Uh, there was an era BEFORE ARR?

[EZGIL]

So, I was youtubing as always and this random video hit my feed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo

I was blown away at what I saw and learned.

Now, granted, I've only been here about 2 and a half years but I was simply unaware of this 'era' before ARR. I had heard of the 'disastrous' first era of FF14 but always just thought it was the ARR era. When I first played and saw that opening cutscene I thought it was from events before the player base was even around.

But now I'm finding that FF14 actually does go back further than 10 years. That this Dalamud and Bahamut saga happened in real time. That the players of that era had no idea that there even was a future.

The following is a quote from the comments section of said video:

"The weeks and days leading up to the server shut down will forever be ingrained in my memory.
Random monster hordes attacking the cities, Players rushing to defend, "The Great Goobbue Wall", and finally accepting the inevitable and just sitting on the edge of the map outside of Ul'dah enjoying the view in silent meditation....
To suddenly get hit with that cinematic as the server went blank. WOW!"

I was sincerely moved by this video.. knowing these players were watching their literal world die.

I have questions. Questions that need answered.

1> Why is this era not celebrated? That era clearly directly led ARR and everything after. It IS a part of this overall saga. This 10 year anniversary is a bit misleading when in actuality its older than that.

2> Did the characters that 'died' in that event get to come back in ARR or did they make you reroll with another character? I'm going to be honest, if they made you reroll and those characters literally died.. thats one of the more epic gaming stories I've come across.

3> Are these players I see in forums with 2011 and 2012 forum start dates from that era? I always assumed they were from the alpha/beta era.

4> For the very few of you that were there that day.. what were your feelings? What were your thoughts and experiences about it all? I enjoyed learning about all of this and would very much like to hear from your perspectives.

[FenyxRising]

Sorry there's no way you did not know, people talk about legacy characters all the time. Is this just another PR campaign survey ?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

1.0 was a critical and utter failure.



There's a reason no one talks about it.





It had something like 10 story quests at launch. And leve quests. And that's it. No jobs. No AF gear. Over world was empty. No dungeon bosses. Few npcs in the cities.



After yoship took over we got jobs, the grand company qeustline that lead to dalamud and nael, and stuff in the over world (settlements, hamlets, side quests). That's also when primals were introduced.

[EZGIL]

Sorry there's no way you did not know, people talk about legacy characters all the time. Is this just another PR campaign survey ?

I guess im just stupid. Now, move along.

[Canadane]

I have questions. Questions that need answered.

1> Why is this era not celebrated? That era clearly directly led ARR and everything after. It IS a part of this overall saga. This 10 year anniversary is a bit misleading when in actuality its older than that.

2> Did the characters that 'died' in that event get to come back in ARR or did they make you reroll with another character? I'm going to be honest, if they made you reroll and those characters literally died.. thats one of the more epic gaming stories I've come across.

3> Are these players I see in forums with 2011 and 2012 forum start dates from that era? I always assumed they were from the alpha/beta era.

4> For the very few of you that were there that day.. what were your feelings? What were your thoughts and experiences about it all? I enjoyed learning about all of this and would very much like to hear from your perspectives.

1) The end of the era is celebrated. The Rising is that celebration. Every year I passive-aggressively correct SE's tweets about how many years the game has been around haha!

2) Legacy characters got a special cutscene intro. We didn't die. If you do the Binding Coil of Bahamut raids, the story in there will explain more in detail about what happened. Anyone you see with the Legacy Mark tattoo on their back are 1.0 characters. Some cutscenes even have minor alterations to acknowledge our deeds.

3) Yeah I'm from 1.0.

4) My feelings are that the game shaped up to be pretty good, but without the wow-clone revamp that it had, it wouldn't have made it as big as it is now. There are some things I do miss about 1.0, but overall the game has improved. The way it was handled was fantastic. It's not like they just wrote off the history of the world.

[Tetsujin]

Gonna answer what I can.

1> Why is this era not celebrated? That era clearly directly led ARR and everything after. It IS a part of this overall saga. This 10 year anniversary is a bit misleading when in actuality its older than that.

To me, it's because ARR is a completely different beast. More of a sequel with shared and heavily modified assets than the same game. It was also catastrophically bad, I signed out after beta in 2010 and didn't return until 2014 IIRC.

2> Did the characters that 'died' in that event get to come back in ARR or did they make you reroll with another character? I'm going to be honest, if they made you reroll and those characters literally died.. thats one of the more epic gaming stories I've come across.

If you have a legacy account, you are one of those characters. Louisoix teleports you through time 5 years into the future. The memory of the Warriors of Light is hazy at best, but you are one of them.

Nael is also in the coils and NPCs carry over, of course.

3> Are these players I see in forums with 2011 and 2012 forum start dates from that era? I always assumed they were from the alpha/beta era.

I would assume so, yeah. Forum date is when you join the forum rather than when you register you account.

[Jeeqbit]

The game started development in 2005 (lore and so on, such as the Twelve). It released in 2010. It was a failure. So they salvaged what lore they could and reused a lot of assets to create a 2.0 version and re-released it in 2013 and it was the success it is today.

A lot of people recommend watching the Noclip documentary to understand what happened (set aside a few hours) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0y...HQAYcw&index=3

Why is this era not celebrated?

Hardly anyone actively played it and it was a separate game release.

2> Did the characters that 'died' in that event get to come back in ARR or did they make you reroll with another character? I'm going to be honest, if they made you reroll and those characters literally died.. thats one of the more epic gaming stories I've come across.

Louisoix teleports the Warriors of Light and they come out of the aether in the future. If your character played in 1.0 it begins by teleporting into a city state and then some dialogue is different in ARR due to you having been around 5 years prior.

3> Are these players I see in forums with 2011 and 2012 forum start dates from that era? I always assumed they were from the alpha/beta era.

That's right. Although many people stopped playing because it was a failure, so it's possible some of them had stopped playing and then returned to the game sometime after ARR.

[Fawkes]

I have questions. Questions that need answered.

1> Why is this era not celebrated? That era clearly directly led ARR and everything after. It IS a part of this overall saga. This 10 year anniversary is a bit misleading when in actuality its older than that.

2> Did the characters that 'died' in that event get to come back in ARR or did they make you reroll with another character? I'm going to be honest, if they made you reroll and those characters literally died.. thats one of the more epic gaming stories I've come across.

3> Are these players I see in forums with 2011 and 2012 forum start dates from that era? I always assumed they were from the alpha/beta era.

4> For the very few of you that were there that day.. what were your feelings? What were your thoughts and experiences about it all? I enjoyed learning about all of this and would very much like to hear from your perspectives.

1. Because the game was bad.
2. They didn't die they were teleported to the future and got a special little cutscene if they imported their character. You got to keep most things (levels/items/a percentage of gil), that's why we were quarantined into Legacy servers.
3. Yes. There's a whole version 1.0 forum archive.
4. I wasn't there that day, you had to be subbed when the service ended in September to be able to log into the final shutdown event in November.

[Oizen]

Its neat to look back on 1.0 as this mysterious cool time for the game, but if you were actually there it was just a horrible experience all around.

I played it for like an hour and quit.

[Canadane]

I sometimes feel like I was the only one who enjoyed their time with 1.0!