1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

[Packetdancer]

There's also a bit of a caveat when it comes to map size.

1.0 had no sprint or jump, and only got mounts (Chocobos) later in its life. Go to any HW+ area and navigate it only on base running speed and every single map will suddenly feel massive. Not as massive as a 1.0 map but this is does contribute to the sense of how big a map can be. I imagine if flying ever made it to 1.0 that many areas would have suddenly felt way smaller.

Moreover, I feel like in my recollection, most of the zones other than Coerthas had something like 80% of the map consist of the same copy/pasted assets. "Look, there's that rock again." "Hey, look, it's Tree Cluster #3, again!" Etc. And in some cases they blocked off what would be a rational path from point A to point B just to make you go out of your way. (Which, I mean, the overworld was dangerous and you don't want players shortcutting around that, so... fair, I guess?)

The practical result being they weren't just incredibly huge, they were also incredibly easy to get lost on at times.

*cue silent glaring at the 1.x Black Shroud again*

(Side note: I am convinced that the ARR version of Toto-Rak had the little ledge you had to jump up on at one point to continue through the dungeon just so they could be like "Look! You can jump now! Jumping, hooray!" Especially since dropping down those exact same sorts of ledges prevented you from backtracking in the original Toto-Rak due to the inability to jump...)

[Mikita]

There's also a bit of a caveat when it comes to map size.

1.0 had no sprint or jump, and only got mounts (Chocobos) later in its life. Go to any HW+ area and navigate it only on base running speed and every single map will suddenly feel massive. Not as massive as a 1.0 map but this is does contribute to the sense of how big a map can be. I imagine if flying ever made it to 1.0 that many areas would have suddenly felt way smaller.

I remember going into ARR from 1.0 and feeling that the world suddenly got really small.
The larger 1.0 zones with their sparser camps, dangers, and hassles of getting around, made Eorzea feel more like "a world" that we were in.

Not feeling like I really want to go back to that, but I do have fond memories of that version of Eorzea.
FFXIV 1.0 was pretty much my first game ever, so naivity just made everything fresh and interesting.

Anyway. Here are a few of my screenshots.
It was more wide open and atmospheric.









We spent so much time running around the world to get places.



I remember looking at the chocobo that was stabled in Western Thanalan thinking "I wish we could ride one of those!"



A couple of my not-so-favorite places in old Eorzea.





Also for comparison, battle was much slower and less flashy. But it had some really interesting lighting effects -- like someone would shine a spotlight on you whenever you used spells and weaponskills.

[Packetdancer]

It was more wide open and atmospheric.

*whispers* Except the Shroud, which was borderline claustrophobic.

A couple of my not-so-favorite places in old Eorzea.

*small tic develops near eye when seeing what appears to be 1.x Larkscall*

Also for comparison, battle was much slower and less flashy. But it had some really interesting lighting effects -- like someone would shine a spotlight on you whenever you used spells and weaponskills.

Anything else aside, I gotta say that the lighting in 1.x -- in combat or otherwise -- was on point in a way I've seen in few other MMOs.

[BaconBits]

If there is any one thing left from 1.x that I would like payoff on—beyond the blink-and-you-miss-it "hey, remember that thing he stole from Y'shtola and you all on Seal Rock? Look what he did with it!" moment we got during the Alexander quests—it is Travanchet. We don't know what Ascian he was—one we've seen in another form? One we've heard about? Just one of the lesser ones? He's certainly the only Ascian I can think of who we've seen take a host that wasn't a Hyur (or, I suppose, a Garlean), what's up with that?

I prefer to believe Travenchet is on a random beach rolling up some fogweed and chilling with the rest of the unaddressed Ascians.

[P0sitr0nic]

From what I heard it was sort of a permanent instance where people got in and out of for grinding instead of an actual dungeon like our version has?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

From what i heard, it was an open non instance dungeon that you did Leves in.

[ReynTime]

I think Tanaka, the old producer, intentionally made things difficult to force people to work together in hopes of creating a community.

Like you, I got to know who could make what items I needed. It was really hard to be an omni-crafter and so it helped to know who had what and befriend them.
I actually got to know my best friend, whom I still play with today, because she was a high level miner and I chased after her to buy some colorant materials from her personal bazaar.

Of course a lot of people ended up hating those design decisions and the rest is history.

People tend to misunderstand the point of the camps that every video talking about 1.0 makes fun of too. Making them mandatory for initiating guildleves and behests made it very simple to gather adventurers together in small parties while leveling and still contribute with the immersion of being an adventurer making a living working with others for bounty. I miss that. And the difficulty of the battle leves.

I understand it was a nightmare to navigate but 1.0 Black Shroud certainly feels much more like a foreboding ancient forest than the current version which is for the most part pretty open. I always feel so disconnected from Gridania story bits when they say something like "don't get lost in the dangerous dense woods!" then I go to Central Shroud and I'm like "WHAT WOODS?"

They could have kept the eerieness of the original Shroud without a labyrinthine design. Of course, they didn't even bother. After all, the Calamity was used as an excuse to downplay the importance of the elementals and brush woodsin aside.

[DiaDeem]

I remember going into ARR from 1.0 and feeling that the world suddenly got really small.
The larger 1.0 zones with their sparser camps, dangers, and hassles of getting around, made Eorzea feel more like "a world" that we were in.

Not feeling like I really want to go back to that, but I do have fond memories of that version of Eorzea.
FFXIV 1.0 was pretty much my first game ever, so naivity just made everything fresh and interesting.

Anyway. Here are a few of my screenshots.
It was more wide open and atmospheric.

ARR Zones were indeed tiny, and I'm gonna fully blame the PS3 for that one. It's kind of a miracle that they somehow fit Heavensward on the console at all. They were enough for me at the time specifically, but keep in mind: My prior MMO to XIV was Ragnarok Online, so the move to a (in comparison) huge and super detailed 3D world definitely skewed my perception of ARR's areas. I really wanted to play XIV ever since 1.0 was around (even knowing of the backlash at the time), but my little laptop at the time would have never been able to run the game, so I decided to wait for the PS3 version... and we all know where that eventually ended up in.

Not too long ago I did a "just run around" session in the Shadowbringers areas, which meant no mount and no sprint, and they do feel way larger than they do when we fly around in them, which.. why wouldn't we, right? Even then, yes: They don't feel as big as 1.0 areas, and a point of reference I definitely don't have is how the areas felt with other players around or when there were monsters around, so I can't say for sure how that was, as my screenies are rather limited in that sense. The tradeoff being (as many have pointed out) that you could be in Central Thanalan or in Eastern Thanalan and you wouldn't know it just by looking around from the excessive re-use of assets, which is never an issue with ARR areas.

The one area which I wish had been somewhat as massive as a 1.0 area was the Azim Steppe. It's described as this "Gigantic space filled with plains as far as the eye can see" and... not really? Not even with the "Just walk-no mount" trick. I would have love to visit more of the Xaela tribes in a map that big.

Dunno, mixed feelings. Your screenshots are awesome! It's always really cool to see genuine 1.0 era screenshots.

[ReynTime]

IMHO the vast, mostly flat, barren emptiness of most maps they added since Heavensward aren't that much better than the copy-pasta excess from 1.0.

ARR is hands down the best when it comes to map detail, regardless of size.

[DiaDeem]

They could have kept the eerieness of the original Shroud without a labyrinthine design. Of course, they didn't even bother. After all, the Calamity was used as an excuse to downplay the importance of the elementals and brush woodsin aside.

I was lucky enough to get Odin weather as I was making this post, and the South Shroud in particular I feel really captures that feel:


Other than that... Sylphlands? Maybe?...


Mind you, I don't think 1.0 shroud was that eerie to begin with.. and it just doesn't feel like a forest to me. Forest aren't closed off corridors like that. It just feels really artificial. In that sense, I don't think either version got that part of the Shroud right. If anything, I think Dimwold is what captures that feel the best, even if it's just a tiny section of The Fringes. Well, that and Odin weather.

[Packetdancer]

People tend to misunderstand the point of the camps that every video talking about 1.0 makes fun of too. Making them mandatory for initiating guildleves and behests made it very simple to gather adventurers together in small parties while leveling and still contribute with the immersion of being an adventurer making a living working with others for bounty. I miss that. And the difficulty of the battle leves.

Yeah. There's plenty of stuff to make fun of in 1.x, but I'd agree that the camps are not one of them; the system had its clunky aspects, but I do think it gave more of a feeling of an adventuring party gathering.

They could have kept the eerieness of the original Shroud without a labyrinthine design. Of course, they didn't even bother. After all, the Calamity was used as an excuse to downplay the importance of the elementals and brush woodsin aside.

I will admit, for all my dramatic whining about the 1.x Black Shroud -- most of which was, sadly, deserved -- the sheer ominous "if you do something the elementals don't like, they will just Thanos snap you out of existence" factor of the greenwrath is something I really do miss from 1.x. I disliked a lot of the design of the Shroud in 1.x, but dang the lore was really meaty.