1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

[Packetdancer]

There was a lot of empty and copy-pasting in 1.0 but one thing I still prefer about the maps is the sense of scale. The sense of scale and distance was perfect.

Well, except the shroud. That has always sucked and I prefer ARR shroud.

I am normally a very calm individual, the peacemaker in a group who tries to get folks to get along, etc. "Rage" is not a thing I usually do.

But the 1.x Black Shroud actually did the near-impossible and inspired the flames of fury in me after I spent an entire evening trying to get across it, getting lost, dying, and so on—and thus utterly failed to meet up with some friends. Not that their luck was much better than mine.

(To be fair, the fact that I'd run out of anima and so couldn't use aetherytes was my own fault... but it's not like 1.x always had aetherytes in the most convenient of places sometimes, either, even if I hadn't been anima-poor. ANYWAY.)

I literally proclaimed "This forest is terrible, the Elementals should feel bad, and I hope it all burns!" and force-quit the game to log out. The only other map in any game, ever, that has come even close to inspiring that level of hate from me is our own Eureka Pagos... and even at its worst, Pagos has never driven me to force-quit the game and walk away from the computer.

As I said earlier in the thread, my salt over the 1.x Black Shroud is dead and buried... but it is a very, very shallow grave.

However, setting aside the memory of my blind, seething rage towards whatever sadistic map designer inflicted that torment on us... I will absolutely grant that the Shroud was, in many ways, a good take on the "dark and forbidding forest" of folklore; traveling through it was sometimes terrifying, as you could easily get lost. And then things would eat you. And whatever else you want to say about the zone, the music was one of my favorite pieces of the original soundtrack. (For those who didn't play 1.x, the 1.x Black Shroud zone music still exists in game; it's now the music for Slitherbough in the Rak'tika Greatwood.)

Thank you for finding and posting that.
I had forgotten the old Lower Decks since I didn't go to Limsa Lominsa very often back then. Ironically, it's where I spend most of my time now.

To be fair, I don't think anyone went to Limsa very often in 1.x if we could avoid it.

But in keeping with the "the zone I avoided/hated is where I now call home"... despite all my (extremely obvious) dislike of the 1.x Black Shroud, somehow I ended up playing ARC/BRD in the ARR beta and then maining CNJ/WHM after launch. And I remain an Adder to this day. Go figure.