What game did you play before FFXIV and do you miss it?

[Whiteprincess]

FF11 and WoW. FF11 is bitter/sweet miss my friends the gameplay builds deep bonds because you need a party to do anything in the game. If you were an terrible person in that game it will reflect and lower your odds of doing things with ppl. Compared to this game many mean ppl can be black listed and end up in your duty finder still. WoWs story sucked compared to 14, but imo jobs kick butt compared to this game. They were very fun to play, in 14 it feels like they try so hard to reinvent each class (except for healers) they forgot to make it all fun. Most are just ok, some a pretty good now. But its my opinion, im sure many love the classes as they are now

[Justuas]

FFXI. Played for 8 years. I miss the community it had do to things actually requiring that you get to know people and actually coordinate your abilities. The battle system, though many say is slower than FFXIV, felt fast and engaging. You couldn't just spam your highest damaging spells as a BLM because you would actually pull hate even off a tank that was fully geared and doing their job properly.

You actually had to heal and DPSing on a WHM was totally foreign for most.

You couldn't just focus on your own DPS you had to actually monitor and coordinate with team mates for max DPS numbers.

Pre-Abyssea FFXI was the perfect game.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Also, I mean the "real" FF XI. Not this grotesque mutation they have flailing around these days merely wearing the name.

What makes it "grotesque mutation"?

[ManuelBravo]

FFXI, still play it while FFXIV is doing maintenance or if monthly updates are worth playing... Got to love the classics been playing it since day one.

[Cemil]

Before 1.0 i played Aion and i miss flying with my own Wings.
Before 2.x i played Tera and missing the Action Combat System.
Before 4.0 i played B&S/Black Desert and missing the Action Combat System.^^

Before FFXI i played DAoC and miss the RvR Fights 5h every Day.

[K1tt]

I played dcuo for 5 years (from beta) I loved the game but it got stagnant when they started monthly updates (basically repackaging old maps repeatedly) and the community was so toxic by the time I left, It was about 2 years ago I last played, I saw a new healer being called horrible names in a raid and had a real existential moment where i asked myself 'why am I even playing this?' So I immediately quit and deleted the game. Miss the style system though. My friends had at that point migrated to ESO, but i never clicked with it, loved how every quest had voice acting though.

[Malzian]

I've played a number before XIV, some things I miss more than others, so I'll list out all the ones I've played and my impressions of them, in somewhat chronological order of when I played them (some will be before and some will coincide with XIV)...

RFO (Rising Faction Online): My first actual MMO experience. Was pretty fun until you hit the lvl 30 zones (which were also the first of the open world PvP zones in the game) and would get repeatedly ganked by max level players whenever you were out of the hub zone and couldn't level anymore.

PSO: Not technically an MMO, but the first real game I put a LOT of time into, even on crappy dial-up on my Dreamcast. I do still miss it and the way the combat handled and am waiting to see if PSO2 ever gets a US release (I know I can play it with a VPN and the English patch, but I don't want to go through that hassle).

Guild Wars: Liked the game for the most part, my Necro was a force to be reckoned with, though the game did suffer from some issues. When you get to the end of the game and even overworld mobs are 2 or more levels higher than you can level to I kind of lost interest... The expacs didn't really bring much too the table either, just more of the same.

LotRO: I loved LotRO for everything it was pre-Helms Deep and the Hobbit segway stuff they crammed in there when the movie came out. The combat was fun and impactful, though skill bloat was a problem by the end, but their skill tree solution just gutted the whole experience. The social systems were great. The music system was fabulous especially since I was on (well... am on... Lifetime sub and all) Landroval which is the server that hosts Weatherstock, the in-game music festival. I miss some of the festivals as they always had interesting things. I miss the landscapes since visiting places from the books was always a thrill. PvP was actually rather fun and had a real impact on the rest of the game in exp bonuses that you could earn for the whole server by fulfilling certain conditions. There was a lot to love and a lot to miss, but it just isn't the game I remember from when I started so I don't think I could go back.

CoH/CoV: great fun playing the villains here, there was a lot of neat things you could do with it and building your home base was immersive for the most part. Being the first game that let you play with super powers made it unique, but that wore of quickly as the core gameplay really became stale in the long term.

Aion: Flying was an interesting concept, but the way it was implemented just didn't make it very worthwhile.

Rift: I really liked the combat in Rift, the way you could play one role in different modes depending on what you were doing made for some really interesting gameplay. The world was interesting and the public events were FAR better than FATEs in XIV. I left, though, when they reset my lvl 50's skill tree and I just couldn't invest the time to rebuilding and reoptimizing my skills for my playstyle... This also started my hatred of Skill trees.

Tera: Love the combat in Tera, the active system and the combos are well designed and thought out. Fighting BAMs (the acronym means what you think out does) was always fun and challenging, though that's been a bit muted lately and just Gunner can run group content solo on-level now which is kind of disappointing... but also nice in a way.

SWtOR: The first thing I can really say about this game is... Man it was fun playing my Sith Inquisitor. Not for the gameplay, mind you, but for the conversation pieces. There's something refreshing about playing a character that can be a legitimate snark and mouthy to the main story characters and actually says what you intend for the most part. And there were some genuinely funny opportunities to employ a little Force Lightning during some of the conversations that just had me rolling... But yeah, not for the combat...

GW2: Never really got far in GW2, it seemed overly complicated and didn't really have a good flow I my opinion. It's public events are also better than FATEs and the guest transfers (switch servers for a day!) were pretty cool. Would love to see something like that in XIV some day.

DCUO: I liked getting to play in the DC universe and engaging with the heros and villans. The power system was fun and interesting and I made some real unique character builds with it. Where it fell short for me were some of the core systems such as gearing and the monetary system (seriously, I can understand a currency cap on an F2P game, but escrow can go somewhere and do something with itself... needlessly complicated) and the zoning was terribly difficult to follow, especially when transitioning from one "core" zone to another, i.e.: Metropolis to Gotham City.

ESO: All I can really say about this is launch woes... The Elder scrolls combat system is fun, playing an MMO in that fashion is different and refreshing, but the implementation of it also with the instance zones, spawn issues and so many other things at launch made the game not fun. It's gotten better with age and some things have improved, but I still feel like it's a game that doesn't really have a solid indentity as an MMO or an Elder Scrolls game so it makes playing it feel really weird.

Devilian: Decent Diablo-esqe dungeon crawler with since interesting concepts but some of its systems are muddled and unclear. I had fun with it for the most part, but I feel like it takes too long to really get a handle on the systems to play effectively.

Blade and Soul: Good action combat and decent story, the aesthetic was fun too considering I do like the Japanese themes. Didn't care much for the faction system and it really turned into a grind fest at the end. Gathering and crafting was really kind of pointless in my opinion, especially since you didn't do any of it yourself.

Dragon's Dogma Online: Disclaimer: I LOVE Dragon's Dogma and Dark Arisen, so this is biased. So this was the first game I broke down and did a VPN and patch to play... The game carries so much over from the original version that it's an utter delight to play. It's not like playing some adaption of the game (there are some differences, of course, but core gameplay stays mostly the same) but rather playing an online evolution of the original. The graphics are fantastic for the engine it uses, the combat against giant creatures is challenging but manageable, even if you're way under-leveled for it and it all just comes together nicely. My only problem it's that the patch just doesn't translate enough for me to get really invested, but I can't wait for this to come to the US... I really, really hope it does.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, I may add more later as I recall them.

[miraidensetsu]

Played a little from others, but not clicked with no MMORPG. The problem was always the same: healer was too weak that leveling solo was severely sped down or just impossible. What was not true to other classes.

The game I played the most was Ragnarok Online. Played it for some years. But it is mostly pay2win right now and is filled with bots that basically ruin the fun. Ragnarok Online 2 was boring. They ruined what monk was in Ragnarok Online and priest was basically useless solo. Tree of Life? Not clicked with. The build system is too complex and is very easy to mess the build.

[SicariusSeven]

World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2. WoW I played a bit until the WoD expansion made me mad. Then on and off during Legion, not really putting my heart into it like I used to. Ultimately I stopped in March and haven't really looked back. Guild Wars 2 I check now and then but it's gotten irritating. Only thing about GW 2 that I enjoy is the racial diversity and combat. FF XIV is my home now. I am glad.

[ADVSS]

White Knight Chronicles on PS3 until D3 Publishing, Level 5 and SCEA conspired to kill it. I loved that game, the online aspect was great and player community ruled. Most of my group came to Eorzea after our previous world was summarily destroyed.

YES! I moved to 14 after playing this exact game, after the servers cut off, I met my friends, who we all migrated to 14 from there after a couple had been legacy players just waiting for 14 to come out. So sad that the game was continuing in Japan but they dropped support in the west.

[Kosmos992k]

YES! I moved to 14 after playing this exact game, after the servers cut off, I met my friends, who we all migrated to 14 from there after a couple had been legacy players just waiting for 14 to come out. So sad that the game was continuing in Japan but they dropped support in the west.

Indeed. I need to put some serious time into learning to read and speak Japanese for just such an occurrence, it reminds me of the PS1/PS2 days when often times the only way to play a game was to learn Japanese. Besides if I can do it, the Idolm@ster games will be within reach too.