The "Good Ol' Days" Thread:

The day I completed my first set of AF armor on my first lvl 60. Circa 2004. Real PS2 screenshot in the photobucket archives lol.

Man, so many memories.

- Spending a good half hour just getting everyone to an EXP camp only to have the party suck.

- How excited we used to get just gaining 1 level, especially so we could equip that next piece of shitty gear that we were so excited about.

- Putting forth days worth of work for a very small "thing".

- Spending hours getting a group for Hakutaku, spending at least a half hour just getting there and however long fighting him. As well as being the guy who didn't want to use his cluster first.

- Being the only game (that I've ever played since 1985) where people didn't want to party with you just because of what country you live in.

- The nightmare of Temple of Uglypie treasure coffers for AF. I've done all areas and that was the worst.

- Being the first person on Levi to unlock Corsair. Trying to explain to people what it does and how it fits into parties to so many people just to get an invite.

- The amount of people you met back then was staggering. I've met a lot of new people since I've been back but since everything was so group-required, you seemed to know just about everyone.

- LS vs LS drama. A lot of eye-rolling comments but man... some of it was juicy. I've not seen any at all since I've returned. Probably because everything is popped or instanced, so there is no competition.

I could go on... I tried to join Nasomi before because I got nostalgic but old FFXI is like basic training. Some of the most frustrating and memorable moments of your life... but you'll never do it again.

As with all things seen through the historical perspective of rose-tinted glasses, the memories kinda get mooshed together.

It becomes easy that the reason we have such fond memories of 75-cap era FFXI wasn't the game at all- it was the combination of a fresh community, and honestly...the LACK of online resources made the game more communal. We *** now when someone shouts for help on mission progression- "look that ***up on BG like the rest of us, don't waste my chatlog space!" 10 years ago, shouting for help because you got lost or stuck on a mission/quest was common. I'm not saying it was always met with helping hands and warm hearts lol...but it happened all the time and was an accepted way to find ***out.

Everything in the past 6 years of FFXI history has been about making the game more solo friendly. Removing level caps from earlier missions. Adventuring Fellows. Trusts. Removing minimum party sizes from some content to allow players to enter solo. All things designed to get rid of some aspect of an MMO and make the game easier to play solo, and thus get addicted and pay more money to SE even if they can't find an active shell and friends.

Well said and true.

Granted, it's not as hand-holdy as FFXIV but outside of a select few people I remember, you were not spoon-fed everything.

Let's see...

Mithran Trackers

Snoll

The blank option when talking to Tenshodo about Aht Urghan

Divine Might with the wipe reraise strats.

Resting and losing TP.

Falling down Uleguerande Range.

Fighting Yovras on land rather than over water to prevent their regen.

8-3 pots

Apocalypse Nigh

Ouryu v2

Riverne Site A & B

Being the only guy in my group not get the Voyager Sallet... OTL

I'll raise this one step further to "mages having hMP sets".

literally just found my ps2 downstairs yesterday, still with HDD in it. idk if it works, but #nostalgia.

Almost no one quested this map so you get a pass lol. Iirc you had to travel to every stone tablet in the game to do this quest and boy some of these things were in weird spots. Like an extra annoying version of the Headstone Pilgrimage mission. I navigated Crawler’s nest just like everyone else: Memory or a Printed map next to me (a lot of us were on dialup in the earliest days so couldn’t simply leave a tab open like now).

Thankfully SE made the map buyable by NPC because *** that quest lol.

not sure if anyone has said it yet but bazaaring in batallia downs to avoid paying the bazaar tax in the city. woo!

One of my favorite LS activities from back in the day was BCNM night. Everyone bought a BCNM40 orb and we brought a team of 5 RNG and BLM that could carry everyone through. The carries cleaned up from their cut of each orb and everyone in the LS got a chance at erase/utsu ni. We'd spend 6 hours on a Saturday night carrying the whole LS through the fight multiple times. Was a blast.

The game needs more of this sense of altruism again.

Panty raids for JSE50 bodies made us better people, I stand by that :)

Missing the Ferry or Airship by 1 second.

What better way to escape the real world than by giving up the trappings of profit and competition, if only for a few hours a day..... What what what?!?! In a video game! How dare I?!?!

We weren't totally altruistic XD needed to fund that RNG/NIN lifestyle somehow >_>!

Which reminds me of another thing from back in the day: Leveling a "cheap" job so you could play RNG or NIN which both cost an arm and a leg to XP (well) on.

True, but, the carriers/carried in content this day and age can both make a tidy savings, if the carrier's would quit demanding maximum profits from the carried. Everyone has to start somewhere, harder to start if your in game mentors sap all of your scarce newb resources.

thank goodness the "good ol days" are over

Back in the dunes i joined a party and we were talking and someone asked our age, i told them i was 14 the rest were so much older than me 18-24 I was LIKE WOW UR TOO OLD TO PLAY a video game, Little did i know and than my uncle told me he plays too....

I miss when people actually cared about others in party. Really sparked my faith in humanity when the RDM or WHM would say they have to go soon but their replacement is on their way. Now camps don't mean jack spit anymore since bots don't care about that sort of mess.

I actually found this kind of annoying. Too many times where someone in party found a replacement on their own, then the party disbands 10 mins after they arrive. I'd rather they let the party know they have to go soon, then the party can decide if it's worth finding another person or they should just disband when the guy has to leave.

It used to be like this back then. Now the 2nd button is the most used one.

A decent party would tell the guy they were going to disband after he left. I have never seen that happen in the parties I was in, though that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. What kind of jerk PT leader would keep his mouth shut when that happens? Hell, usually if the guy leaving was that good the pt would break up by itself because there was a good chance that the replacement couldn't keep up with the merit party. That said it was a pleasant surprise when the replacement was ten times better than the last guy. I remember staying in a colbri camp for around 5 hours because the new RDM was that good compared to the last guy, getting 15+ exp chains was euphoric.

Reading these posts is bringing back so many memories. Odin.Llewelyn posted "missing airship or ferry by one second". Yass, betch. Friggin' airships used to be a "fast" method to get around and it could take you around 20 minutes (or more if you got distracted at the auction house while you waited) to get from Windy to Sandy via that method. Windy > Jeuno > Sandy.

Speaking of Auction Houses... newer people may never even realize that each nation used to have unique auction houses. Rabao's AH was tied to the Sandy AH. Kahzam's was tied to the Windy AH.

I enjoy that three words that I use in a row are all not understood by my browser as being spelled correctly (as I want them to appear).




I will literally take new characters to those homepoints one at a time each day via nexus cape'ing to friends that will help because f that map.

My record was chain 218 in caedarva mire on imps/jnuns etc. my friend got 219 somehow (jerk!). that was when rdm main heal with max merited convert timer was a thing.

When Shadow Dragon was highly sought after because it dropped a lot of Gil.

Cities having conquest wars before each weekly update was fun.

Manaburning Divine Might

Manaburning in Kuftal Tunnel

Remember when penta thrust use to give back a ***ton of tp lmao

Casinos in Jeuno

Double up scam

there was one time that sandy took saruta on unicorn so i ran and did the supplies quest before dynamis lol. i was like '*** dynamis, I NEED THIS WARP!'

Nope. You guys had your chance ;)

Also this:

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/17891/old-ffxi-vs-new-ffxi

I would bet most players today weren't around during old old school XI.