Uh, there was an era BEFORE ARR?

[TAS]

I was there from early beta 1.0. Myself, and a bunch of folks who were playing FFXI at the time figured that the move to FFXIV 1.0 was a no brainer, so we took the plunge upon release and were in for quite the surprise.

The game was completely broken. The following examples are from 1.0's launch:

1.) The UI was completely abysmal and archaic.

2.) The game was riddled with glitches, bugs, and latency, which was made worst by the fact that you couldn't even run the game unless you had a high-end PC.

3.) Content was nonexistent. At launch we had about 7 main scenario rank quest... No dungeons, no raids, no trials, no alliances, no side quest, no Grand Companies.... Nothing

4.) It took forever to level b/c of the fatigue system that was in place; which basically meant that you could only get so much EXP on a certain class before your gains were nerfed to an absurd level.

5.) We had no job system in place. The classes that you start the game with now, minus Arcanist, were what we had: Gladiator, Marauder, Pugilist, Lancer, Archer, Conjure, Thaumaturge. The cross-class system, where you could borrow traits from other classes and put them on your main showed promise, but because you also had to have those classes leveled, especially with the fatigue system in place.... Need I say more? DoL and DoH classes were there too, but... yuck!

6.) Mounts and airships were nonexistent, and because the zones were huge back then, it took forever to get anywhere. Much of the map in certain zones had multiple landmarks that were just copied and pasted across massive areas; The Black Shroud being the worst offender, because the entire zone was just a huge maze of copied/pasted trails.

Those of us that stuck it out held out hope that with time these problems would be fixed, and sure enough, almost three months after launch, Nobuaki Komoto, Hiromichi Tanaka and almost all of the original dev team were fired. Then Naoki Yoshida took the reins, and a lot of the remaining Player Base were curious to see where the road would lead after hearing his vision and plan of action. And that journey did not disappoint.

[Mr_Gyactus]

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

1.0 did everything he could to not be funny.
For example:

- Equip only from crafting
- Repair equip only from crafter (you or another guy)
- No quests, except 3 leves /day and a simple MSQ every 5 levels.
- from what I said you could level up only grinding BUT there was a weekly experience cap! In 3-4 hours we had done. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Fatigue_System
- No instanced areas (no dungeons, no trials, no raids)
- No mount
- There were aetherites, but they needed a limited resource (don't remember the name, let's say "soul") and this resource ended very quickly, thus a lot of time we reached the aetherite for the 3 leves by foot
- stats were decided by the player but at the begin stats were the same for every class (you could not rearrange stats based on the class)
- mining/ herbalism was the minigame we have now in the gold saucer (and housing), thus you could try to gather metals/herbs AND fail BUT we were using and damaging the equip/tool, thus we had to repair, and we could not repair without the proper crafting class and materials, but for level up the crafting class you required metals/herbs...

[Fawkes]

- No mailbox
- No auction house
- For most leves you had to kill like 5 enemies but then the last one would run away and spawn more enemies you had to kill which was especially bad in the black shroud since you'd have to chase it through packs of high level aggro mobs.

[Canadane]

1.0 did everything he could to not be funny.
For example:

- Equip only from crafting
- Repair equip only from crafter (you or another guy)
- No quests, except 3 leves /day and a simple MSQ every 5 levels.
- from what I said you could level up only grinding BUT there was a weekly experience cap! In 3-4 hours we had done. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Fatigue_System
- No instanced areas (no dungeons, no trials, no raids)
- No mount
- There were aetherites, but they needed a limited resource (don't remember the name, let's say "soul") and this resource ended very quickly, thus a lot of time we reached the aetherite for the 3 leves by foot
- stats were decided by the player but at the begin stats were the same for every class (you could not rearrange stats based on the class)
- mining/ herbalism was the minigame we have now in the gold saucer (and housing), thus you could try to gather metals/herbs AND fail BUT we were using and damaging the equip/tool, thus we had to repair, and we could not repair without the proper crafting class and materials, but for level up the crafting class you required metals/herbs...

Yeah! :D

Good times had by all.

(also the teleports used Anima)

[RitsukoSonoda]

Yeah!

Good times had by all.

(also the teleports used Anima)

Meh, the kiddies dun get it, hence why their lives revolve around their instant coffee and nuclear ovens... >.>

[Powercow]

- There were aetherites, but they needed a limited resource (don't remember the name, let's say "soul") and this resource ended very quickly, thus a lot of time we reached the aetherite for the 3 leves by foot

Oh Anima. Being able to teleport to another city once every couple of real-life days was... an interesting choice the devs made.

Mining had an ability to track nearby nodes, and if you were too far you got a minor speed buff to help you get to it. This is why I leveled mining originally -- just to cut down on travel time through those huge zones. (Also the physical exp was good -- useless though because stats didn't do squat anyway.)

[Payadopa]

Hot take alert. Read at your own discretion.

Honestly, the battle system we had at the *end* of 1.x was leaps and bounds better than the current 1 2 3 spam we have now where everyone is the main protagonist.

[Carin-Eri]

To be honest, having read numerous threads/replies etc regarding 1.0, I get the impression that it's the ending that everyone wishes they could experience. It really does seem to have gone down in legend - heck, even Asmongold has a video where he watched it and commented on how "f*****g badass" it was when they turned the game off and ended the 1.0 story with the 'End of an Era' cinematic. I also gather than no-one knew that Bahamut was inside Dalamud until that cinematic was first shown.

I get it - and I kinda wish I could've been there to experience that.

[Canadane]

I also gather than no-one knew that Bahamut was inside Dalamud until that cinematic was first shown.

Correct, there was no mention of Bahamut anywhere.
The only dragon we knew of at the time was the corpse of Midgardsormr, who we all assumed was dead-dead, not just "dead" since his events happened years before the 1.0 story begins.

[ronibosch]

Just dropping by to say I really love this thread. It's like listening to old stories being told around a campfire. I can even feel the nostalgia emitting from everyone's posts.

I know 1.0 was a difficult period, but I really wish I could've experienced it somehow.