Would You Play An Official SE Pre-Abyssea Server?

Yeah and in the old days, churn rate was insane. LS would break and form in months, people would be used up camping and there likely tens of thousands of players who played for 4-5 months and quit. It was also about throwing more people at content, where HNMLs cheese tactics included entire out parties/alliances. Content these days are the opposite.

Stuff like that would be difficult, but I guess if there's this huge demand for it and they can get 2k players in a legacy server it may work. But I'm not sure current players, the people who have been footing the bill, will go though.

That said I'm ok with it if it draws back people back and grow the game. I know EQ do pretty well relaunching progression servers.

My own greedy self wants older content respecced. The 3 add-on storylines should totally be requested for i119. (why not?) and I forgot most of the story by now, it's been about 10 years.

Would love i119 Missions as well.

i'd say old ffxi was the best mmo ever, but it's not something that you could sustain today. it was a fleeting thing you were either a part of or weren't. although i pine for an mmo that pulls me in the same way, it most likely will never be replicated.

Nope and would heartily laugh at anyone who did.

All those bots that thousands of dollars got sunk into were now useless except for 30m spawn nms. A few halfway competent players could take down all the content which rendered waiting in line for months as you farm gear for everyone else a useless endeavor.
Content could be taken down in short groups and you know how low the bar for that is. Once voidwatch hit, most hnmls had lost life support.
So in the end they probably asssociate it with all the people they played with through the years no longer being comrades.
Or they’re just salty that it turns out they weren’t elite players. They were just lucky/corrupt enough to get the claim and most of the players were fully capable of taking down endgame mobs when given a fair chance because the bar really isn’t that high.

So the old times are just like the new times except now instead of just having bots you also have SMN.

nope and neither would you after week 1

I remember getting excited just seeing another player. "OH ***THAT'S A REAL PERSON!!" Was a totally different time.

Hell NO. I played those times and remember them fondly but I realize how much worse they are. People seem to think it was the gameplay that made those days but it was actually the community.

I'd love to ^^

Back in those days I didn't do HNMs or anything endgame, I was a LS leader who spent most of his days helping newbies do quests like getting them subjobs, artifacts, rank missions, Zilart, CoP, basically everything that was fun about FFXI back then.

I didn't care for my own gain, I just wanted to adventure with others, because the concept was new to me. I'd only ever played FF with a bunch of characters I controlled, so to play with FF characters who were real people? Mind blown. I never got to experience what it was like to camp HNMs or anything like that, because I didn't want to sell my soul and sit for hours on end every day just to see another group get claim via bots. I like to believe I dodged a bullet on all that.

But the best thing about FFXI before Abyssea wasn't the content, it was the people. If you could bring back all the people I used to play with, and stick them in the game with me back how it was, we'd work towards our goals and have a blast. But they'd only move on eventually like they did before, and then I'd go back to learning how to care about furthering myself; I was super poor and ill equipped. My idea of farming was going to Zitah for a few stacks of Moss and Cuttings, which was a frustrating experience at times (but at least I had the Zitah music).

There's many things which sucked back then, but what worked had more to do with people who were willing to talk about more than the game itself. You got to meet people who wanted to share their lives with you, and the relationships I made will never be replaced or replicated. Not that I don't make those now like, but it's very apparent most people just want to progress in the game and rarely talk about themselves. Which is acceptable, I don't talk about my personal life much either, but in the old days I was an open book.

I probably would not. I really enjoyed that time but honestly I was unemployed and too high to have many responsibilities. I now have a family and career. I met my wife playing this game so it will always hold a place for me. Currently I can log in mess around for a hour or so and log off. I level'd DD jobs so I likely wouldn't even get a party in that 1 or 2 hours I can play.

I remember the feeling after getting something from sky or HNM. I remember the run to Jeuno or Windy from Bastok. There are many memories that I cherish. It was a very fun time but probably best left as a memory and not something to do again.

I guess it would be neat for current players to see how this game has changed but I can't see myself playing that way again.

Yeah XI was about the people. The content was in retrospect very much grindy because there wasn't a lot of it. I mean people were still farming sky/sea/cop content in 2009 to get BiS items and at that time salvage farming was just becoming viable for mythics.

I think I miss the people in all their wide eye, sometimes toxic, something funny, glory the most and you can't recreate that just by having a server with all the old settings turned on

Part of the charm of the old game was all the people LFGing. All the people farming BCNMs, the pugs, the grinding and just not knowing what to do.

Which I think the best thing for XI is to bring back a taste of the past. And the best way to do it is give people a reason to do old content in new ways, either respec them for i119 or just release next content with the same feel as the old ones. Imagine having to run to a new city like we did in Jeuno. No warping, but a walk through very difficult terrain, at least once .

It seems that, while a lot of posters expressed their dislike of the OP's idea, still view the old FFXI with a lot of nostalgia. I mostly don't. That nostalgia of mine (which stems from it being my first MMO) is tainted by the horrible design that effectively transformed my experience at large to a time sink (a tedious & jading one at that) that I could easily do without whenever an interesting game came out or life commitments piled up. I mean, just setting up an EXP party then heading out to camp took like what, an hour (on a good day)?

The parts I really enjoyed were expansion missions. CoP was fantastic because it was about overcoming tough challenges & getting rewarded with story CS's rather than mindless grind/camping NMs for hours, so I didn't mind the time spent doing those (and doing missions was a nice change of pace from the tedious grinding that is EXP'ing). Then once I hit 75 and did a few Sky & Sea runs, I realized that there was not much for me to do in the game that wouldn't require me to sell my soul to SE, so I just quit during WotG (back in 2006). Came back for a month during 2008 to meripo and try out the new category 2 merit points before losing interest again.

Then I had some free time in Dec 2010 & decided to check the game out. Abyssea actually kept me playing till a little after Adoulin came out (mid-2013). I really liked my time in Abyssea, and enjoyed logging in to do a few logwatch runs and climb neo Nyzul. Short bursts of random fun that didn't heavily revolve around competing over hourly/weekly spawn points. Abyssea did lock some jobs out (which isn't specific to Abyssea anyways) due to its proc system and the nature of atma buffs, but at least by then it's become much easier to level other jobs to cap.

I played again for a month in 2016 & finished SoA & RoV, while doing Ambuscade & some JP. Got bored quick.

So, no. I don't think the old content design is something I want to go back to (not that I was fond of at any point to begin with).

If I wanted to play pre abyssea, I'd play on one of the private servers.

The community is not the same as then, so you won't really bring it back.

I think alot of the players wanting the level 75 era are looking thru Rose colored glasses.

It also sucks badly.

I enjoyed Abyssea, was a crazy change but it broke the game open. It's the gear progression of SoA that kinda killed my spirit (and I quit for a time) but Delve and other content introduced was fun.

You can really create your own challenges at this point. I entered Salvage as a nab *** THF99/WHM11 on an Alt by mistake the other day and ended up having to pay attention, still skated w/ a Linen but it made me appreciate the run.

Care to elaborate? i see a few let's plays out there of Nosomi on youtube, seems pretty run of the mill old locked/progression server stuff, but I think because it's using 2018 FFXI client, they kept some of the QOL changes as well.

I would say no. 75 cap FFXI was a massive time sink and I would no longer have the time for it. I think most people who played were students, or parents raising young children who had a lot of time to burn (or just unemployed I guess lol).

The best part of that era for me was also the people, who have now all moved on with their lives. As many people have already said, it was a great game at the time and I hold fond memories of it but it would be far from the same feeling in 2018.

Probably not. There were certain aspects from that era that I don't care to relive. Like waiting days to get a party and having it disintegrate within minutes because key people had to bounce before things got rolling. Even worse is a wipe on the first pull if an add shows up and then the tank or healer splits and you're left with negative EXP.

Yes

I'll openly admit I had way more fun playing the game back then than I do now, but at the end of the day, that is content that I've already done, so I have no real desire to do it again. Even if the content now is more stale in comparison to what it used to be in terms of variety, new content at least provides something different, even if only half of it is decent.

Not to mention I don't have the free time anymore to sit around for 3 hours (not even counting Khim/Cerb/Tiamat) to miss out on a claim.

The community was great back then. Everything was new and exciting, and there were more people playing. The game was terrible though, at least compared to what it is now. I feel that even though some overpowered mechanics exist that render endgame content boring (SMN burn, melee, zerg, etc.) the game is still more playable than it's ever been.

It mean. It chase?

Facts

Hell no

I enjoyed the old days, some of my best gaming memory's. My first Eco Warrior raid was something I'll never forget, madness, epicness and so much death. But I felt like if I didnt treat the game like a full time job I barely progressed. The QoL improvements in todays game create avenues for all types of people to play and progress in.

This actually made me laugh. Get gud and stop cheesing everything.

Basically you said. “I’m horrible at this game, and I rely on SMNs to finish content for me.”