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

[Enla]

The thing about WoW is very few will admit the game was riddled with bugs and issues, and the community was what made it great. A community that will never come back, I doubt the classic servers will last all that long. MMO's that never get content may as well be dead.

Oh definitely. It's a gimmick and one that has no staying power. However at least with WoW they had the unofficial, private vanilla server and the outrage generated by it's closing to propel them into making it a reality. There was enough demand there to warrant even just one server being made, even if only for a short enough amount of time to make back the money needed to make it happen. With FFXIV 1.0 there's just nothing... Not even good positive feelings from the general community to hook potential newcomers to pop in and see what all the fuss was about.

[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.

[LauraAdalena]

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,

... there's so much wrong here, I don't know where to start.

first off. Why don't you just stop? Anybody who is a Final Fantasy fan can disprove your citation-less rants.

Second, every "fact" you say I want you to link where you are getting this information. Not just tell me, link it. Let me read it for myself so I can without bias believe any claim you may say that is actually a fact.

Third, your points.

it was our 1.2x players, hype it up before 2.0 release

Where are you pulling this from? I heard this from friends. None of them played 1.x. No, not 1.0. 1.X which is ANYTHING from 1.0-1.23. Literally, the person who told me about this and introduced me to the game was someone who only knew about it because a site he frequented said that it was worth a shot. He, as far as I know, never knew anybody who played 1.x. And I introduced 3 other people indirectly like that without knowing anybody who played before then. I'm an introvert, and most of my friends are too. It's why I am certain of what I'm saying.

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

This is for everyone else that reads this... is this irony? Is this statement here irony?

I'm not even white knighting FFXIV at all. In fact, all I'm trying to get you to realize is that you are ranting, raving, foaming at the mouth all because we enjoy a game and you don't and maybe you shouldn't play the game that gets you to act like this. I learned this with games before, it's why I don't play Overwatch anymore. I play Overwatch and I get angry, I get really upset, if someone wants to play as the character I want to I slagged them off in voice. My answer? Stop playing Overwatch. Maybe you should consider this.

for these people, 2.0 is worse than 1.2x, it no longer has any chance

THEN STOP PLAYING IT. If it doesn't have another chance, TELL THAT TO SQUARE BY, say it with me, NOT PAYING FOR THEIR PRODUCT ON A MONTHLY BASIS. It's the only way companies understand is not getting money.

If you are not enjoying something, stop doing what you are not enjoying. And if you are here ranting and raving at us because we are still playing when you aren't playing, then you should stop. All you are doing is making your own life more stressful. Hell, this will be the last post I put here given how many times I've said this and how cyclical this is getting.

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? I heard this directly from the source of fans who played FFXIV 1.23 on the bus in my high school, in my classes in my high school who were not friends and I stopped talking to after high school, but even if I did they'd probably tell me how bad the experience was again because they were telling me how bad it was up until the day one of them told me there was a scene with Bahamut destroying the world, and he even said, in his words, "it's almost as if this was an apology for creating a god-awful game."

yes, many 2.x+ content have been done wrong. But pinning this on all the reasons you have been is inherently disingenuous and people have called you out on this. You've pinned this on: Yoshi-P being a bad designer (which... I'm not going to touch with a 100 foot pole, don't reply with it), Them flubbing the style (Eureka), them being lazy, them not being in touch with the fans, and most recent of all, people white knighting the game and making it look better. At the same time, you seem to very carefully omit what they did RIGHT. Ultimate is one of the best raiding contents in the game ever. Alphascape is a solid end to the Omega series, even if certain ones could have been a little less lackluster, Pyros gives me hope that Hydatos will be good, POTD was well-received enough for them to clone it with Heaven on High without really doing anything special with it that it needed so badly, the EX trials of Heavensward are some of the best content in the game (that one might be my opinion), and the music is some of the best in the entire franchise (that ALSO might be my opinion.

And finally... Didn't the FFXV director leave? He wasn't fired. In fact, I thought he left to make a new game studio and took some of the FFXV staff with him, and wasn't fired. But just left because he thought the time was right. Also, your "Too many things are wrong now" just rings of a desperate fanboy/girl who clings onto the past like that's when things were the best to the point that you have to shout at people that the past was good and deny all facts just to keep them from ruining your precious rose-tinted glasses.

I'm done since this is seeming pointless.

[Dzian]

Agreed. I don't think most people would think the only solution to a rigidly "restricted party size" would be a full-blown Alliance Raid (though, honestly, every other MMO I've played have managed well enough despite having, say, 25 people to manage), but more alike to... 6-to-10 people. Admittedly, it's harder to balance, which is probably why it seems nearly a ridiculous idea for XIV, especially while it only has two difficulties -- significant and trivial -- and no concept remotely approaching personal loot or embedded DKP or the like. But, if we could get it close enough, and add just a few other features, and change out pages for a more granular currency (which--small bonus--wouldn't take up inventory space), we could probably flex all but the bonus boss of each Savage tier even with just the two existing difficulty ranks.

This is one area where XI really smashed it and also a big reason why the community bonds there were much stronger. the sheer amount of flexibility in a lot of it's content simply meant pretty much everyone was able to participate.

got 14 people you can do and do limbus.. only got 4 people. you can still go and do limbus.
17 people turned up for sky or dynamis. no problem. 27 people turned up for sky or dynamis again no problem. it didnt matter how many people you had there was always something you could do and everyone could be included.

even times where we had like 23 people turn up for omega well half of us dont need any of the drops so some of us can pair off and go work on another pop set for the ls..

this has always been what 14 really lacks. and it's social bonds and connections really suffer for it.. alot of the time you cant even rotate people because if you have 12 people and 8 of them clear savage. they cant then go and help the other 4 because they'll kill the loot drops... or your restricted in other ways.such as potd and hoh only having 2 saves to work with.

This is why people have wanted FC based content since well EVER basically. something groups of people can actually work on together and have everyone feel included.. strengthen the bonds and build stronger communities.

there's not much worse than saying "hey anyone wanna do "insert content"? and having like 5 or 10 people all say yes... someones gonna be feeling left out.....

or you can be like hey wanna help me get lakshmis mount. 5 people say yes. and now your forced to get 2 pugs who might also want the mount and thus mess your whole plan up.... at this point that fight is easily managable with 6

[Daethir]

before XIV 1.2 server shut down, all servers are full of people,(that's why the sever crashed

so this is not rose-tinted glasses or nostalgia or what , I am just telling the fact

So SE shut down a very successful game just to spite the (many) players who liked it :thinking:

[swiss_Momo]

let's go back to the failed version that almost killed the whole Final Fantasy genre, because it had nicer cutscenes and I'm nostalgic about the way they shut it down! XD

and there the 1.0 and XI nostalgia crowd wonders why no one likes their ideas...

[Vidu]

And finally... Didn't the FFXV director leave? He wasn't fired. In fact, I thought he left to make a new game studio and took some of the FFXV staff with him, and wasn't fired. But just left because he thought the time was right.

While he did leave "on his own account" its probably only a way for everyone involved - both Tabata and SE - to save their faces.
Firing someone or getting fired is bad taste in japan and its most likely that they offered him to quit instead of firing him.

Someone must have realised that FFXV and those DLCs were losing them money, instead of making it - so they canceled the DLCs and parted ways with the person responsible for wasting their money.
So... in my humble opinion the thing that was wrong here is was the vision and distribution of ressources Tabata had, managed and decided.

Its kinda ironic, considering how often people on this forum complain about SE most likely taking a huge amount of the revenue of FFXIV to funel into other projects (instead of investing into this game and into Yoshis team) - one of those projects most likely being FFXV.

[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

[Erza_Scarlets]

This thread is nutshell:

Someone posts random things about 1.0/2.0 stuff liking or disliking one or the other

Person A: RAGE RAGE XI/1.0 things to 2.0 and how everything is dying, and they hate this and that about whichever game.
Person B: Another thread about same things.
Person C: Nani?! whats this.
Person D: More fuel to the fire.
Person A: More Rage and including games that aren't 1.0 or 2.0.

(XI is not 1.0 or 2.0 and should not even be in the discussion in first place. 1.0 is dead and gone. 2.0 is what 14 is now and its doing what it is. XI and XIV were made in different gaming times so stop comparing both. XI is still running just fine if you want to play it. If you want to play 14 then do so. 1.0 and 2.0 had their differences.)

Never understood why some people think XI and 1.0 or 2.0 are anything alike when they are both FF games. They were made in different times. Some people like one or the other or both or nether. Just cause you hate A B or C doesn't make it any less to someone else. Also no one cares if you think game A B or C kept SE afloat.