Quote Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar View Post
I wonder, was the Crystal Tower ever a part of early lore? Some of the developer comments suggests that at least that Dalamud and Bahamut was planned for a different context in 1.0 than how they were ultimately used.

I'm also wondering how much of the Ishgard/Dravania conflict is from original design plans and how much was created after they made A Realm Reborn. Same with Midgardsormr's role in the story.
As far as we know the Crystal Tower was new to 2.0 with no original plans for it in 1.0. In fact all character cameos and references to previous FF games came only after YoshiP took over. Tanaka's vision for FFXIV was very much XI-2 complete with realistic travel times, downtime, social dependencies, etc. The only thing that really differed was the class system.

As for Dalamud, YoshiP said a long while back that Dalamud was never intended to be Bahamut's prison. It was originally an Allagan space station of sorts that players were meant to eventually visit in an expansion. When ARR was given the go ahead though Yoshi needed a cataclysmic event to explain all the changes to the world so they changed the lore behind Dalamud. Whilst I am indeed curious what the original story for Dalamud was meant to be I'm quite happy with how it turned out instead.

The Ishgard/Dravania stuff is most likely very much back on track for the original story now. They were not changed much at all for 2.0, though the Ascian involvement in events may be considerably more overt than originally planned.