We Need that Feeling back of "CoP"(first release)

[Ramesses]

Awesome thread and it brought back a lot of bitter-sweet memories.

First off, thanks for reminding me of the FFXI comic "Level-Up"... I actually used to follow it judiciously for a couple years. Wish we had something like that for FFXIV.

As for CoP, I actually loved and hated it in equal measure... I thoroughly enjoyed completing it, but at the time if you asked me if I would run through it again, I would likely have tee-peed your house.

I loved it for the truly excellent and epic storyline... and as a few people mentioned above, that was what really kept people playing because most of the rewards weren't that great. The scenes and the NPCs (Tenzen, Prishe, Selh'teus etc) were VERY well written and the challenging battles really brought out the very very best of your gaming skills... you did NOT progress through CoP if you were a crappy player... simple as that.

In those days, you beat battles like Ouryu, the Mammets, the dreaded airship battle in chapter 6.4 and you held your head up in town with enormous pride. Heck, not to boast but our static on Garuda server were so organized, we beat Promethus himself on our first dry run, right after beating the pots.... and I tanked.

But CoP had its issues. What I really hated about CoP were three things:

One, the horrendous drop rates for certain mandatory key items to progress the storyline... they were NOT fun. Getting items like yellow liquid, or the (teak?) wood that Cid needed, or those stupid Cyan/Grey/Carmine chips from Pso'Xja... I could go on and on. Perhaps we were sometimes unlucky during the middle stage of the whole quests but for me, hunting for a couple days to make sure everyone got their items was sometimes annoying.

Two, places like the trip up the hill in Attowa chasm (somewhere in Chapter 3?) was a candidate for the top ten "WTF" moments in MMO history... heck, even the quest was called "Comedy of errors". The ability to lose your footing due to bad camera angles or not walking slow enough...and then fall all the way down to the base of the hill to start over was NOT funny. People spent weeks... yes WEEKS... trying to finish that particular quest. I hated that experience like a plague and honestly would not want to see crap like that in FFXIV

Three, the alienation of players to be able to participate in the quest... shouting for months to get just the promies done was not pretty, and that's how SE actually lost over 70% of their casual players base to WoW and a couple other MMOs. People must understand that you tube was still relatively NEW at the time so information and video guides were very limited... and less and less people had the precious time to allow CoP to become a vicious time-sink in their real lives. Thus, many quit and that's why SE wanted the TOAU expansion to address some of the player dynamics difficulties that CoP had.

The level of difficulty did indeed bring the element of challenge... but in a world where your bottom line profits actually revolve around the casual players, its highly HIGHLY advisable to have your really challenging stuff at the end game level and not between level 30 to 50. That is how SE should think of addressing expansions in 2.0 and not making early or mid-level content to be a CoP reincarnation.

Sheesh, I still have pics of entire alliances lying decimated at the first 3 promies. Seemed funny at first, until three weeks pass by and you're still trying to get past some lvl 30 dungeon that was insanely hard... then you find out that your two beloved lvl 50+ jobs that you slaved so hard to level are not a right fit for the lvl 30 party.

So yeah... CoP was great and it honed my skills to unbelievable levels but I won't run through some parts of that madness again. Many people have to remember that the Zilart and TOAU tales are actually just as epic in their own unique ways (beating Divine Might, Shadow Lord @ Xarcabard, the Bahamut battle, Apocalypse Nigh, and Alexander were ALL an insane head rush with their respective epic music).

That's the type of excitement I'm looking for in FFXIV 2.0