The "Good Ol' Days" Thread:

Remember a time before FFXIAH was a regular thing?

Hearing Selbina music always brings back the Nostalgia hardcore.

Hitting level 10 and sitting in selbina waiting for a party because the run from the cities was too damn long.

ooh nice thread! some things that come to mind are:

Back in the days when picking a character race actually meant something, every taru would play blm cause of the highest mp pool and intelligence and so on!

leveling bst took a lot of skill since you had to charm pets and toss them against enemies to kill them (before jug pets were effective) sometimes it took multiple new EP, DC or EM charmed pets to kill 1 Tough or higher monster and navigating halfway across a zone to find fighting spots and enough charmable fodder.
Best moments.. getting mauled by both the exp enemy and a misscharmed pet at the same time!

running the crags with a 6 man pt for the lvl 25 and 40 capped chains of promathia missions was a great adventure!

soloing exp on thf/nin by using sleep bolts, then run to the back of the nm to sneak attack + WS the mob and using acid bolts, holy bolts and bloody bolts to debuff and heal yourself.

Nostalgia...

Obligatory remember KillingIfrit?

I miss when leveling was an actual accomplishment to be proud of. I remember being a level 50 dragoon and seeing a level 75 Japanese red mage in Sandy and was just in awe. I think that was the first time I had seen a level 75 player. Even being level 50 had some value where you could help others do missions or try to survive getting somewhere.

I also miss when players would get in full alliances to do missions. Like the Zilart headstone mission. If Ash Dragon was up, someone would aggro it and everyone would die trying to fight it or trying to escape to the zone line where the headstone was.

I remember back in the day I used to be able to use Beastmaster abilities like Reward from a safe distance instead of hugging my pet while it's getting hit with an AoE move.

remember (I think it was called) people of ffxi?
Kind of like a MySpace thing for ffxi ppls.

Yup! About around the same time that everyone had a LiveJournal to blog about their static EXP party chronicle in QS caves.

Leveling black mage on beastmaster pets, this was all the rage back in the day.

Dynamis Calendars.

Optical hat fight when it was required BIS equip.

This fight is etched into my brain, I'll never forget how awful it was as the solo BST on crowd control for a YPYD alliance. Charming T-VT eyes to use against other T-VT eyes. Nearly de-leveled I died so many times, from mischarms and early releases.

Jug pets back then were completely useless, even an EP monster could destroy them in seconds. Crazy how much they buffed BST over the years since I played it as my main.

Not that I would want to back to it, but in a way I sort of miss the days when Charm was the key aspect of the BST job and jugs were just a secondary option for when Charm wasn't available.

I remember with pride my Charm build, and god it made you feel so powerful when you used Charm on a really strong enemy and then used Familiar.
Such an empowering feeling!

I remember doing that a lot in Sacrarium, the level 50 capped area.

the first time i zoned into la theine from ronfaure, i saw a drg in af run by, and i was like omg he looks so cool. or the rdm af hat. (the whole reason i lvld rdm to start)

I 'member when you were looking for people to invite in an xp party and them being rank 10 was a sign of competence. "get that guy, he is rank 10"


First XP party I got on bst in Bibiki bay, I charmed a T or VT monster to use in the party and used 2 hour (nearly died and nearly killed the whm trying to repeatedly charm it). I was so proud at how powerful it was. Then that IT monster we killed gave 110xp cause of my pets level and everyone wasn't so impressed xD

Yeah it wasn't really good for XP alas, but for everything else it was really cool! <3

Leveling into Ancient Magic (50~60), getting your Ice Staff w/ Freeze, and Fei Yin. Good times.

I enjoyed soloing pets. They are still viable and I will pull them when leveling alts low level jobs. Leave my Giant Trappers alone in Qufim Island!

One thing that I think old fart Blue Mages had that no new Blue Mages this day will have is slowly leveling into your new spells. Partying for a few hours and going out to learn each new spell that was within your range. Nowadays you step out of our mog house and randomly scratching your *** will get you exp. You level so fast that your Blue Magic skill can't keep up and you end up needing to script skill or bang your head against the wall as you spam spells on things at 99 (not as bad as some other jobs have it since they are offensive magic).

I was lucky to be able to slowly level up my BLU and it was a different and unique experience. RIP that method of becoming a BLU.

lol that reminded me more of my comment about "people not wanting to party with you just because of the country you live in."

People debated for years on what "JP ONLY" was all about. Some theorized that it was to show that was the only language they spoke however that was debunked since you can select E, J or both.

After speaking to a Japanese player who spoke fluent English, she explained that many JP players just don't like NAs because they felt that they were the cause of NM stealing, RMT and just about every other bad things originating in the game. She also mentioned how they viewed some of our norms as "rude."

The JP players had the game to themselves for a year or two, then we invaded and messed it up. We were like savages invading their virgin lands, with not eating food in parties, stealing camps randomly checking people and demanding to be invited whether they wanted us or not.

That's how they saw it anyway I think, most of them pretend they can't speak english but from my exp almost all of them can speak it pretty well.

Not all ofc, many JP players loved the western player invasion...many come to Asura because of it even now.

I wouldn't say we "ruined" it. They had the game for a year before we did and didn't welcome changes. When EU players came aboard, there were even more cultural differences, but NAs didn't tell them "NA PT ONLY" regardless if they spoke the same language.

Not eating food in parties? Both sides did it just as much as the other.

Stealing camps? Same, both sides did it. In fact, I recall JP doing it more

Randomly checking people? It still kills me that they found that offensive. It's a feature built into the game. Even if the translation sounds offensive, that's not our fault. That's the fault of the poor translators.

And I don't recall anyone ever demanding to be invited. I did remember one NA player demanding that I join THEM but that was a notorious nutcase from my server.

It might have been my original server but we didn’t have much issue with JP players. Definitely never had any problems with them stealing camps, they were very... polite? We relied very heavily on reputations back then so we tried not to get in each other’s ways. Hell, I still stick by that to this day.

Some of them don’t like being checked though that was definitely a thing but I for one did NOT care and honestly still don’t. I won’t step on a player’s toes and invade their camp but like Mattel just said, it’s built into the game. You got a nice weapon, get over it :P

i had mixed experiences with jp on unicorn. some were the whole jp onry mindset, but others were pleasant, friendly, and welcoming. i was always floored by how much better they were at things though, even a normal xp party. i had never heard of using selbina milk and melon juice or w/e for regen/refresh until i got a jp party in qufim. or partying as thf and having the SA lay up right at the start. it was always clockwork.

From their point of view.

Perhaps, but from what I've been told about how they think, they were pretty racist and prejudice.
I think it was the same in most any server. Not all JP were like that but too many were.

I remember doing something when I leveled Bard (for those who remember how easy it was to get party invites as Bard.) I got so sick of "JP PT ONLY" by that point, I put "EN PT ONLY" in my search comment. The funniest part was that I had NAs calling me racist and the same people, when told "what about JP ONLY" would say "that's different, they just don't want to play with us." As if what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

Ballista used to be super fun. Used to run as RDM/RNG with Kclub/Genbu Shield, W Legs and Darksteel/Jelly Ring to get capped PDT (No D Ring at the time, was the rarest item in the game)

With Phalanx up literally nothing could hurt me at all except 2-handed DDs or MNK. Run around using the KClub to Sidewinder spam people it was great. As long as I didn’t get caught from sleepga without a poison pot and hit with a Lethe Water, it was a blast.

Speaking of Lethe Water, that’s a Temp Item that’d be useful on some NMs, what the hell, SE? Lol

I took on a RNG and DRK as WHM and took them both out my first time ever doing Ballista. Basically I peaked with that and have never wanted to go back.

Nobody ever expects a melee WHM with a staff. None of this dual-wield-clubs nonsense.

killingifrit

lord I forgot how rude the /check was perceived by the JP community (on average I'm sure, not entirely). You could even get some JP players to just log out by spamming /check on 'em!

Which was always amusing because you could disable /check notices.