Thread: 1.0

Honestly, I liked it a lot the way it was in 1.x It was a very nice balance between what XI was and what we have now.

It wasn't as horrible and unforgiving as with FFXI where the game was basically just unplayable since you couldn't even leave the starting areas without a whole party/high level players coming back for you to pull you through.
That was absolutely horrible game design and made 100% sure I'd never delve into that game any further.

But in ARR, everything is so..boring?
I wish we still had areas with level 90+ monsters. Sneaking through them for sightseeing was super fun, treating monsters differently depending on if they were sight or sound aggro, etc!
And based on how popular this year's Halloween Haunted House is (which uses exactly these mechanics of sneaking and sight vs sound!), I get the feeling many non-1.x players would enjoy that too.

But yeah, starting areas are probably worst offenders. It annoys me the most because there actually ARE *somewhat* dangerous monsters around (Treants in Gridania, Goobbue in Limsa,....nothing I can think of in Ul'dah but let's ignore that..xD), they just lack aggro. Which lvl 2 player attacks a lvl 12-14 monster on purpose? But having to be careful to not attract it while killing the lvl 2 sheep/mammals/ladybugs around is a lot more exiting. So I wish those would get turned from peaceful to aggressive :/
Now don't get me wrong. 1.x never was "unplayable" without a party. You could technically go everywhere by yourself, and especially in non-lvl90-monster areas, it wasn't really hard to avoid the high level monsters, but it did add a sense of danger to the world that is just completely lacking from ARR/HW.