Quote Originally Posted by Asierid View Post
But...it was garbage. If it wasn't then we would be playing that version of XIV and SE wouldn't have to waste all this money on reworking a poorly executed idea from the start. Just because the guy that takes over happens to make a few parts of memorable content doesn't mean the game wasn't an empty, terrible shell.

You can hand over the nostalgia goggles now...
Did you play in the last few weeks of 1.0? It wasn't an empty shell. The game had to be remade because it's foundation was built on a sinkhole (servers are the sinkhole if you didn't get the metaphor). The combat, job system, stat system, and dungeons/trials had plenty of life to base a game around and were more complex than what we currently have in a lot of ways. They decided to take it in a more traditional approach because of the whole "tried and true" mentality. They had no room to take risks with the amount of support they lost. ARR is a success, no doubt about that. But 1.23 could have been fleshed out on new servers and been just as much fun.