Quote Originally Posted by Alberel View Post
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.
This isn't accurate. 1.0 was nowhere near XI-2, and wasn't supposed to be. The only thing different was the class system? Just off the top of my head; the battle system, crafting, equipment system, quest system, leve quests, aetherytes, group mechanics. All were completely different from XI's.

As for Ishgard's storyline, there was next to nothing about it in Tanaka's time. I don't think you can claim they are back in line with a story we didn't have.