What stuff was exclusive to 1.0?

[Absurdity]

The Chocobo escort missions were the original way to get the Chocobo Mask too. Level 35 with good stats for the level (Ignoring magey defence stats), used by all classes. It's basically the same exact item for the Racing Chocobo Mask, minus the stats. Achievement based item as well.

I completely forgot about that, despite looking for where you could get the mask earlier this year and being disappointed that I would have to do chocobo breeding instead.
Turns out getting a pedigree 9 chocobo was actually pretty fun, oddly enough one of the most in-depth systems this game has.

[KitingGenbu]

I think there used to be dual stat materia as well

Could argue that some of the FC set bonuses were from 1.0 era? idk. I just know they never went past 50

Could also argue that classes were from 1.0 (except rogue) since all we've gotten HW onward is jobs.

[SannaR]

It's not an item but worth mentioning: legacy characters have slightly different cutscenes and dialogue options, at least in ARR (not sure if it's brought up again in later expansions)

There's others. One I remember distinctly is when you meet Varis for the 1st time. He mentions you besting both the Black Wolf and White Raven. I want to say there is one in ShB, but not many made mention of it so it's not as well known. I also want to say there was a more recent legacy player nod in the MSQ. Yet again there aren't that many legacy players who've documented it or went oh that's a call back. I do wonder if the new permanent quest that deals with Louisoix gives a legacy player nod.

[Fyrebrand]

Not an in-game item, but I believe Legacy players only pay a $9.99/month subscription fee.

[MikkoAkure]

Experiences that no longer exist:
We had notorious monster spawns like in FFXI that dropped special gear and spawned when you killed enough of the same type of mob in the same area. Spent many an hour with my LS (no FC back then) farming NMs. Some of these NMs still exist in FATEs but I don't think their drops do.

We also had open-world dungeons and I think I remember hunting some NMs down there too. Some of the open world dungeons have been ported into ARR along with the ones I think were instances, but they've all completely changed. Darkhold used to be the closest thing to a raid and had some moderately difficult dungeon delving along with a hard mid-boss (the ogre) and a pretty dang difficult final boss (Batraal). I remember the Batraal fight requiring specific positioning and multiple tanks handling different things going on. My group tanked Batraal on one end of the arena while another tank and some DPS handled a bunch of skeletons and ghosts spawning in the middle of the room. Toto-Rak was also an instance and had different endings and bosses with a stricter time limit.

The beastmen fortresses felt more like mini-raids but I can't really remember what they were for. My LS turned Natalan into a PL zone and we'd group the newbies into the corner of one of the rooms, have 2 WAR pull half the zone, drop party, and then smash everything.

The original 3 cities have changed a little bit. Ul'dah barely at all. The market ward is gone and the GC spot is on top of where it was. Limsa Lominsa's Octant lost its statue and the aetheryte was moved there from where the Aftcastle is now. Limsa and Gridania both lost their long bridges but Gridania's original theater was moved and the original site is rubble. I think I remember the road to the CNJ guild being longer and further away. The city change that upsets me the most is that the pirate ship in Limsa has been completely redesigned and pales in comparison to the original 1.0 version. There was a pirate bar on board that included an Elezen playing Answers on a lyre.

Back in the day, there weren't FC tags next to names (or FCs) and instead you'd have your LS's crest. It was neat, but could be distracting.

Crafting was super annoying. It required much more cross-discipline work since you'd need items crafted from other classes. To make a shirt for example, you'd need to craft the front half of the shirt, the back half of the shirt, and stuff like wooden toggles all separately and then combine them together at the end. Armored gloves could require the leather part of the gloves to be made, plus nails from a blacksmith and then an armorer to finish it off. All the different parts could be sold on retainers/bazaar.

[Oizen]

Belts used to exist as a visible piece of gear, from HW onward they just became an invisible item, then were removed entirely.

The Graphics actually used to be better, metals looked better, cloth physics were a bit more detailed, and cutscenes were generally a bit more dynamic but it was all cut back on because the PS3 couldn't handle it.

[Connor]

Some serious lag and fps issues, very large zones full of way too high level monsters, belts that never went with what you wore, everyone wearing those ungodly Harness armours lol. Jobs having a main and secondary main stat (Bards was piety!).

Not to say that it wasn’t fun, but mostly I just remember the issues rather than the fun stuff lol. Though, Endwalker doesn’t feel much different in that respect…

[Denji]

shields and wands. they still technically exist (low level whm/blm, palis) but at one point most classes(all?) could "train" aka do a quest to use a shield.

there was also a whole plotline with minfilia's actual parents getting killed and why thancred cared so much. some necromancer or something. it was kinda creepy tbh and i'm glad they shifted thancred and minfilia's relationship into something more like big bro and lil' sis rather than "step-bro i'm stuck in the dryer".

the dark souls-esque footsteps that were super loud.

coerthas(sp?) highlands being connected and grassy/covered in plants and life.

the teeny tiny aetherites that used to exist outside the major cities and the atma that it cost to use them. it's why chocobo porters were a thing. idk why they insisted on continuing to support it but at least it has like, story reasons to exist since i believe the original explanation is that our character is unusually rich in atma or whatever and that's what allows them to warp around so often while the NPCs often seem to walk places.

a lot more elemental nonsense that nobody liked and they insisted on continuing to drag over until the end of HW or whatever where even our materia had elements.

there's some equipment but most of it was kinda meh, tbh. the original designers of the game clearly had no intention of anything even remotely resembling modern styles so we all wore like, potato sacs dyed dung green and lung infection yellow.
there's a lot of music they still haven't used but i'm not a fan of most of it since it's very... idk. uninspiring and kinda, i dunno, midi-esque. it just feels like it's loud for the sake of being loud.

basically 99% of the outdoor maps. imagine the kobold caves from arr but that was every map indoors and out. you still see part of it in uhh east shroud with the cabbage doll beast tribe.

also we couldn't jump.

thousand maws, cutter's cry and ... uh. i don't remember the real name for it because me and my friends just call it "stinky dungeon" since it looks like its constantly farting. the one with the gold bile. they were all endgame dungeons and the latter two were one big dungeon iirc.

[MikkoAkure]

The Graphics actually used to be better, metals looked better, cloth physics were a bit more detailed, and cutscenes were generally a bit more dynamic but it was all cut back on because the PS3 couldn't handle it.

A lot of the old cutscenes were mo-capped, which probably costs a lot more money than just recycling existing emotes and would add to the development time as well. There were other things too, like walking/running around had more "weight" to it in how your character would move and if you were on an uneven surface, your feet would be flush with the ground even at an angle and your feet/legs would adjust to the surface you were on, knees bent etc.

But it wasn't very well optimized and the famous flower pot is an example of that. Besides PS3, a lot was also sacrificed to allow for more characters on the screen. And the old movement physics don't allow for the snappy AoE dodging the game revolves around today.

[Bacent]

I completely forgot about that, despite looking for where you could get the mask earlier this year and being disappointed that I would have to do chocobo breeding instead.
Turns out getting a pedigree 9 chocobo was actually pretty fun, oddly enough one of the most in-depth systems this game has.

Originally you had to wait 6 hours for them to breed once. Doing it when it was brand new content it took 1/4 of a day just to get the result from one attempt. It was brutal. Thankfully they changed it.