What Is XIV Nostalgia?

As a XI player, I remember 2004 dune parties (Being nervous to join my 1st one), getting an escorts to dangerous places (Getting K.O anyway, so have to start the walk all over), The Crystal Warriors beating the breaks off of NPCs, foes and players.......

However, there was an era before 2004 (2002). XIV was kind of the way I guess, with 2010-ish. Perhaps some have memories from then (1.0).

I began XIV around 2013. So, my Nostalgia are the beta queue as my Female "Galka." XIV is somewhat new, but what is XIV Nostalgia to you?
(Did not try to make that rhyme on purpose)

Dots and content that was still xhallenging like Dune scaith and A11/A12

FATE Trains (to get secondary classes to 30 for all the cross-class skills).

Cleric Stance
Doing below level 50 dungeons on WHM and switching between Cleric Stance and cures. It was so much fun until I got heal OGCDs which ruined it for me.
Stance Dancing on tanks
Old content not being nothing due to item level increases so it felt good to do well in it
Old hunts not being nothing due to item level increases so that they left bodies everywhere
Positioning bosses
Using cross-class abilities for fun
PLD's old rotation
5.0 AST or earlier where it felt more fun to juggle cards and handle bad RNG cards
Old MNK because I can't act like I have less positionals
Tank raid-wide mit having less range, because it took me quite some time to not bother running close to the party.
Keeping up Blood of the Dragon even though it was easy
Stuff like both Bard dots buffing the damage of Sidewinder, procs working off crit and buffing players MP, it's a background thing but it just felt better knowing that there was more impact from my decisions

So I just have to endure this nostalgia when I'm going through old dungeons or playing jobs that were around then and try to forget it.

My Nostalgia is walking through Ishgard today and remembering how good and fun day 1 Dun Scaith was, and hearing the "Forward and back" lyrics to A11.

Remembering sitting in Camp Drybone with friends doing early MSQ during the ARR beta. Listening to the Thanalan sanctuary theme makes me nostalgic for that time.
Remembering Mor Dhona and Idyllshire before they got built up by the patches.
Remembering the old cross class skill system. I have alt characters that still have some of the old deleted skills on their hotbars.

Dunno if it's necessarily nostalgia because while I enjoyed some things when they were here I'm not sorry to see them go in the interests of moving forward as a modern MMO

Stance dancing for both tanks and healers
Technical Points and sprint using them
Goad
No glam until 50 so we all looked like hobos
Needing different types and levels of glamour prisms
Having to level two classes for a Job
Cross class skills
Stat assignment and how it hated scholars and summoners
Hunts being limited to the server instead of treated like an assembly line with trains so the call going out and the server coming running for them
The entire server showing up for Odin

Cross Class skills
Binding Coil of Bahamut (The Louisoix cutscene in FCoB especially)
Mor Dhona
The old boss and battle music - This is something I especially miss. I miss having unique themes play for each boss throughout a dungeon instead of just one leitmotif track of the final boss music play for all bosses prior to final. Blegh.

When I started the game I was a Gladiator, but I wanted to be Dark Knight.
An Xaela Dark Knight, funnily enough.
However I didn't own Heavensward at the time so I couldn't do either of those things.

My nostalgia comes from the moments I think of those times I spent with my very first FC; Tanking Titan Extreme in Ironworks while swapping between Sword Oath and Shield Oath and the gearsets I would wear. I would be in the Chaos artifact armor and I always thought it was the coolest thing. Seeing that set also reminds me of those days and I miss them.

Heavensward main menu theme and zones in general.

There's no actual MMO nostalgia for me because I treat it like a single player JRPG with chat features.

Sitting with my small FC of 10 players watching the final fall of dalamud coming to end the game in the last hour of the servers being up

Of that 10 I’m the only one left, only 4 picked up ARR and only 1 other made it to ShB

Playing the 2.0 beta.
Having to allocate attribute points when leveling. [Having to decide MND or INT for SCH/SMN.]
Playing with friends.
Old hunts and shouting to form a party.
Not having a [forced to use] discord for everything.

Playing 1.0

I've got quite a few, but the one that immediately came to mind were the FATE trains in Coerthas Central Highlands to get up to 50.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Cleric Stance
Doing below level 50 dungeons on WHM and switching between Cleric Stance and cures. It was so much fun until I got heal OGCDs which ruined it for me.
Stance Dancing on tanks
Old content not being nothing due to item level increases so it felt good to do well in it
Old hunts not being nothing due to item level increases so that they left bodies everywhere
Positioning bosses
Using cross-class abilities for fun
PLD's old rotation
5.0 AST or earlier where it felt more fun to juggle cards and handle bad RNG cards
Old MNK because I can't act like I have less positionals
Tank raid-wide mit having less range, because it took me quite some time to not bother running close to the party.
Keeping up Blood of the Dragon even though it was easy
Stuff like both Bard dots buffing the damage of Sidewinder, procs working off crit and buffing players MP, it's a background thing but it just felt better knowing that there was more impact from my decisions

So I just have to endure this nostalgia when I'm going through old dungeons or playing jobs that were around then and try to forget it.

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Yeah that is so unfortunate that we lost all that. I was so infuriated when they removed most of it at the outset of Stormblood.

I remember DoT stacking on SMN and thinking the Egis were so cool.. until I got Deathflare. I did love how each little move was a buildup to the next and that was on every class, not just one. You had to actually strategize and put them together like a puzzle piece. Each job was unique in how they functioned, then you throw in cross class skills and subjobs and it was just such a rich and fascinating system to be a part of.

I like Mithron's too, there was just nothing like the feeling of walking through Ishgard and feeling to sucked into that whole story. The entire HW from sound track to story to overworld to everything was just so incredibly well put together. I think that was truly the golden age of this game. I'm not knocking ARR, because I can remember a lot of cool stuff in that one too and I do remember being sucked into it some of those original dungeons and Hard mode dungeons were so unique and cool they just felt like an actual dungeon crawl. Hell I even remember vividly my first Leviathon fight with the whole player crew skittering on the skiff with Leviathon popping up all over tail, head, etc... it was like the cloud whale fight in HW.

I remember trying to do the Relic Weapon in HW, and running Fate after Fate in Helix with a bunch of FC members and that place was already cool, the floating Allegan Research facility. That place used to be packed.

Another thing I remember, you could get another DoT on SMN back then, the key was you had to complete your Arcanist job quest all the way to 50 to get it. It was a healing field like SCH had, that you got at 50th level but this was a DoT field. Most people never completed that, once they got their SMN stone they never finished off the arcanist quests through level 50. I remember whipping that out in dungoens and some people were just amazed because they didn't know it existed. (Was Shadowbind I think)

Getting lost in the old Black Shroud (first time I heard that music again in Deep Dungeon I paniced for a second or two), doing the old Crafting leve quests that you could fail.

Once ARR hit, using Cleric stance without getting people killed and the old FATE groups to level in Northern Thanalan because the MSQ didn't give you enough experience to level you to the next MSQ point, so you had to grind - while that was a pain, we had some good times in them FATE groups.

Stormblood AST cards. I remember quite fondly of this one lalafel monk threw a fit because I threw a arrow on him and he ran out of TP mid fight. Good times

community used to be nice like people still claim it is, but back when i started playing, people weren't telling me to kms for being a lalafell as often as they do nowadays so.

I remember when I got to heal, I actually needed to heal… those were the days. I don’t want to DPS, I want to heal, I chose healer for a reason because I don’t like to DPS.

Hard dungeons that were borderline suicide to wall to wall pull. You could only walk to wall with a group in max gear and very high skill.

Patches every 3 months and not every 5 months.

Expert roulette being harder than leveling dungeons and we had lots in the queue… really SE, just keep all max level dungeons in that roulette as the same 2 dungeons for up to 9 months… sigh…

When this was actually an MMO and not a single player game that is done in a few hours.

Mine has to be 1.0 the players I met and sometimes see but there are a lot that have sadly gone but I always remember them. I will never forget cutters cry and when Ifrit was so tough there bodies piled up high. And the world of 1.0 and community. The old raids and the NM hunting none of this bs hunt crap we now have.

Back when the community was extremely helpful, and they didn't go at each other's throats for sharing an opinion. Back when people had enough courtesy to have a macro prepared for trains telling people how to adjust their setting to minimize fps loss and lag, for every platform, and conductors would straight up stop trains if people had their chocobos out. Back when shout chat was used for conversation and doing content instead of spamming ads for things that have nothing to do with the game itself. Eureka. Stance dance. Watching last boss of lota die during ancient flare adds because it had 50 dots on it. So many changes to the game these days that the nostalgic vibes are becoming kinda rare.

1.0

1.0 Crafting, gathering the materials, struggling with the Mini Games to harvest resources which was unique in the day. Having to synth and level other crafts and mats to make a tool even.

Running through Gridania and turning a corner and seeing mobs that could tear your face off, and would tear your face off, where 5 steps ago there were low level mobs.

Fighting and grinding against the exp limitations after your time counter and leve counters ran out, leading to groups to chain exp like back in Valkurm Dunes in FFXI.

The feel of marauder back then. The look and feel of Gridania, and exploring the regions around Limsa and the cliffs.


2.0 and after

The Beta and waiting in line for the sword in the stump in Gridania

Ishgardian restoration. Completing the final step alongside my Best Friend on Sargatanas and being there with everyone when it was completed. The celebration then…

The Battle in Whitebrim for the Dark Knight storyline.

ALL, of the Dark Knight Storyline.

Everything involving Shadowbringers. Such a beautiful story. One of the best ever.

Playing Gladiator starting in 2.0 and remembering things like the aoe blind, being able to remove bind on yourself. Stoneskin and cleric stance.


And one of my favorites. Helping my Best Friend level her rogue on Miqote lad, and her fighting the massive crabs in Limsa while I just stood there doing nothing and my fairy from scholar auto healed. And her expressing frustration after multiple levels of why they were taking so long to die. And then I examined her and started laughing my arse off. And she was like “ What? “. It took me a few solid minutes of guffawing to finally tell her she was still using the level 1 daggers and she was almost level 10 or 12 at that point. And I just started howling and said “ I guess my character decided you need to train in hardcore mode and handed you a pair of flint rocks and said good luck!!! “

We still joke about that to this day.

“ These aren’t daggers!!! “

My character: “ Sure they are! They’re sharp and pointy!!! Now go bring me dinner!! “ *Points at 2 story tall crab*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

Another thing I remember, you could get another DoT on SMN back then, the key was you had to complete your Arcanist job quest all the way to 50 to get it. It was a healing field like SCH had, that you got at 50th level but this was a DoT field. Most people never completed that, once they got their SMN stone they never finished off the arcanist quests through level 50. I remember whipping that out in dungoens and some people were just amazed because they didn't know it existed. (Was Shadowbind I think)

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I think you're thinking of Shadow Flare. Shadowbind was a archer/bard skill that binded targets.
Squadron Arcanists still have Shadow Flare I think.

Edit: Though IIRC it was just a skill you learned by leveling up. I remember SCH couldn't have it active at the same time as Sacred Soil and players used to debate which one to use during trash pulls.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

I've got quite a few, but the one that immediately came to mind were the FATE trains in Coerthas Central Highlands to get up to 50.

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And Northern Thanalan because we had that gap at 47

People have already mentioned great ones and I agree. Especially the FATEs.

My friend has a recording of us playing ARR together. I sometimes watch it for the feel-good nostalgia feeling. I was more "energetic" and bubbly back then. Talked so so so much more than I do nowdays. I barely type anything now. The dungeon in it took about 40 minutes. We talk about being excited to unlock Dragoon. I got a dungeon drop and was actually pretty excited about it. It was like level 20 armor or something, ha.

It's a very cozy video for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

I think you're thinking of Shadow Flare. Shadowbind was a archer/bard skill that binded targets.
Squadron Arcanists still have Shadow Flare I think.

Edit: Though IIRC it was just a skill you learned by leveling up. I remember SCH couldn't have it active at the same time as Sacred Soil and players used to debate which one to use during trash pulls.

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Yeah that's the one,

But the key is you couldn't get it unless you pulled your stone and did the 50th level quest for it. It was the ending quest in there with the corny cat chick that always overcomplicated things, she runs off with the guildmaster that she always had a crush on anyway and just never would admit to it. But before he leaves with her he imparts that one last piece of Arcanist wisdom to you. They removed that quest now as far as I know so most people never get to know the ending of that story.

Good things already mentioned (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
For me, around the map in overworld, houses you can enter and which are more than just one room.
ARR had interesting places, though not just houses.

Couple of days ago I came across something I can't believe I either had never before paid attention to, or had just not noticed.
sOME sort of dubiously legal purple leaves growing operation... OwO

https://i.imgur.com/ITan2if.png

https://i.imgur.com/7KVnokF.png

https://i.imgur.com/zfYv7Jz.png

Doing fates to level alt jobs and always having other people doing them with you is probably the biggest nostalgia I have for FF14's olden days.

The OP talking about FF11 nostalgia made me realize how much more nostalgia I have for that than I do for FF14.

- FATE trains for levelling jobs.
- Levelling crafters by going through the log rather than powerlevelling through Ishgard.
- Concealed nodes
- Crafting my first set of Ironworks
- Learning WWYW - As busted as it was - even fundamentally, it was super fun to learn and master.

Mining in Ala Mhigo as a Sprout in ARR.
Trying to Tank in the same patch BLM got a 20 potency buff to Fire 1 and adds just saying no whilst I try to hold a group of mobs.
Toto Rak 1.0 when it was great before the stupid sludge noise.
Walking on Water and being able to fall off the world in the Hinterlands during Midas patch.
Being able to play prime Monk before it became obsolete at DRK launch.
Looking at my hotbars when I make a new character and seeing all the deleted skills when I copy my settings over.
Bosses having enrages even in normal / story mode and the casual parties pumping as best they can to kill. This is a huge loss to the game, no greater feeling than the final pump when you see the cast charging. Auto-Clean I miss you.

But most of all I'm lamenting the loss of Pinball Wizard for WHM. Always loved Fluid Aura and it needs to come back. We need water magic representation.

Before DC travel / E(RP) Venues and RP in general.

Now you have the entire player base stuck in QS.

Most of my nostalgia in XIV comes from early early ARR era.
This is the first MMO I ever played so there were so many concepts of the genre that were foreign to me. I remember starting as a marauder in the beta without knowing wtf a tank even was, or what those green, red, and blue symbols were. I just went into dungeons and hit overpower a bunch lol

I think my most nostalgic memory was sitting around outside the entrance to Sastasha and looking for a party. This was before DF (whichever phase that was implemented in) and well before PF so everyone was shouting for one. I managed to get into a full party only for us to realize that we could only go into the dungeon as a party of four, so half of us had to go. The group I ended up going into the dungeon with was the group I did most of my dungeoning with for the remainder of the beta. I think just about the only dungeon I didn't get to try back then, due to time constraints, was Brayflox. Honestly the excitement for just about every little thing was awesome. Still remember one of them going "we just hit level 20 and got our chocobos!!" You really only get that kind of experience once.

Going into actual launch, I remember having issues logging in. If I remember correctly, whenever I wasn't able to play XIV, be it due to getting kicked out or not able to get in, I would play Tales of Xillia (great game, btw, 100% recommend). When I actually made it in, I pretty much dedicated myself to leveling my conjurer. I had started with marauder in beta but decided to go with something different at launch. I also didn't know you needed to level another class to unlock the job, and like a lot of people have already mentioned, we mostly FATE grinded our way there. Dungeon experience just wasn't worth the time. The FATE grind was interesting sometimes because you'd sit your butt on a zone with a particular level range and just go at the FATEs. You might just make small talk with people in your party, then say good bye to them as you moved to a different level bracket zone. Rinse and repeat til you're able to progress in the MSQ. Rinse and repeat til 50. Another memorable thing about the journey to 50 was having to do Stone Vigil like 3-4 times cause we timed out every time. I don't know what it was about that dungeon but getting through it was a pain for some reason. I remember the sense of relief I got when we finally killed Isgebind.

At endgame, Coils and CT are what I looked forward to. To be honest I never really cared about grinding Coil, I just wanted the story, but it became kinda difficult to get a group going cause this was around the time in my life when I'd switched jobs and was studying for the MCAT. Still, managed to get through em somehow. Lol.Beyond that, I remember I rather enjoyed dungeons at endgame. They felt, well... tough at times. Remember wiping a few times in Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace, but eventually was geared enough to speedrun them. I also remember enjoying Pharos Sirius. Honestly, the 2.1 version of that dungeon has got to be my favorite dungeon in the game. The difficulty felt just right. There were a few instances on that first week when we actually timed out, and others when we came pretty close. It was a far cry from today's "15 minutes or your money back" style of dungeons.

Overall, I think a lot of the nostalgia for the 2.x patch era came from the fact that we just... didn't know what was coming. There was a sense of wonder to it. There was, of course, a pattern which was observed in which SE released certain content corresponding to even-numbered and odd-numbered patches, but we weren't 100% sure if this was a cadence they would keep going into Heavensward. I feel like, for a lot of us, 2.55 set an extremely high standard for patches leading into the next expansion. I was already excited for HW, but my interest regarding the direction of the plot just soared after the "Bloody Banquet" in Ul'dah. I'm a bit saddened to say that no .5 or .55 patch has ever hit these highs. Come to think of it, 2.55 was also the first time they issued the "you're about to see a lot of cutscenes, we recommend you get some popcorn and set aside some time to view them in their entirety" warning. I feel like, for a time, whenever this warning popped up, it really put people on edge due to the strong association with the Banquet cutscenes hahah.

I apologize for the long read. If you took your time to read it, thank you, and I'm sorry... lol