Any ARR 2.0-2.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[Asako]

The good old days, when the bosses hit hard, 24 man raids had damage and mechanics and sometimes forced a random player to take a 30 minute penalty because it locked the first area off at the start meaning no one could progress.
Spamming both LotA and Brayflox Hard mode for 1500 Myth tomes to do the book step of relic.
WHM Divine Seal Regen being super busted.
Inner Beast on Warrior and both PLD and WAR having the ability to drop Tank stance for more damage.
Monk being soooooo good to play. It was basic but man was it fun just going fast and mauling bosses.
Seeing Mor Dhona flooded with players at cap on their mounts.
Gathering around Urths Gift with spiritbonding gear on to get grade 4 materia to make money and for relics.
Funny wipe moments when someone moved during Blighted Bouquet in T6.
Gathering around the raid entrance on raid nights and seeing your fello raiders waiting also. Actual interaction with others.

Ah ARR just take me back now.

[Voltyblast]

Well I really enjoyed my time during ARR, the best 2 years of my online gaming time, it heavily reminded me of the first years of WoW, with how things were kinda new to me.
I surely had my terrible times but also my fair share good times, I remember running in Ul'dah everyday to greet my friends, and we'd occasionally jump in a dungeon or trials whenever we could.
Also how I had to get help from a friend because nobody could get turn 9. God Bless him for the help.

Then HW came and everything went downhill for me. Oh well, life goes on.

[BristolRuss]

Dragoon was in a pretty rough place until 2.4, pretty much the only time it wasn't welcome in groups.
Not being able to queue for duties if you had your Chocobo out. Your queue being cancelled if you accidentally brought your Chocobo out.
TP being a thing, which meant physical classes couldn't use sprint in combat if they didn't have invigorate available. Also meant you couldn't AoE indefinitely without becoming TP dry very quickly.
The cross class system which meant you have to level other jobs to get key skills for your own.
PLD being able to raise out of combat.
EU servers being located in Canada so ping was a nightmare.
Vase off, Skinchange and the emoting Gates.

[Shougun]

Completing castrum wall to wall pulls, taking all the mobs into the boss rooms XD..

FATE leveling in Northern Thanalan...

Rage of halone till the end of time paladin combo, with flash as your primary means of holding aoe aggro .

[Payadopa]

I absolutely LOVED doing dungeons and fighting in general. All the jank that some people say when referring to the job design was actually enjoyable to me. Protect, cleric stance, aggro management, being a healer with proper buffs like a real FF game, etc...

Yeah, I miss using TP, aggro management, helping out other jobs with your abilities. It felt like a team effort. These days it feels more like 8 people happen to be fighting the same enemy.

Seeing Ishgard from afar without being allowed entry and only getting little revelations via quests felt pretty magical, too.

[Knot_D]

Yeah, I miss using TP, aggro management, helping out other jobs with your abilities.

MNK and WAR in shambles...

Also dying and using sprint turns your TP to 0...

[Payadopa]

Also dying and using sprint turns your TP to 0...

Exactly. Retreating actually had a modicum of depth and decision making. Nowadays you run past everything with your chocobo anyway.

[Zomkei]

people sold titan hard clears for 300-600k (which back then was a LOT of gil) because the servers were so bad a lot of ppl struggled lol

[george357]

started playing game at 2.0 on playstation 2 with hdd later changed to computer it has been a fun ride.ps my best time was running thru areas with no map to get the map to pop up always set my local crystal so when i died i could go back and start up wherer i left off.

[Kaurhz]

It's a love-hate relationship.

On one hand of the coin, everything really had a bit of substance and you'd see/learn a lot just simply progressing through the game, and quite a lot of things did feel punishing, whether or not these were for the right reasons does vary.

You had a great deal of stuff to do back then, or at least it felt like it since most facets of the game were investment intensive (e.g., crafting back in those times was a lot more demanding than it is now). I liked the feeling that some facets of the game just simply demanded attention. This gave a sense of content, despite the game overall having less content back then in every sense.

But on the other hand, how intensive some areas were, and most especially the quests as part of the main story were an absolute annoyance and were part of the reason that I dropped the game for a while. That being said, it's a lot better now in this department.

I think one of the golden moments for me though was the whole... Well, in the absence of deep dungeons and in the absence of squadrons FATE trains were a lot more attractive back then than they are now, so it did give a lot more sense of wonder and population in the world. Now it just feels like an uninhabited wasteland 90% of the time. I feel in this way things have regressed. Open world FATE trains for leveling back then was just like pleasure, honestly.