Would You Play An Official SE Pre-Abyssea Server?

I think the centripedal force of doing stuff together is way stronger in XI than XIV still.

In XIV it just feels like people log on and hit up all the duty finder crap and dailies. Still technically 'group' content but its always with randoms you dont see again.

My friends and I migratred over to XIV and we tried our best but people just floated to doing their own thing. We all came back to XI around RoV time to complete the story and have stuck around doing stuff 'together' daily.

Is nostalgia really the term? Or Masochism? Why would you feel "nostalgia" for such an era..

Unless you were in a really strong HNM Dominating LS, there really was no joy in that era among majority of the community members.

Only other groups that were huge were Drama-Filled - Broodqueen-Dynamis Linkshells, that built Relics for Exclusive Leaders and "women" (mostly manthra), that's just about it...

I ran and was a part of several dominating Endgame/HNMLS's and even though I miss some of the people at times, like Afania says it's just a memory that was very exclusive. It only existed once and it gets old once you experienced it... IF you even got a chance to...

There was so much corruption going in within Linkshells for loot those days. Sad reality is that now I hear even in current day 75 cap private servers, the corruption still thrives...

So....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pre-Aby FFXI

Returning Players

Stockholm syndrome is a much better term.

Dammit, we only remember classic FFXI fondly because we were forced to form bonds with other people since everyone was suffering in the same ***together! Everything was made to make our lives miserable at best. To this day, I still have the urge to lynch that *** Tanaka and every time I come across a picture of him, I have to hold myself to not punch my PC's/cellphone's screen!

In a heart beat, Playing nasomi (63) paladin as my FFXI subscription is going on renewal (no TOS Wrong) but its buggy as F. Mining point only 1 node a zone is Cancerous for me.
Preabyssea YES PLEASE id pay 30 dollars a month for that ***.

I would not. The old days were fun back in the old days. Back when we were young and had time for that stuff. Taking shifts waiting 24-72 hours for an NM to pop just so a bot could claim it; taking a good 9 months to get to lv 70 just to be blocked by Maat; taking 3 years to make a mythic... ain't nobody got time for that.

the epeen pride is strong. I don't know why ppl prefer getting *** in the *** not only by ls leader, also leaders gf, and their butt buddies on loots. Then there is the retard grind design by the lunatic Tanaka just to *** every one.

"FFXI was so much better back then. I wish I could go back in time"

**POOF** You're now in 2003

The Tunnel Worm seems like easy prey.
"Oh man! This is so nostalgic!"
Defeats the Tunnel Worm.
Earns 21 experience points.

"...........crap."

Even if FFXI swapped back to 2003, the population would likely be basically the same as all those folks that have quit/left don't have the free time for 2003 FFXI. Old FFXI really only worked due to the high population it sustained, if it had the population of current FFXI I honestly believe it would crash and burn.

In today's ffxi, people have multiple max-level "fully geared" jobs. Back-in-the-day, a lot of folks only had 1 max level job, if any, due to the horrible exp gains. So have 1 max level job, and only 300 active folks per server (Quetz for an example); it would be impossible to get anything done.

Wouldn't play. One of the biggest selling points of what made FFXI great to me was the learning experience. It was my first MMO and I had to learn everything as brand new. Party roles, travelling, abilities, spells, gear progression and choice, weapons, skillchains... everything that made the game desirable at the time was fresh and a new experience. You can't replicate that after 10 years of playing, and it will never be the same as it was the first time you aggroed a Body and levelled down out of your Bone Harness gear.

how about we as a community pool our money together, hire a staff that will actually produce content for the game, make private servers, and tell SE to go #$%^ themselves since apparently they choose to just use us as a cash cow at this point to fund other projects.

Probably.

I wasn't very EG focused back then and just enjoyed hanging out with friends and exping. So going back, knowing what I know now about gearing and such I think it could be fun.

I also miss classic exping.

That being said, I loved the whole Aby/VW era too, because it got me doing some actual 'endgame'.

No need to farm HNMS just do limbus :)

Nope. It was engaging at the time, but as others have mentioned, quite a lot of that was more about community and learning the game. Going back to a fraction of the content gated behind a restored grind would not be appealing.

No, For the simple reason that the brand Final Fantasy is intellectual property.

Took me forever to beat Maat as my taru as mnk. This thread has made me sit and think about my time in the game before...A good in game friend Napaalm had to constantly help me farm new tests...

obviously a sarcastic and impossible idea but it really is sad that many of us are forking over money to basically have a social group when we are supposed to be gamers.

Most people who still play now, I would guess, are more likely to say "No". Ask all the people who quit around the Abyssea time, or soon after its release. I assume you are likely to find a higher quantity of those people would say yes.

People who play now enjoy the game for what it is; those who stopped playing either grew out of it or were disgruntled with it.

Personally: Yes, I'd play on it. I just couldn't be as committed as I was in 2004-2009.

*** it let’s go back to 35 cap the end

As a Summoner who played through all of Zilart, CoP, ToAU, and WotG being treated as a gimped WHM no, no I do not ever want to go back to those dark days where I couldn't even keep my avatar out because it constantly drained my MP. I know folks are going to whine that SMN now is broken, but as bad as it is, it was the complete opposite back then. Abyssea was the first time SMN was allowed to actually start being a SMN.

True

Another thing from back then which really sucked was the abysmal job balance. A number of jobs were just flat-out excluded from doing certain things altogether, and God help you if your main was one of said jobs (not nearly as bad now, plus leveling isn't the chore that it used to be). I was a BLU main that started doing endgame during the last 18 months or so before Abyssea. I didn't level up a "real" mage job until early 2017, so yeah, a lot of missed opportunities. You either diversified or knew the right people. Thankfully I had the latter to fall back on with a friend from another online game that was already established in some endgame circles.

As an ex video game developer currently working at Microsoft for Xbox... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Good *** luck with that. You have no idea how hard that ***is.

I very vaguely recall SMN was actually used in 75 era as part of strategy due to safety reasons, and we used a lot of them on things like Odin etc.

RNG and BLU/THF were popular choices too on that fight.