Negative nostalgia:

  • Sitting for HOURS in Jeuno waiting for a party especially as a DPS. You'd open your "Find Members" window, there'd be a tank, 3 dps, but oh wait the healer or support is JP only. You'd /tell them but there would be no response because they didn't like NA parties. On the flip side you quickly learned who were the server idiots.
  • Then you'd trudge out to camp with the PT... and come across 5 other parties camping the same mobs. Oh sure there'd be other camps but they'd be inconvenient or dangerous to get to.
  • HNMs. People begged for those 3 mobs (Fafnir, Behemoth, Adamantoise) to be made force spawnable for years but Tanaka resolutely ignored those requests.
  • Massive queues at battlefields because only 3 parties could fight in it at a time
  • Worthless content like Evoliths, Pankration, and Hunt Logs
  • Coffer keys.
  • Gil sellers. At least in FFXIV all they do is warp from mining point to mining point. There they would control an entire gear drop system by controlling the pop items needed to spawn notorious monsters. Sky anyone?
Positive nostalgia:

Joining a coffer key linkshell. We'd all (18 of us) go down to Eldieme and get our coffer keys once and for all. Coffer keys dropped off of skeletons. Skeletons have a special move that drained the HP of everyone in the vicinity. So we'd get drained, going into yellow HP, which attracted more undead and suddenly it's a raid wipe.

Stepping into Sky for the first time. Breathtaking. I'll never forget that sight.

Beating Chains of Promathia pre-nerf. It was a struggle through and through, but reaching the end was worth it.

Beating Maat for the first time, as DRK, pre-Blink Band.

Overall, FFXI drove home the point that even though you may have lost thousands of EXP, if there's something worth having, you eat that Raise 1 or returning to Home Point and keep trying. You'll achieve your goal eventually.