to modders. As I understand it, there are already groups aiming to reboot FFXIV 1.x on their own, without any assistance from SE whatsoever. Why not release the assets and such, boost their efforts? The whole thing would be nearly free-of-cost, and might even turn into a useful test bed for new ideas as modders play around and implement new things that could apply to modern-day XIV.

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SE would never do that, because that would allow players to create their own FFXIV V1.0 game. Yoshi-P's response kinda means that SE would really have no recourse to take down any V1.x server emulator, since he basically said "we threw it away". That said any working server emulator would run afoul of copyright laws, and has been tested with WoW and previously Battle.net itself. It's not the server emulator itself that is really the problem, it's the fact that you'd need people to commit copyright infringement to acquire the 1.x client, since as everyone knows, you had to pay money for the game client. It was never free.

Now what SE could do as a sort of middle-ground. They could release an authorized complete 1.00+1.23b patch set as a disc image for people who have the 1.x license, as this information is obviously still data they retain. Anyone who has a paid license to 2.x or later could "buy" access to this 1.x game client. This gives people a legitimate way of obtaining the game client without inducement of copyright infringement. After all, us 1.x players did pay for the 1.x game so we should have the right to obtain and use the client, even if the server's been gone for years. Whatever people do with it (Machinima, single player conversion, limited multiplayer, etc) SE would just ignore unless it violates the Materials License in the same way they'd not approve if it was ARR/HW/SB (So no unapproved SE assets, no hate/porn mods.)

The loser of at least one WoW server emulator was ordered to pay 88 million dollars in 2010. So it is unlikely anyone who has the means of producing a working server emulator would even be willing to publish working game binaries without some kind of approval from SE that SE will not sue them. I'm aware of what exists already, and what exists only lets you explore an empty world and invoke some of the cutscenes at the inn. Completely contextless.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I'd like to experience it. But the best way would probably be as Vhailor suggested: release more source code so private servers can form. It wouldn't be the same if my character was illustrated as a Derplander fill-in. I couldn't play 1.0 despite owning a copy someone gave me because of system requirements so. Would still be nice to at least experience the story, and after watching a lot of the Speakers Network videos, to walk around the areas (particularly Coerthas) because I like that sort of thing.

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SE would not release the source code because as Yoshi-P said, they threw it away. I'd hope that a company like SE kept a versioning system around so that it would be possible to actually see the source code, but it's unlikely that the client and server were produced as separate things, and rather they were built together, and thus the entire build process tools and original assets would be needed to compile the game, and that's just not a viable thing even if SE could get all the copyrights clearances approved. They may own the game, but ask yourself why the materials license always calls out specific tracks that aren't to be used.

Speakers Network utilizes one of the server emulators in a working state to basically allow themselves to take video/screenshots of areas, had they access to a working 1.x game, many of these areas would have NPC's in them, let alone monsters. On the plus side it also lets them explore areas that were in development.

At any rate, what will eventually happen, SE approval or not, is someone will come up with a way to play the 1.x game solo/pseudo-solo. SE is a lawsuit happy company and tends to stomp on any kind of fan production/sequel/prequel if it starts to look like anything more than proof-of-concept. So I doubt anyone would release such a thing without some requirement that they have a fully patched 1.23b game client just sitting on their computer to side step the copyright elephant.

The problem with trying to bring back 1.0 that no one seems to be willing to accept (or even realize), is that 1.0's original story (as in, the original starting city storyline and the truncated Path of the Twelve story) has been effectively cannibalized for ARR's storyline and thus you have technically already dealt with the same basic ideas anyway that 1.0 players had - what 1.0 story ideas haven't been reused already are effectively just ignored or even outright retconned.

This thus leaves very little left to make a coherent narrative for any hypothetical 'return to the Sixth Astral Era' story in the game, as it's what the player has effectively already experienced. Even the 7th Umbral Era story was little more than dealing with the founding of the Grand Companies and discovering Nael's mad plan to bring down Dalamud, the relevant aspects of which are already covered in ARR anyway.

So that leaves the world itself and, given that the whole point of ARR was to replace the earlier zone design (and thus give a narrative reason for the change), this simply is not possible (now outright stated that the original 1.0 source code and files are now missing meaning they couldn't bring 1.0 back even if they wanted to).

And with that final statement, effectively Yoshi has driven the final nail into 1.0's coffin, I'm afraid the deceased simply is not coming back... ever. 1.0 is gone and is never, EVER coming back. It's long past time to accept that and move on.

i would LOVE to have a little film about the story, I was reading about the whole 1.0 story and man so much happened before we dropped in in ARR! A movie would be super cool.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

The only reason I didn't play 1.0 is because I couldn't- my PC at the time had less horsepower than my toaster.

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LoL sameee

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Originally Posted by Issac

Take a page from XI like Wings of the Goddess? :p

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Give me campaign battles too.. where we help the city build up defenses.. do quests for them, etc... and Im in.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

Which is exactly the point, I want to experience those events, even if I have to pay extra for it.
The only reason I didn't play 1.0 is because I couldn't- my PC at the time had less horsepower than my toaster.

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Unfortunately, it's over. A past event.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

SE would never do that, because that would allow players to create their own FFXIV V1.0 game. Yoshi-P's response kinda means that SE would really have no recourse to take down any V1.x server emulator, since he basically said "we threw it away". That said any working server emulator would run afoul of copyright laws, and has been tested with WoW and previously Battle.net itself. It's not the server emulator itself that is really the problem, it's the fact that you'd need people to commit copyright infringement to acquire the 1.x client, since as everyone knows, you had to pay money for the game client. It was never free.

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I wasn't commenting on how likely this is to happen. Just because something can or arguably should happen, doesn't mean it will.

I was commenting about which path would be the simplest to take from SE's perspective, in regards to offering players the chance to experience the 1.x storyline. If they did it internally, there's a big effort around it, there's a risk to corporate reputation if people rip it to shreds or SE overcharges for it or makes changes people don't like. Server resources. All that good stuff.

If they release it for modders, it's... well, have fun, we'll enjoy seeing what people do with it.

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Also, out of curiosity, you do realize that other games have allowed modders, right? All of the legal challenges are very solvable; it's been done for over 25 years. Typically there's permission to use the available assets and tools in any way desired, but with the caveat that users aren't allowed to charge for it (basically a Creative Commons license of sorts).

The only barrier here is SE's willingness to be open with their content and release some version of the 1.x assets and toolkits used to develop them. And it IS a large barrier, and you are right in that SE probably will never take this course of action - but the additional 'challenges' you've mentioned are pure nonsense.

One of the main reasons I even began playing this game, was the promise of practically creating your own class to play with the cross skills. I loved playing as THM with second wind and many forms of self healing. I loved all of the absorb spells and elemental spells it offered.

Now we seem to be all shoehorned into very specific roles that bring no varying difference from player to player. It's easy for the devs to balance, but very bland to the players.

I would love to go back and have challenging solo field content like we had back then.

Let bad games die, if you really need to know what happened there are YouTube channels that talk all about 1.x to 2.0 and even one that has a full play through of the game.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Also, out of curiosity, you do realize that other games have allowed modders, right? All of the legal challenges are very solvable; it's been done for over 25 years. Typically there's permission to use the available assets and tools in any way desired, but with the caveat that users aren't allowed to charge for it (basically a Creative Commons license of sorts).

The only barrier here is SE's willingness to be open with their content and release some version of the 1.x assets and toolkits used to develop them. And it IS a large barrier, and you are right in that SE probably will never take this course of action - but the additional 'challenges' you've mentioned are pure nonsense.

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That is the point. Square-Enix has generally sued people out of existence for even announcing that they were thinking of making any unofficial sequel or prequel. They are as bad as Nintendo for this kind of thing.

Unauthorized modding usually comes with the caveat that the project may disappear at any time, and usually charging money or trying to crowdfund development of it is a guaranteed way to have the project die.

Authorized modding of certain games by certain publishers has to be done either with the blessing of the company who owns the copyright and trademarks, or the original developers release the source code to the game engine, but not the assets, which still requires you use your legally purchased game discs.

The original source code to games like Simcity (Micropolis), and a port of Star Control 2 (The Ur-Quan Masters) were basically done that way. They created new assets for those games so they work with what was essentially the source code to the original game.

The game engine used by FFXIV V1.0 is the Crystal Tools engine. In order to "open source" FFXIV V1.0, they would be need to open source the tools they used to build FFXIII, FFXIII-2, Lightning Returns, FFXIV v1.0, Dragon Quest X. So open sourcing the client is unlikely not something that SE would do since it would allow modding of those games as well.

Likewise you'll see a lot of references to middleware when developers talk about Crystal Tools, so it's very likely that the client and server share significant amounts of code, so open sourcing that is probably not something that can be reasonably done without developers from SE putting significant effort into making what they release not rely on anything proprietary that they can't release, or do not have the license to release.

As much as I would like to play 1.x again on something that is capable of playing it, it's just not going to be possible without SE giving their blessing to do it, and providing at least the netcode and LUA scripts to work from. That means someone has to spend time and money figuring that out, and as we've seen before, SE would rather just repackage a bad port than ever consider releasing the source code.

With XIV V1.0 there is nothing for SE to lose except some PR embarrassment. The 1.x game is not better. People are not going to prefer to play 1.23b over SB. This is not a "WoW Classic" kind of situation. At worst SE would gain subs from the players who are interested in the storyline and pick up the 1.x story and want to continue it into the present client. At best, players who played 2.x would go back and play 1.x to fill in the story like it was a prequel.

But ultimately Japanese developers don't really get "open source". Often what you get are really dense license agreements that prohibit you from doing anything meaningful that wouldn't be equal to a doujin (fan) game that you can't charge money for.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...848/Aliens.jpg


Echo

They (SE) should have kept one 1.0 world active, but wiped clean of all characters at the end of service for 1.0 (or even just a fresh empty world), and let anyone with an active 2.0+ subscription have access to the 1.0 1.23b server so they could experience the world and its changes, it could work like FFXI's Official Test Server maybe?


Seems such a waste to have thrown it all away, a part of SE history.

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Originally Posted by Final-Fantasy

so they could experience the world and its changes, it could work like FFXI's Official Test Server maybe?

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but it will be not a changing world, but a static world. Frozen at the last days of the 6th astral era. The changes happened with patches.
And it also would not work as a test servers. 1.0 is too different to ARR and especially to SB. They could test out ideas, but not finished content