Quote Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere View Post
way back when there was a more tedious method to unlock them.
SE wanted the crystal tower to be done by everyone, so they eased up on those requirements. then they made the tower mandatory for 5.3's MSQ.
The only "more tedious" thing about the unlock, unless there was some older and worse method that I never experienced, is that you had to do specific FATEs rather than fixed battles when you travelled to the beast tribe strongholds to collect crystals. That potentially added a lot of tedious waiting time in the middle of the quest, but didn't make any difference to when or how you could do the quest chain overall.