What Is XIV Nostalgia?

[Asako]

Mining in Ala Mhigo as a Sprout in ARR.
Trying to Tank in the same patch BLM got a 20 potency buff to Fire 1 and adds just saying no whilst I try to hold a group of mobs.
Toto Rak 1.0 when it was great before the stupid sludge noise.
Walking on Water and being able to fall off the world in the Hinterlands during Midas patch.
Being able to play prime Monk before it became obsolete at DRK launch.
Looking at my hotbars when I make a new character and seeing all the deleted skills when I copy my settings over.
Bosses having enrages even in normal / story mode and the casual parties pumping as best they can to kill. This is a huge loss to the game, no greater feeling than the final pump when you see the cast charging. Auto-Clean I miss you.

But most of all I'm lamenting the loss of Pinball Wizard for WHM. Always loved Fluid Aura and it needs to come back. We need water magic representation.

[AnnRam]

Before DC travel / E(RP) Venues and RP in general.

Now you have the entire player base stuck in QS.

[Hazama999]

Most of my nostalgia in XIV comes from early early ARR era.
This is the first MMO I ever played so there were so many concepts of the genre that were foreign to me. I remember starting as a marauder in the beta without knowing wtf a tank even was, or what those green, red, and blue symbols were. I just went into dungeons and hit overpower a bunch lol

I think my most nostalgic memory was sitting around outside the entrance to Sastasha and looking for a party. This was before DF (whichever phase that was implemented in) and well before PF so everyone was shouting for one. I managed to get into a full party only for us to realize that we could only go into the dungeon as a party of four, so half of us had to go. The group I ended up going into the dungeon with was the group I did most of my dungeoning with for the remainder of the beta. I think just about the only dungeon I didn't get to try back then, due to time constraints, was Brayflox. Honestly the excitement for just about every little thing was awesome. Still remember one of them going "we just hit level 20 and got our chocobos!!" You really only get that kind of experience once.

Going into actual launch, I remember having issues logging in. If I remember correctly, whenever I wasn't able to play XIV, be it due to getting kicked out or not able to get in, I would play Tales of Xillia (great game, btw, 100% recommend). When I actually made it in, I pretty much dedicated myself to leveling my conjurer. I had started with marauder in beta but decided to go with something different at launch. I also didn't know you needed to level another class to unlock the job, and like a lot of people have already mentioned, we mostly FATE grinded our way there. Dungeon experience just wasn't worth the time. The FATE grind was interesting sometimes because you'd sit your butt on a zone with a particular level range and just go at the FATEs. You might just make small talk with people in your party, then say good bye to them as you moved to a different level bracket zone. Rinse and repeat til you're able to progress in the MSQ. Rinse and repeat til 50. Another memorable thing about the journey to 50 was having to do Stone Vigil like 3-4 times cause we timed out every time. I don't know what it was about that dungeon but getting through it was a pain for some reason. I remember the sense of relief I got when we finally killed Isgebind.

At endgame, Coils and CT are what I looked forward to. To be honest I never really cared about grinding Coil, I just wanted the story, but it became kinda difficult to get a group going cause this was around the time in my life when I'd switched jobs and was studying for the MCAT. Still, managed to get through em somehow. Lol.Beyond that, I remember I rather enjoyed dungeons at endgame. They felt, well... tough at times. Remember wiping a few times in Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace, but eventually was geared enough to speedrun them. I also remember enjoying Pharos Sirius. Honestly, the 2.1 version of that dungeon has got to be my favorite dungeon in the game. The difficulty felt just right. There were a few instances on that first week when we actually timed out, and others when we came pretty close. It was a far cry from today's "15 minutes or your money back" style of dungeons.

Overall, I think a lot of the nostalgia for the 2.x patch era came from the fact that we just... didn't know what was coming. There was a sense of wonder to it. There was, of course, a pattern which was observed in which SE released certain content corresponding to even-numbered and odd-numbered patches, but we weren't 100% sure if this was a cadence they would keep going into Heavensward. I feel like, for a lot of us, 2.55 set an extremely high standard for patches leading into the next expansion. I was already excited for HW, but my interest regarding the direction of the plot just soared after the "Bloody Banquet" in Ul'dah. I'm a bit saddened to say that no .5 or .55 patch has ever hit these highs. Come to think of it, 2.55 was also the first time they issued the "you're about to see a lot of cutscenes, we recommend you get some popcorn and set aside some time to view them in their entirety" warning. I feel like, for a time, whenever this warning popped up, it really put people on edge due to the strong association with the Banquet cutscenes hahah.

I apologize for the long read. If you took your time to read it, thank you, and I'm sorry... lol