Most likely it will be "It fucking sucked."
Well, yeah. It did fucking suck. But that didn't stop me from playing like there was no tomorrow!
I got the collector's edition pre-order, and you know what that meant! Early access, bitches.
I was playing a week before anyone else. I called in sick that whole week. I didn't give a shit. It was awesome kinda.
Yeah, I know. Everyone thought it was going to be another FFXI. A fun-filled nostalgia trip full of partying in new, beautiful areas.
It turned out to be something different. Too different.
One of the things I always felt was wrong with how XIV 1.0 was put together was the developers were trying to make something completely different than anything else. Even if that meant making it harder on the players.
A very big controversy when XIV first came out was the exp fatigue system. It was quickly scrapped because of the backlash, but if you're curious, this system was basically put in place so you couldn't level one job quickly. The longer you stayed gaining exp on one job, over time, you would gain a penalty until you couldn't gain exp on that job any more and were forced to level up something else until the penalty went away.
There were tons of videos explaining why this was a good thing. Until people realized that you're paying a subscription for a fucking game and you should be able to stay on one job if you damn well chose.
If I'm paying $12.99 a month, which is what the original subscription for XIV 1.0 was, don't penalize me for playing whatever I want however long I want.
Sound retarded?
This is just the tip of the iceberg, my friends.
Remember the retainer market area? If you don't, let me explain.
Unlike the XIV we all know and love today, it started off having no market board. Retainers were still used to sell items, however, when you put an item up for sale, your retainer would go into a separate area full of everyone else's retainers and sit there, waiting for someone to come along and select your specific retainer to buy crap.
At release, there was no searching for items that retainers sold. If you wanted something, you had to go into a separate instanced room and search each individual retainer, hoping to find that hat you're looking for.
You think the developers would have listened to the massive amounts of people wanting a market board, but no. They decided to dress up the dead horse and add a "search function." Why quotations? Because this "function" let you search an item, and it would tell you which retainer had the item for what price. You still had to go to the instanced room and find the retainer. But no fear! They later added a tag command so you could put a star next to the retainer's head that had the item you wanted, making them a little bit easier to spot in the crowded room.
Just what we wanted!
Here's a hypothetical situation for ya'll. Let's say you wanted to start leveling Gladiator. What's the first thing you would do?
If you said "Go outside and start killing shit." You are correct. That is what you would do in 1.0
If killing shit got slow, what then? If you said "Look for FATEs in the area," slap yourself. FATEs didn't exist in 1.0
Think of something else.
If you said "Do Guild Leves," good job. That is what you would have to do to gain enough exp to level up.
So now you're level 16, a good solid level. What then?
If you said "Hop on the duty finder and go to your first dungeon," fuck you. There were no dungeons. Dungeons were added almost at the end of 1.0's lifespan.
So? What do you do now?
If you said "More Leves," good job. Unless you make a random ass party full of strangers, Leves were the only way to level up in 1.0 until dungeons were added way later.
What if you managed to create a party? Well, you better learn placement for your attacks.
You might be saying "But I'm not a Dragoon or a Ninja! What do I have to worry about placement for?" Slap yourself. Dragoon and Ninja did not exist in 1.0 And everyone had to worry about placement. Each attack was directional and lowered the opponent's defense slightly depending on where you struck.
This was kind of important because any monster you would need to fight to gain any decent exp could be between 50 and 99. Yes, there were level 99 monsters, with very high defense, which made the defense break of your attack position necessary.
Combat got you all flustered? Why don't you go try crafting for a bit and cool off?
Just grab your materials and-
What's that? A crafting list?
Hahaha. What do you think this is, a good game or something? There's no crafting list in 1.0
You just have to throw stuff together and hope it makes something maybe. Any crafting abilities you happen to have are in a long vertical list, start scrolling. Also, if you do make something, be sure to write it down. It's not like we're getting a crafting log any time soon.
So, you need materials, but you've searched every retainer in your home city and can't find anything. The next logical step would be to travel to another city, correct? Correct.
Get going. You have a long walk. All the maps are connected into one giant clusterfuck that is almost impossible to navigate. There are still aetheryte points, but don't get used to teleporting around. You can only do that so many times a day before you're forced to walk everywhere.
Yeah, right about now, you're probably saying "Fuck this game." But I played it. It was free to play because it was such a broken piece of shit. I played it right up until they wanted to charge monthly for it then I stopped. I picked it back up at 2.0 after Yoshida fixed everything and I've been playing it ever since.
Of course, there are a few good things I could say about 1.0
Few. Very few.
For one, it did have a great sense of adventure. Everything was completely new. Traveling to other areas and acquiring teleport points was fun in itself. And as always, the landscape was beautiful. Everything felt so alive and I couldn't wait to get home from work and keep playing.
The lodestone was another great idea. They don't do this now, but during 1.0, the lodestone itself kept track of your achievements and uploaded them on your profile. Check this shit out.
This was a fun touch so you could see what you achieved and when. It's something I wish they would bring back.
Not sure why the pumpkin heads. Always with the fucking pumpkin heads.
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