This video tells you why some people thought FFXIV 1.2. is a better MMO than 2.0

[ShanXiv]

Well then, if it's true then that's great news considering we still have enough for a healthy amount of people playing the game and FF14 is still only 2nd to WoW in terms of amount of active players. I imagine this 95% is across the board with almost all MMO's considering the status quo has remained relatively unchanged. Puts a bit of a dampener on Shan's point anyway, 700k active players is way more than the figure Shan gave on 1.0's total sales.

FFXIV 1.0 sold 600k copies it was because SE stop selling it after the game released for one or two months? in 2010.
not because 1.2x contents are bad, there were a lot of return players during 1.2 period,

If 1.2x wasn't great, you won't get so much hype about 2.0,
In fact, it was our 1.2x players, hype it up before 2.0 release
that's why you saw so many people joined 2.0 alhpa & beta, & people had so much passion on a new game

Yes, 2.0 graphics，UI，QoL changes are wonderful, no one denies that.
and ARR gaming experience is great at the beginning.

And because the 1.2x experience, I was a white knight too when 2.0 just released,
why I had to defend 2.0? here's a little story: it's because a guy in my FC, he's a XI player,
because 1.2x leave him a good impression too, he bought 4 ARR copies(that's why ARR sold a lot lol..) & gave them to his XI friends(his friends tried 1.0 & quit),
if 1.2x isn't good, he won't do that.

After 2.0 just released, he was hanging around in the game,
he run to Mor Dhona & check the tomestone vendors when he was only level 1,
after 1 or 2 days, he said: "ARR is a WOW clone". my reaction was:"WHAT? THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE, 1.2x contents are enjoyable, SE has no reason to do this."
& time had proved he's right. He & his XI friends quit ARR after one month & never comeback,
for these people, 2.0 is worse than 1.2x, it no longer has any chance

You see? many rumors you heard are wrong (1.0 sucks =/= 1.23 sucks) , it's just like 2.0, many contents in 2.0 had been done wrong,
SE just fired XV director you know? Too many things are wrong now....

[Penthea]

If 1.2x wasn't great, you won't get so much hype about 2.0,
In fact, it was our 1.2x players, hype it up before 2.0 release

While it is true that 1.2x players did indeed lend great support to the hype of 2.0, you're forgetting some details.

1: Final Fantasy is one of the world's most loved gaming franchises and it's over 20 years old. Its fanbase is huge. 1.2x and 2.0 weren't obscure games. A lot of fans who had not played yet were waiting for 2.0 because it was essentially a new FF game to play, and also anyone who didn't have a pc would finally have a new FF mmo they could play. Anyone who loved the FF series knew about XIV. SE's fame certainly carried them to a degree.

2: SE dismantling their latest mmo and building a new one from the ashes very quickly gained legendary status among the mmo community. Attempting such a thing was almost unheard of, and certainly the success of something to this degree never happened before. Five years later XIV is still the only mmo to accomplish success with anything like this. I personally know people who never played a FF game who were very curious about XIV because of this, and they bought 2.0.

3: SE had no choice but to make 2.0. 1.0's ill-fated release nearly destroyed SE. It truly looked like one of the mightiest jrpg kings would be dethroned. The only way to convince their fans and their shareholders that they could make a solid mmo was to...well, make a solid mmo. Especially to their shareholders because they invested their money into the project and it flopped, so they lost money. That's an incredible amount of financial pressure. SE simply could not leave XIV behind and hope to recover from it, because they wouldn't have survived.

4: SE created their own hype by doing a 180 by becoming hugely involved with the playerbase. Players feeling like they truly had impact on the state of the game definitely inspired them to play more, and be more constructive and active with their feedback. And this resulted in the point you brought up: the 1.2x players helping with 2.0.

1.2x's players were instrumental in not only creating hype for 2.0, but also for the sort of game 2.0 ended up being due to feedback. But let's not pretend that they were the only important factor. SE's long time fame, great reputation and the risk of ruin was equally important.

You see? many rumors you heard are wrong (1.0 sucks =/= 1.23 sucks) , it's just like 2.0, many contents in 2.0 had been done wrong,
SE just fired XV director you know? Too many things are wrong now....

What rumours? 1.2x is a different game to 2.0 because most players, as well as most developers in Yoshida's team did not think 1.2x was good enough, and from a technical point of view it was horrible to work with to the point it severely lacked longevity. This is not an opinion. This is fact. If the "rumours" weren't true then 2.0 would have been an expansion and not a reincarnation of XIV.

Sorry but you liking something doesn't automatically mean it was better in every way. You liking 1.2x doesn't change that the game was unstable, it doesn't change that most players wanted something more or different, and it doesn't change that it was a nightmare for the devs to work on it.

You are truly mixing up fact with personal taste. They are not the same thing. I don't think you could even be called a white knight. You're too blind to wield a weapon.

[Zephera]

You see? many rumors you heard are wrong (1.0 sucks =/= 1.23 sucks) , it's just like 2.0, many contents in 2.0 had been done wrong,
SE just fired XV director you know? Too many things are wrong now....

What rumour? The game literally failed because it was that bad, it's an undeniable fact that it was so bad that not enough people stuck around to play it resulting in it's closure.

Also, love being called a white knight, always know I'm on the winning side of the argument when people resort to this all too common buzzword insult these days.

[Sigma-Astra]

And because the 1.2x experience, I was a white knight too when 2.0 just released.

...You still kind of are for the game that everyone else was fine with leaving behind. If you want to stay in the past, that's fine, but let the rest of us move into the future without your nonsense and rose colored glasses.

[Vidu]

FFXIV 1.0 sold 600k copies it was because SE stop selling it after the game released for one or two months? in 2010.
not because 1.2x contents are bad, there were a lot of return players during 1.2 period,

If 1.2x wasn't great, you won't get so much hype about 2.0,
In fact, it was our 1.2x players, hype it up before 2.0 release
that's why you saw so many people joined 2.0 alhpa & beta, & people had so much passion on a new game

...pretty sure it wasnt the legacy people hyping it up, but rather SE being "We fixed everything, please give it another chance!" and a huge add-campaign. Personally I didnt got to this game because a legacy player invited me but because I saw an add with a free beta-key in a german games magazine.

People returning to the game for its final moments also says little about the actual quality of the game and more about the wish of those players to say "Goodbye" - or possibly get the promised items in the hope that ARR would be better..

And I'm pretty sure 1.0 only selling 600k wasnt due to SE not producing anymore. I doubt that people were trying to buy the game and got turned away because "Sorry, mate, SE doesnt make that game anymore" - but rather SE noticing what a HUGE flop 1.0 was and so they stopped funeling more money into producing copies of a game that no one wants to play.
Also: Did I missread that in this thread or didnt the whole thing went freetoplay at a certain point, in an attempt to safe the game? And didnt that fail aswell?

Yes, 2.0 graphics，UI，QoL changes are wonderful, no one denies that.
and ARR gaming experience is great at the beginning.

Every games experience is great in the sense of wonder and amazement in the beginning, because everything is literally new to you - you have to learn the rules and basics of the game. And while yes, that feeling slips away the longer you play, thats neither exclusive to this game nor is it a truely surprising or bad thing.
Looking at the beginning of ARR without the rose tinted glasses of "Hach, my first hours in Eorzea...!" its not that great anymore. The storytelling is slow, involves a lot of fetchquests and while the dungeons are great for learning the ropes and have some slightly intresting puzzle-mechanics, most bossfights are rather boring. Same goes for the lowlevel jobs - not a great experience.
So, that "great experience" comes from exploring a whole new world and a whole new game - not from the beginning of ARR being the Holy Gral of Gaming.

And because the 1.2x experience, I was a white knight too when 2.0 just released,
why I had to defend 2.0? here's a little story: it's because a guy in my FC, he's a XI player,
because 1.2x leave him a good impression too, he bought 4 ARR copies(that's why ARR sold a lot lol..) & gave them to his XI friends(his friends tried 1.0 & quit),
if 1.2x isn't good, he won't do that.

Sure he would do that! I mean, I cant speak for your friends motives here, but: It is totally possible that he was aware that 1.0 and even 1.2 were still so bad that his friends wouldnt play it. So he waited for the ARR-release, banking on the promise that it would make everything better.

And yes, those 4 copies that your friend brought are the whole reason for ARR selling more copies than 1.0...!
And not SE investing a lot of money into adds...

After 2.0 just released, he was hanging around in the game,
he run to Mor Dhona & check the tomestone vendors when he was only level 1,
after 1 or 2 days, he said: "ARR is a WOW clone". my reaction was:"WHAT? THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE, 1.2x contents are enjoyable, SE has no reason to do this."
& time had proved he's right. He & his XI friends quit ARR after one month & never comeback,
for these people, 2.0 is worse than 1.2x, it no longer has any chance

So... without even seeing most of the game, he decided that it sucked and quit? Surely an opinion that one can trust, based on foundation and such!

But: Fair is fair. Different people can like different things. I dont wanna belittle anyone for their taste here - if 1.2 and FFXI worked for you and your friends: Great!
If ARR and the follow ups dont work for you anymore: Sad!
But at the same time ARR work great for a lot of people.
And you dont need to tell them why you like 1.2 better or convince them that its the better game - it might be for you, but beside no one being able to play 1.2 anyways, you dont need to convince anyone here about that.

Stick with games that you like to play - stick with FFXI, find something thats more to your taste... we'll stick with FFXIV as it is today. Deal?

You see? many rumors you heard are wrong (1.0 sucks =/= 1.23 sucks) , it's just like 2.0, many contents in 2.0 had been done wrong,
SE just fired XV director you know? Too many things are wrong now....

What rumors are wrong?
Certainly not the one that 1.0 almost bankrupted the company, that 1.2 was a band aid fix and that ARR saved not only the game but SE as whole...
No one denies that there might have been good ideas within 1.0 or 1.2 - but at the end there werent enough of them.

About firing that XV-director: What was wrong here is that he was losing the company money by putting more and more into XV-DLCs without getting enough out of it. At least thats my guess. He made bad choices and being let go is the consequence.




Let me ask you again:
Why are you here?
Why do you bother playing a game that you dont enjoy anymore?

Stop torturing yourself. If it helps I'll answer your question from a few pages back:
Yes, there is no hope left. All the good people are gone. SE is dead. You can leave and mourn them now.
(No one tell them that the rest of us will continue to play and enjoy our game!)

[Reynhart]

Also: Did I missread that in this thread or didnt the whole thing went freetoplay at a certain point, in an attempt to safe the game? And didnt that fail aswell?

They thought the game wasn't good enough to justify a subscription fee until 1.18 (I think). At that time, they realized that patching the game would not be enough and they needed more funds to rebuild it from the ground, and that's what gave us the Legacy status. So from a marketing standpoint, I'd say it kinda worked.

Personally, I'd say that by 1.18, the game was not that bad, even though the servers were horrible. But at the same time, they already scrapped most of what I think was interesting in 1.x in favor of more streamlined ideas, instead of fixing and improving them.

One thing to remind though, is that a majority of the fanbase was not comfortable with FF being an MMO. At its peek, FF XI had a population of around 500k, pretty "low" considering mainline FF sells far above the million units. And frankly, digging to find the first updates of FFXI, if the game was released worldwide, it would have probably been destroyed like XIV was.

[Vidu]

They thought the game wasn't good enough to justify a subscription fee until 1.18 (I think). At that time, they realized that patching the game would not be enough and they needed more funds to rebuild it from the ground, and that's what gave us the Legacy status. So from a marketing standpoint, I'd say it kinda worked.

Personally, I'd say that by 1.18, the game was not that bad, even though the servers were horrible. But at the same time, they already scrapped most of what I think was interesting in 1.x in favor of more streamlined ideas, instead of fixing and improving them.

One thing to remind though, is that a majority of the fanbase was not comfortable with FF being an MMO. At its peek, FF XI had a population of around 500k, pretty "low" considering mainline FF sells far above the million units. And frankly, digging to find the first updates of FFXI, if the game was released worldwide, it would have probably been destroyed like XIV was.

Ah, thank you for clarifying that!

I'd like to say that I dont believe that everything about the pre-ARR-era was bad! I'm pretty sure 1.x had (some) nice ideas and might even be better suited to the taste of some people, which is all fair! Just wanna dd that in case I came off as thinking that everything about 1.x was totally horrible - the only "horrible" thing in my book are people like the OP who cant move on and insist that the current FFXIV totally sucks for the simple reason of it not being 1.x - which just seems extremly unfair to me, even if I dont think that FFXIV as it is today is a perfect and flawless game, its still... "wrong" to expect it to be 1.x.
But I get that people have fond memories of 1.x and that the game had both kinds of content - enjoyable, good ideas and boring, content-less downtimes. Just how this game does.
(...and this was probably more directed towards the OP, not you, Reynhart... I'm not arguing against you here)

And I totally agree with your last point!
Final Fantasy as franchise has a HUGE fanbase - and I would imagine that the bad reviews of 1.0 kept a lot of FF-fans, who liked the solo-games but hestitated about playing an MMO (because, well, they enjoyed solo-games and would have played FFXIV because it was an FF, not an MMO), away.
When ARR got good reviews and everyone promised that the game was now enjoyable and playable, people who felt unsure about the whole MMO-thing but wanted to play the new FF, gave it a try.
...at least thats the case for me - never wanted to play an MMO, but loved Final Fantasy and since I had that beta-key and an encouraging friend (who also had never played an MMO, but loved FF), I gave it a shot.
I also think that thats part of the reason that this game offers a more "solo-like" experience - they are aware that not everyone playing this game comes from an MMO-background but that instead many will come from an FF-solo-background. Despite the OP always insisting that the social aspect of an MMO is the selling point and the most important thing, I dont believe that thats true - even less so for this game.
The mainpoint of the game is being an FinalFantasyMMO and that means trying to offer both a solo- and an MMO-experience, depending on what the person in question prefers.

[Reynhart]

But I get that people have fond memories of 1.x and that the game had both kinds of content - enjoyable, good ideas and boring, content-less downtimes. Just how this game does.

The problem I have with FFXIV right now is that it feels like any idea used by 1.x (or XI most of the time) is inherently bad. And it's just sad because some of them were very interesting and may have been the reasons why some of us even were attracted by an FF MMO in the first place.

Final Fantasy as franchise has a HUGE fanbase - and I would imagine that the bad reviews of 1.0 kept a lot of FF-fans, who liked the solo-games but hestitated about playing an MMO (because, well, they enjoyed solo-games and would have played FFXIV because it was an FF, not an MMO), away.

The very idea kept lots of them away even before XI launched so I'd say the bad reviews only beat an already wounded horse

[Sandpark]

The problem I have with FFXIV right now is that it feels like any idea used by 1.x (or XI most of the time) is inherently bad. And it's just sad because some of them were very interesting and may have been the reasons why some of us even were attracted by an FF MMO in the first place.

The very idea kept lots of them away even before XI launched so I'd say the bad reviews only beat an already wounded horse

The problem I have with FFXIV right now is that it feels like any idea used by 1.x (or XI most of the time) is inherently bad. And it's just sad because some of them were very interesting and may have been the reasons why some of us even were attracted by an FF MMO in the first place.

The very idea kept lots of them away even before XI launched so I'd say the bad reviews only beat an already wounded horse

There are two types of gamers.

The Rules gamer and the Role gamer.
The rules gamers want jobs and no classes, without jobs all of their characters blend into a generic adventurer class who acts as a sort of everyman. Without racial modifiers, choosing a race becomes a cosmetic choice with no lasting impact. Without strict faction memberships, guild quests become senseless and arbitrary. They love the strict combat script of this game that role gamers call jump rope.

The role gamers dislike a game having too many arbitrary rules, they feel hemmed in. If they can't choose a role they find desirable, the game is not worth their salt. Roles should be defined by decisions not rules.

On one hand, the rule gamer is right:
If you don't have rules and statistics, if you don't have attributes, classes, racial modifiers, and skill requirements, your role is undefined. That isn't role-playing, that's pretending the way kids pretend.
There's no hard limit to push up against, no consequences for your decisions, no meaning to any of your actions.

On the other hand, the role gamer is also right:
If the rules prevent you from playing a desirable role, what's the point of playing?
If there are too many arbitrary rules restricting your freedom of choice you're not really playing a role, you're just following a script. It might be a good action game, or a good strategy game, but it's not really a role-playing game if you can't make basic decisions about things like your character's skill development, what kind of armor they wear, or whether or not Derplander the WOL can reject his destiny and live in the cities as a drunk pimp with a Lalafell girlfriend and a gambling addiction.

1.0 was mostly role and little rule, now we swung over to the other side. All rule and little role. A great game has to have a balance between role and rule.

Guildleves remains as a repetitive sidequest and material gatherer option, in the most boring way associated with fetch quest rpgs, only they removed the long walk to return quest giver. It has basically been untouched since the beginning of 1.0 for the most part.

It has/had the potential to be a fast easy way to jump in and out of different styles of content solo or in a pre made group.
https://guildleveideas.webs.com/

My issue with fates, GW2 dynamic events, ESO anvils is immersion. Immersion is a suspension of your senses or beliefs.

So you can have immersion whether you have convenience or not, but that requires developers to think about what their mechanics mean. Which unfortunately for MMO’s tends to rarely happen.

There is too much “weird MMO crap” going on for me to get truly immersed the way I would with a single-player RPG.

By “weird MMO crap” I mean all the stuff MMOs seem to need to have to be MMOs.
Things like enemies that simply stand around all day in the same spot, never moving, simply waiting for someone to come and kill them.
And ones that respawn faster than their predecessor’s corpses de-spawn.
People standing around waiting to be the hero who saves the village by slaying the monster, only they can’t because someone else is slaying it right now (but don’t worry, there will be another monster along in a minute, and the village will need saving again).
Bar patrons who bounce up and down on the table for hours while waiting for this mysterious “group finder” thing to “pop” and yelling at the other patrons to queue.

I mention the immersion thing because that is something XIV Hamlet and FFXI beseiged got right. If it happens constantly and very conveniently, it is immersion sapping and loses it's flair and oomph. The wildlife and enemy AI from 1.0 was amazing and immersive. They had reasons to exists beyond being your experience points or a means to an end on a quest or material farm. Sure, some of their tendencies were weird and annoying, but it made the world feel more like a real place.

Fast travel, I love it and don't want to see it go. But it's whole point was to not force a player to waste time seeing the same static environment they have been through a thousand times. Maybe if the environment was not static, I wouldn't mind a temporary or out of the blue reason for it to be limited for a time being? Maybe the aether gets plugged due to an ominous storm, maybe the fog gets so dense it renders my mini-map useless for a bit, maybe the sun and moon get so eclipse I can barely see two feet in front of my face, or maybe at night a new race of vampires and evil beast come out to feast on my rotting corpse? If it is static, do not touch my convenience with a ten foot pole, thank you. Idk, perhaps there is random treasure chest that spawn rarely with a mini game to unlock it? What if once an eorzean month or year, a crater opens in the Sagolli desert and some ancient ruins reveal a lost civilization?

[ShanXiv]

There are two types of gamers.

The Rules gamer and the Role gamer.
The rules gamers want jobs and no classes, without jobs all of their characters blend into a generic adventurer class who acts as a sort of everyman. Without racial modifiers, choosing a race becomes a cosmetic choice with no lasting impact. Without strict faction memberships, guild quests become senseless and arbitrary. They love the strict combat script of this game that role gamers call jump rope.

The role gamers dislike a game having too many arbitrary rules, they feel hemmed in. If they can't choose a role they find desirable, the game is not worth their salt. Roles should be defined by decisions not rules.

On one hand, the rule gamer is right:
If you don't have rules and statistics, if you don't have attributes, classes, racial modifiers, and skill requirements, your role is undefined. That isn't role-playing, that's pretending the way kids pretend.
There's no hard limit to push up against, no consequences for your decisions, no meaning to any of your actions.

On the other hand, the role gamer is also right:
If the rules prevent you from playing a desirable role, what's the point of playing?
If there are too many arbitrary rules restricting your freedom of choice you're not really playing a role, you're just following a script. It might be a good action game, or a good strategy game, but it's not really a role-playing game if you can't make basic decisions about things like your character's skill development, what kind of armor they wear, or whether or not Derplander the WOL can reject his destiny and live in the cities as a drunk pimp with a Lalafell girlfriend and a gambling addiction.

1.0 was mostly role and little rule, now we swung over to the other side. All rule and little role. A great game has to have a balance between role and rule.

Guildleves remains as a repetitive sidequest and material gatherer option, in the most boring way associated with fetch quest rpgs, only they removed the long walk to return quest giver. It has basically been untouched since the beginning of 1.0 for the most part.

It has/had the potential to be a fast easy way to jump in and out of different styles of content solo or in a pre made group.
https://guildleveideas.webs.com/

My issue with fates, GW2 dynamic events, ESO anvils is immersion. Immersion is a suspension of your senses or beliefs.

So you can have immersion whether you have convenience or not, but that requires developers to think about what their mechanics mean. Which unfortunately for MMO’s tends to rarely happen.

There is too much “weird MMO crap” going on for me to get truly immersed the way I would with a single-player RPG.

By “weird MMO crap” I mean all the stuff MMOs seem to need to have to be MMOs.
Things like enemies that simply stand around all day in the same spot, never moving, simply waiting for someone to come and kill them.
And ones that respawn faster than their predecessor’s corpses de-spawn.
People standing around waiting to be the hero who saves the village by slaying the monster, only they can’t because someone else is slaying it right now (but don’t worry, there will be another monster along in a minute, and the village will need saving again).
Bar patrons who bounce up and down on the table for hours while waiting for this mysterious “group finder” thing to “pop” and yelling at the other patrons to queue.

I mention the immersion thing because that is something XIV Hamlet and FFXI beseiged got right. If it happens constantly and very conveniently, it is immersion sapping and loses it's flair and oomph. The wildlife and enemy AI from 1.0 was amazing and immersive. They had reasons to exists beyond being your experience points or a means to an end on a quest or material farm. Sure, some of their tendencies were weird and annoying, but it made the world feel more like a real place.

Fast travel, I love it and don't want to see it go. But it's whole point was to not force a player to waste time seeing the same static environment they have been through a thousand times. Maybe if the environment was not static, I wouldn't mind a temporary or out of the blue reason for it to be limited for a time being? Maybe the aether gets plugged due to an ominous storm, maybe the fog gets so dense it renders my mini-map useless for a bit, maybe the sun and moon get so eclipse I can barely see two feet in front of my face, or maybe at night a new race of vampires and evil beast come out to feast on my rotting corpse? If it is static, do not touch my convenience with a ten foot pole, thank you. Idk, perhaps there is random treasure chest that spawn rarely with a mini game to unlock it? What if once an eorzean month or year, a crater opens in the Sagolli desert and some ancient ruins reveal a lost civilization?

Well said,
You can often see some old school MMO players making good posts like this. thanks

I will say the "MMORPG is a service" concept is BS, it's an excuse for not knowing how to make a real MMO, bad gameplay & lack of imagination