The "Good Ol' Days" Thread:

So this player wants to hear about the old days. Let's indulge them since I know that a nostalgia topic will be fun. It's an overwhelming amount of stories and such to go over so I'll need some help. I'll provide the memes though.

First, somebody should explain what this image means:

The "train" lol, I have nightmares about the crawler trains at the Crawler's nest entrance, which was a level ~40 level up spot.

You know how things work today, you aggro a series of monsters, they chase you, eventually kill you, go idle and then disappear because they're too far from their spawning place.
Back then it didn't work like that, once a monster went idle it would sloooooooooooooooooowly walk back its initial place, and while it was on its way back the monster was perfectly able to aggro more people.
If a train of monsters went to the entrance of a zone, each new player zoning in would re-aggro the train, making it so it would never get back to its place until a high level player came to the zone to do a clean up, or until nobody zoned in for a long time.

BST could also use this as a strategy to hassle other players or take revenge by charming a monster and then releasing it in a specific place.



Adding my memory now: I remember the day someone aggroed Vrtra in King Ranperre's Tomb and somehow managed to bring it all the way out to where Spook (the low level ghost NM) pops. It was insane lol xD

So while I may have a meme for everything... Yeah. I may have related screenshots for everything saved as well.

how the hell is vrtra up. people pull him upstairs to avoid skeles or something?

I'm not sure how it was possible, maybe there was no draw-in mechanic back then? Maybe it bugged out? I don't remember the details honestly but it was funny as hell seeing people getting slaughtered everywhere by this huge dragon bugging out while moving in really tight spaces lol

iirc the story goes the NM just bugged and popped upstairs. GMs turned up to kill it.

Meriting on birds, when the party ended you do virelai so they charm you back. Then the party beats you up for a free warp.

the lv 50-54ish exp parties using BLM Ancient Magic.

/p BLM: starting {Freeze}!
/p (2sec later) DD#1: {weapon skill}!
/p (2sec after that) DD#2: {weapon skill}!
(4 seconds after, Freeze lands)
/p everyone not BLM: holy crap 8,000 damage! its just dead!
/p BLM: yeah need to rest for 6 minutes

I cant remember exactly but I think the damage was much lower than that? Back then, doing anything more than 2000 Damage at one time was just insane and resulted in /check spam haha. Actually wait, found a link:



Lv.45-50somethings working in unison for a 1000~ Freeze Burst haha.

I wish I had a screenshot of it, but on Jailer of Love, which took the concentrated efforts of a couple dozen people to pop, I hit it with Mighty Strikes 300% Steel Cyclone for 2284 damage. It had just done Fluorescence, and it crit me for 1751 damage, one shotting me from full HP.

Also Dispel, Cures, Erase, Stun, and a handful of other spells used to have a high Enmity+ yield due to their positive effect. You could spam them, regardless of if they would work or not, and gain just as much hate. This let RDM tank by spamming Dispel, Cures, and it was a damn good tank back in the day. Nin/Drk if you had BRDs to sustain his stun capabilities. Some real ridiculous stuff back in the day.

My favorite thing is that before the addition of iLvl, gear was on a horizontal/utility based optimization route. Gear from low levels could still be the best in slot for its intended purpose, even at 99. iLvl changed all that, and the game is lesser for it.

Holy ***. Rhaegal :O One of the ~20 people from Poland who played FFXI. First one who finished Relic (Kikoku). Woodworking 100 and elemental staff cash was OP, so he was able to buy more currency on top of getting them from organizing dynamis runs with Gelenros and Opiekun (another 2 polish players). All of them were 75 before I started playing. Funny to randomly see him on pic :)

This reminds me of this

Still works well. Not nearly as reliant on ***loads of refresh like back in the day, I've been having a lot of fun with it lately.

Shameless self plug for The History of Final Fantasy XI.

PS: 2011 coming soon.

I recalled these and am glad you posted them.

The old dynamic of FFXI life was kind of a fluid dynamic with more people and more friends doing things together with goals to work towards. Not that there isn't that now, but... it's not the same.

There were so many quirks that eventually were nerfed / changed.

Does everybody recall the few weeks you could do campaign battles as /BRD and get full capped credits for just singing songs on yourself while just standing there?

Not exactly JoL but..



Also JoL hitting my DRK with Dread Spikes lol..

I'll have to post some screenshots I found from a long time ago the other day. Saw one from 06, camping Fafnir.

Not quite "old days" but The Mystery of ROM9 was pretty great.

I miss when my +1 Duelist Chapeau meant something... =/

Miss the good ol days when I could make billions of gil on Sparks/Accolades.

Oh ***, how long has this been up? Its awesome! Especially with the Occaisonal debate of "This or that wasnt intended" when there was an update that did it deliberately lol

Glad you enjoy! The original concept, and basic information was first provided by Elmer the Pointy on his website JP button for 2000-2003. I expanded those years by 2-3x what they were and then started on 2004 and worked onward. Started this in 2017. I didn't intend to drag it out this long, but ***/life happens!

Joining a 20 hour EXP party. We went from about Lv16 to Lv34.

have a LS meeting in selbina then taking the boat to mhaura ~ only to have almost all members dead due to pirates by the end of the trip

AFTER waiting for 20 hrs for an exp party xDD

Tanks that were Brd/Nin pre-Utsusemi nerf.

Guivre..

Some of you may remember this Wyvern NM in Kuftal Tunnel.. It was very powerful compared to the average passer by or lv.60 party just trying to kill some crabs.

Sometimes someone would aggro it and try to run away to the Altepa zone before it killed them (Or maybe they made it? dunno) Anyway, this thing was FAST and hit hard and had a very long sight aggro range. This *** would skulk the hallways like it was the goddamned Xenomorph Queen from Aliens lmao. People who had no idea it was where it wasn't supposed to be would get aggro and proceed to get mauled while trying to run back to the entrance and reset the process all over again.

I remember it because it gave me a very familiar feeling of Crawler's Nest all over again.. but NMs do not depop xD

deco weapon camps as drk main, abusing engage glitch for the fastest endgame exp at the time

I was recently doing missions for a new character and I was blasted by some nostalgia.

- Teleport - Taxi's in Lower Jeuno.

- People would ask for Raise because their home point was a million miles away and the journey back to Valkurm Dunes would be long.

- Looking for party in Jeuno, get invited to an EXP PT in Kazham, have to wait 20 minutes to get there due to airship.

- No dispel on Crawlers/Beetles in Crawlers Nest was a nightmare.

- 'Panty raid' parties in Phomiuna Aqueducts.

- The absolute nightmare it was dragging an alliance of people through Ifrit's Cauldron to get to the Fire Fragment Cermet Headstone.

- Bomb Queen & Hakutaku LS events. Optical Hat was just the best head piece in the game before Walahra Turban.

- A little later into ToAU, but I remember NIN/DRK's (and to some extent, PLDs) being able to fully gear for "Resist Fire" and "Resist Earth" for things like Tiamat, Cerberus, Bahamut, and Ouryu. Those sets were so ridiculous to look at. The body piece you wore in your resist fire set on 75NIN/DRK was Legionnaire's Harness.

Dude i totally forgot about Engage/disengage hack lol.

I actually have a pic from that camp.