Yeah the max that would load player wise for 1.0 was around 40 players and I believe that included the NPCs. I remember once the LS I was in made a circle in Ul'dah around the area next to where the stairs to the Aetheryte is and stood circle facing each other. We literally couldn't see the player across from us in the circle (it was probably about 10 of us) and the circle wasn't even that big.

There were some gorgeous views from it as well but there also were a lot of copy and pasted areas as well. All in all I do prefer the 2.0 and later graphics to the over too pretty and hardware abusive 1.0.