Level 75, The Possibility, The Nostalgia!?

So, was having a serious discussion with some players recently in the community about the fact you theoretically could play the "old" days of 75 content, if you wanted to and found enough people willing to do the same.

I want to know you guys's opinion if this could possibly work, or if not, why not? Aside from the obvious ease of leveling, and certain quality of life adjustments, I think everything would remain pretty consistent. Salvage, Nyzul, certain HNMs like Ixion and such.

If you think this could work, would you be interested in joining a group of people? Let me know your feedback! I'd love to get something like this going.

This has been discussed and way more people rather not go back to the 75 days. There's a couple of guy at the ffxi official forum that wants to. Can ask over there.

there are about a dozen 75 cap private servers just go join on of them.

That's the problem, they all are ***.

Here's what I've come to realize:

The community is what made old FFXI great.
That community has moved on.

Why?
The community that made the old FFXI great was comprised of the younger portion of Generation X's and Y's, and the older parts of the millennials. It was a mix of people who grew up well into their late teens/mid 20's without the internet, experiencing online collaboration in an MMORPG for the first time. We grew up playing Zelda, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy titles in solo player mode. For the most part, all of our gaming was done in isolation. We played superbomber man, golden eye, street fighter games occasionally with others. But the huge time sinks that were required by RPGs were done solo, in isolation.
Then came FFXI, - the first major MMO that us RPG addicts could sink our teeth into. Instant addiction. We were questing, but we were questing with friends. Enter e-peen braggings rights (a phenomenon that really began offline, "how fast can you kill Ruby weapon/emerald weapon/omega/ultima/did you get all legendary weapons school yard conversations?)
That once-in-a-lifetime experience will NEVER repeat itself. That magic you felt for the game is not coming back. Its over. What made it great was that it was something new. I'm not trying to detract from how great it was, but take it from someone who is 36 and started playing this game when they were 23 - you're never going to recreate the early days of FFXI and its novelty. Move on, and find other "new" experiences to experience. FFXI is now a good, moderate hoby. It isnt demanding, it isn't intense, its not hard, its not competitive, and its a reflection of what it used to be. Every now and then you will pass by a zone or area where you and your in-game friends spent sometime and memories together, and you will smile or cry. But if you get hung up on it, you're likely to miss new and just as valuable memories somewhere else, in a different way.

Its just like sex and your first kiss - its awesome and wierd and magical at first, but after your 30th birthday its just something you do. Its not a sky-dive or a deep sea diving trip, its just ..well, nice.

And lets be honest now, the days of 75 were not all that rosy. There was a lot of BS we don't have to deal with anymore, and it should never come back.

No, stoppppp

Put your shirt back on.

I understand the sentiment of this post, however I do want to add a different outlook to this subject.

I feel although the community may have "moved on" persay, that doesn't necessarily mean it was by choice initially. I mean, if you're going to continue playing a game you love, and SE decides to change it constantly, even if you disagree with the changes, you'll most likely just adapt because the game still means something to you even if you dislike the direction of the game at the moment.

So although the game has a lot of quality of life enhancements since then, the state of the game currently is really preference if you like it or not, and it's hard to really gauge if FFXI was better off with how it was before and then adding quality of life enhancements and content done in a similar vain, versus how content has been created for a while now.

Everyone is entitled to what they like for sure, but I just want to note that not everyone looks at the past state of the game as something that needed to moved on from, nor had that initial upbringing with RPGs that you did or initial MMO experience you did.

I respect your view, however.

I started playing this game when I was 15 years old and now I am 27.

How time flies..

You can do all of the level 75 content, and at level 75 while playing on the current game. "How is this possible?" you ask. Easy, you make a new character/ or level a mule.

Level up as normal, and when you hit 75, you just don't break the cap! Tada!! Now find a bunch of like minded people, set up a lvl 75 LS. and you have all the modern benefits, while playing at a capped level of 75 etc.

EDIT:: If you want true "old days 75" style FFXI, private servers are the only way to go. Noone really wants to go back to the days of waiting 20 mins for airships/ferrys and travel time, and shouting for a WHM teleport just to cut 15 mins out of your running around time.

The only "issue".... And I use that term VERY lightly, is that RUN ruins 75 content.

GEO probably warps things too... But as it's impossible to cap those spells... Or even augment them with any skill beyond merits... As they were made 99-only... So I think it's gimp enough to not really change anything.

But RUN? Nope. All those super hard NMs... All those things in both the 75 and even 99 era where "omg stun that one thing cause it'll 1shot the aegis PLD"/"kite it!"/"hope you don't run out of shadows"... All those things just fall off RUN like rainwater.
Sure it won't have -50%DT... But then neither did PLD back then. (You had a PDT and an MDT and they were separate sets because there just wasn't enough DT.)

It really trivializes pretty much all of 75 content.
So if you're *really* nostalgic... Don't be going 75 GEO or RUN. One's just really powerful and the other is broke as hell.
(Also GL finding WHMs.... No WHM ever wants to go back to using MND........)

Not really. A lot of other jobs are immensely more powerful now due to all the adjustments added over the years. I'm not even kidding when I say two well geared RDM can duo almost every single HNM thanks to stronger, faster, and cheaper nukes, in addition to being able to acquire all the best gear effortlessly. That, and, the limited merit choice is not so limited anymore.


I don't doubt RUN would be a potent job for the era. Nothing besides instant KO moves were one-shotting an Aegis PLD though, besides certain physical attacks that scored critical hits/didn't get blocked that would one shot RUN too.

That aside, I don't pretend to know RUN well, but if we're strictly talking a Lv.75 RUN, wouldn't it be terrible at physical reduction due to gear options and abilities at that point?


And again, so would many jobs now. With the knowledge people have of the game now, even if there was some kinda legacy server made, it'd be easy as ***. That aside, if you just do it on regular server you wont have a fun time. Coupled with the knowledge you would now have, the powerful 75-cap gear that could take literal years to acquire to further your class is all easily obtainable now. Something like a Defending Ring is very powerful for those days, for instance.

I would play on a private 75 server just for the nostalgia, but then again I really cannot be asked to waste all that time taking a job to 75 just so I can play the game.

I do admit though, Old Dynamis and certain NMS within the WoTG like Sandworm were really fun.

Much better than stagger and kill everything.

I think it's the hunt and competition I found fun about them, coupled with the fact the engagements are not readily repeatable. Force spawned enemies for me get tiring after a few and feel kinda weightless. Losing a time spawned enemy is far more painful than force spawn (depending what it is of course) so battles felt more tense/valuable? Idk.

The fights themselves aren't much different, or are super generic for the most part. I mean with Sandworm you'd just keep tank alive and ws/nuke it down. The doomvoid battles varied somewhat but the only ones that are even anything are Lambton Worm and KA, more so KA since you would setup skillchain magic bursts for it and burn it down, like what you do with most the current crap on retail.

I have got a 75 mule, I am tempted to take it to 99, just no one to do events with I have however been working on the storylines with trusts and that has been fun. I do miss old days of doing dyna, einherjar, nyzul isle, ZNMS and salvage.

Enmity mechanics being what they are these days, RUN's best option for 75 cap HNMs might well be an Earth/Terra's staff a la oldschool NIN/DRK and NIN/RDM tanking. Maybe even go RUN/NIN with an evasion build? Stoneskin and phalanx don't hurt either - PLD doesn't get stoneskin natively and phalanx is at 77 for them.

If you really want to DD tank then... idk, gogo Spinning Slash/Ground Strike? Or Savage/Vorpal Blade if you wanted to use a sword. Hauteclaire for a defensive weapon perhaps, or pump up SB damage with Martial Anelace. Can't use Joyeuse or Ridill sadly.

Inspiration merits would be pretty ridiculous at 75, up to 50% fast cast before gear would make shadow rotations a breeze.

Would love to have a server with this. The only issue is FFXI to this day is basically the only MMORPG you can still experience everything that was in the game from the beginning, minus some QoL stuff mostly. I mean there is a few WS updates etc... Nothing though that removed content.

SE is the king of Nostalgia when it comes to releasing old stuff to buy again. I would not put it past them if they one day did this in the future, but SE has a huge issue with marketing outside of Japan, so the people they would be targeting to relive the experience could possibly not even know this exists for a long time, or if ever.

WoW is currently being battered with people requesting a "Legacy Server" more than ever. There is speculation that they might finally do one after this upcoming meeting with people who were running a Classic server that was shutdown by Blizzard. The numbers for people wanting this are usually a lot higher than people calculate since it's always a random person that gets shutdown by hundreds of people. If you could somehow gather a massive support for this and to bombard SE, it might look better when requesting it.

What I'm ultimately getting at is I would love SE to do it, but there is definitely hurdles they would have to combat. This is about the only MMORPG I've played in the last 17 years of my life that I don't care if they make one for yet. And again, that is because I can still do everything that was offered. If they do one though, I will be there in a heart beat looking forward to spending hours getting to know people killing the same mob over and over. Good times for me. One reason I've been highly interested in

https://pantheonmmo.com/

I've done ENMs solo as RUN/NIN using Martial Anelace and Hauteclaire (and the rest being 119 gear), and yeah, RUN does extremely well at 75. Battuta and Inspiration are way too good against old school stuff. Note also that RUN gets the Hydra Scale Mail set which is loaded with PDT and accuracy, so tanking and DDing would be very plausible.

A couple of neat level cap tricks...

Ochain. Shield size doesn't change under level sync, it just stays as is. And Ochain's amazing block rate originates from its size 6 shield size. So even if you cap Ochain down to 75, it's still broken as hell. You do lose the MP convert and vit still. But those aren't the point. Possibly lose some of the def? not actually sure. And that would be a bigger deal as it would reduce block dmg-. But the point is, the block rate remains insane.

Mythics. When you cap a 99+ mythic to level 75, the aftermath you get is still the level 99 version, duration and potency(OA2~3) wise. Much fun. XD

It isn't because of the size. Bigger size means less block rate. Ochain is a special case since it has extremely high block rate while being technically a huge shield.

Everything except basic stats such as mods, att/acc etc. used to become invalid when level capped/synced so I doubt such an attribute would stay. Have you tested it?

Size 5 has a higher block rate base than size 3, and size 3 has a higher base than size 2.

Yes I've tested it. How do you think I know about it? And yes it's because of the shield size. Don't people even start with this hidden stat *** again.

Aegis and Ochain(size 5 and 6) don't follow the general rules the other shield sizes appeared to. Aegis has higher block rate and block damage reduction than the smaller sizes, and Ochain has ridiculous block rate, but less base damage reduction than sizes 3~5.

Feel free to try it yourself and see.

Blizzard gave up on making another MMO, same for daybreak and everquest, to focus and their current working MMO. I have secret hopes that SE is going to be forced to do something with FFXI, besides, I heard FFXIV is seriously lacking ppl playing except on updates.

Pretty much, XIV grows stagnant a month into a patch because you're essentially doing the same thing over and over.

A lot of people enjoy the game as it is, or if you raid then it stays interesting for a while longer, myself I find the game gets boring after a while, but since I've found a raid group I feel some enjoyment again.


Whisper that softly, into my ear.

If by lacking people you mean the popular servers are still bursting at the seams with players, then yes.

lol yeah right

Considering I'm on one of those servers and even at low times, a login queue still exists... I am right. Thanks.