What was FFXI like when that first launched?

[SolArisa]

FF XI was a total nightmare aqnd basically everything done wrong. SE got many things fixed before the NA and windows versions were released, but it was an unbelievable mess. Worse than XIV.
Remembering this gave me more hope than anything else. Hehe, I still remember stuff wich may seem funny from today's perspective, but were not back then ... like being aggroed on chocobos, mobs always being your rank, the AH getting shut down due to duping bugs, etc.

But also, history repeats itself, like the server load issues, etc. ... SE still seems to be a bunch of developers who consider themselves being system administrators and infrastructure architects, but without a real clue here.

I found a nice link on the update history ... http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html
Some things may be interesting to read, some even funny, some painful because it simply happens again to us.