Uh, there was an era BEFORE ARR?

[Raiya]

1.0 was in one word.....


N I G H T M A R E

Behold: The pot with more bones than a pc, graphics that slowed your pc (at the time) to a craw and most could barely run it, deliberately gated exp gain. It was a disaster.

[FudoMyoo]

Bad memories from 2010~2012ish, we are all trying to forget it.

[Windseraph]

I'm sick of everyone generalising the whole of 1.0 as one big disaster. Yes, 1.0 was bad, but by the time it rolled around to 1.23, that's when it was actually quite a decent game and many people just write it off. THAT'S the 1.0 I remember fondly and miss to this day

[Ephremjlm]

I sometimes feel like I was the only one who enjoyed their time with 1.0!

The real truth is that you weren't the only one. I wasn't there but about a year and a half ago I posted a video of a guy playing FFXIV 1.x (idk the exact version) with the graphics cranked while he was recording it and his mic. I was shocked, there was no stuttering, and the graphics looked incredible. It must have been around 1.19 or something too because the combat looked fluid and I didn't see any bugs going on. That said, I posted it in one of the big FFXIV Facebook groups and too my surprise A TON of people said how much they actually enjoyed 1x's version. Like other than the usual shitters it was like 50+ comments of positivity. I tested it again later with images and the same happened. So I was curious if everyone just got their opinion from the NoClip documentary and random repost YT videos, so I scoured a bunch of old forums including this one, YT videos, reddit, and made more posts asking people. What I found was that once the game stabilized and had content there were A LOT of people that actually liked the game and many started to see it as becoming the true successor to FFXI, which you could hardly say is the case today. Its a shame too because so many people have this irrational fear of something that for a good portion wasn't even that bad.

Then, idk how bad it really was because the results seemed more mixed (maybe people left) but when ARR's battle system was announced looking like WOW's I read a ton of really pissed off comments and people saying they were leaving or going back to FFXI, OSRS, ect. I heard somewhere they by heavensward there was a new batch of population and like a good chunk left. I came when Stormblood launched so I can't say for sure.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I'm sick of everyone generalising the whole of 1.0 as one big disaster. Yes, 1.0 was bad, but by the time it rolled around to 1.23, that's when it was actually quite a decent game and many people just write it off. THAT'S the 1.0 I remember fondly and miss to this day

The game for the most part was improving over time and most likely would have continued to do so. Would it have been as widespread as now? Who knows but it would have definitely been possible. We won't know however because someone hit the panic button rather quickly due to it not killing WoW like they hoped and at the same time I believe was also still being outperformed by FFXI which may have still been sitting on ps2 era visuals and an old style menu based interface but also had mountains of content to keep players occupied.

[Supersnow845]

I know 1.0 was such a financial disaster probably the only way to give it long term stability was 2.0 but I really wish they had sold 1.15 (the yoshi p overhaul patch) ad a half rework and if it received good feedback build off there rather than Nuke it from orbit

I’m still salty I can’t replay rivenroad as a duty

[Ephremjlm]

I know 1.0 was such a financial disaster probably the only way to give it long term stability was 2.0 but I really wish they had sold 1.15 (the yoshi p overhaul patch) ad a half rework and if it received good feedback build off there rather than Nuke it from orbit

I’m still salty I can’t replay rivenroad as a duty

I'm also pretty salty as i would just like to replay the story bits personally. And like 2.0 was gonna happen one way or another, the back end of the game was pretty bad, you can even talk to certain people in a certain discord who may or may not have reason to back engineer that stuff. The thing that didn't necessarily need to happen was blatantly coping WOW. Though to be completely fair the panic was probably really high at Square Enix HQ and financially I can't really fault them for saying "F it copy the most financially successful one out right now but reuse most of the assets".

It does suck though. FFXI though similar to EQ had its own specific charm and things that made it stand out as unique, just like WOW did.

[Kennar]

I don't remember exactly when I faded away from 1.0, but I suspended my account right before SE decided to start charging subscription fees. I liked the game at first, even though it was so incredibly broken. However, I couldn't get any of my friends to play and the people in-game seemed cold and unfriendly (maybe that was just the Lindblum server). I was lonely, there wasn't much to do, and I got really busy with work; consequently, I just didn't feel like playing for a while. I remember reading the notes for Patch 1.18 and liking the upcoming changes, but I just couldn't summon the energy to log in. My character has a Legacy mark, but since I wasn't subbed at the end I didn't get my name in the 2.0 credits. Seeing what later patches brought, I wish I would have stuck around a little longer.

I don't know if 1.x could have been repaired enough to make it viable. They were taking care of the gameplay issues, and perhaps more of the technical problems could have been addressed, but even then it probably wouldn't have had more than niche appeal (which would not have paid the bills). I don't mean to be that "WoW ruined MMOs!" guy, but it did prove that a MMO can have wide, mainstream appeal, which is what the suits in the corner offices were wanting. I don't believe any amount of lipstick on the pig that was 1.0 could have gained it that appeal.

[Atelier-Bagur]

The game for the most part was improving over time and most likely would have continued to do so. Would it have been as widespread as now? Who knows but it would have definitely been possible. We won't know however because someone hit the panic button rather quickly due to it not killing WoW like they hoped and at the same time I believe was also still being outperformed by FFXI which may have still been sitting on ps2 era visuals and an old style menu based interface but also had mountains of content to keep players occupied.

Its more to do than just the content. The engine itself was still too much to bear for the at the time resources, especially since SE had to keep their console release promise and 1.0's engine wasnt going to handle it.

Also cant forget that to the devs, it was annoying and hard to even think of adding expansions and new content despite the ones theyve included in the final patches. The Crystal Tools engine was not fit to be an MMO and from what I gathered with the last patch content, it was already pushing it to its limits.

It made sense for them to downscale the engine and to make the game more consistent and appealing to gain favor to those that held those bad first impressions. Nobody who quit early cared that 1.0 was just getting good.

If the game just kept on going without having an ARR, it wouldve most likely have died off.

[Velthice]

It was both better and worse than people say

I think the sense of scale was grander and the visuals during cutscenes absolutely smoke what we have even now, but it also played like trash and trying to do simple things like buying an item on the player market were so needlessly complicated that the game felt actively hostile at times

I'm not gonna begrudge anyone who enjoyed their time with it (and I'm one of the absolute weirdos who loved the old black shroud and learned to navigate it) but I will say for all my gripes with xiv currently, the game is undoubtedly in a better state now. I'm sure some people will disagree, but I feel 100% confident in saying that if xiv had continued down the 1.x patch. we wouldn't be here talking about it now. It would be dead like wildstar or in maintenance mode like so many other barely there mmos