FFXIV: Last Footage From 1.0

This is just footage of the night that the servers were going down and how 1.0 ended at 2 AM CST.
After the servers went down and all of us logged out, they released the epic ending to it here on KZbin. Here's the link:
• FINAL FANTASY XIV: A R...
All copyright goes to Square Enix.

[@JoshuaVerscha]

Remember. Remember us. Remember that we once lived.

[@GengarCollects]

For anyone curious, the event music is the reprised version of “Answers.” Also referred to as the “Hymn of Dalamud.” Someone even made an hour long version of it. 🙂

[@FinalxHikari]

Thank You!

[@gwenderp6229]

Thanks for uploading this. When you look up the end of 1.0 it's always the same group of people standing outside looking at the sky. Nice to see what other areas looked like!

[@TheDeliveryMoogle]

Even though 1.0 was quite bad and ran terribly even on high end computers of the time must have been cool to experience these final moments and seeing all these adventurers fighting the inevitable fighting right up until the end

[@velvetfair21]

It was a very emotional moment for me for sure after I disconnected for the final time.

[@davidpoa7775]

​@@velvetfair21massive respect to (ffxiv legacy players)yous all for sticking with the game to the very end even some seeing the hidden beauty within legacy 14 and giving the developers to keep a little hope for the game to encourage them to keep trying at least once more and giving way for one of the best mmos of the early decades 😊❤

[@SakuraShuuichi]

@@velvetfair21 I remember it fondly, I kinda miss some of the ui stuff and a lot of the people i played with, but arr was for the better.

[@Spirit-FilledMindset]

I loved FFXI. And I played FFXIV beta. But when this was released, they literally fixed nothing from beta. It wasn't until I saw the documentary that confirmed exactly that. I could only take a month of the boringness of the grind. Got to about 22 PUG and quit after a month or so. You literally could only do about 6 levequests a day for decent XP and then had to grind the rest. The levequests took you into caverns that were just copy pasted stuff. The lag between menus was horrific. To heal someone, you had to have a weapon out (meaning you were attacking a monster) and then still be facing who you wanted to heal, if I remember correctly. I just couldn't handle it anymore. But looking back now after playing from ARR and on, I wish I could go back and experience what I didn't get to. How Yoshi P and the writers took from the lore and forged a new story from it is simply amazing. I never realized how much was in the game. From original 1.0, it felt like you got a few MSQ up to 15 and that was it. I ran to Ishgard gates for some pictures just before I quit because I thought I might be able to get in, similar to Jeuno being a hub. I didn't realize that there were so many other cool zones that we know of today that were open to be explored during that time.

[@TheXev]

I remember my friend playing the final RAID from 1.0 It was nuts. I'd love to see more footage of the old 1.0 days. I was going to buy in, but after things went south I decided to wait.

[@silvyxiv]

the eeriness of the sounds in uldah give me chills lol wish i got to experience this back then

[@FolicanisAmicaris]

There's something so scary about hearing Answers play, it really is the Calamity huh

[@Iowsbub]

Didn't even know they spawned mobs in Ul'dah for this. Thanks again for the footage!

[@the_dark_soul_of_man]

Dunno why you came up in my feed, but thank you for recording this piece of FFXIV history.

[@Micahlopl]

An amazing piece of history. Thanks for preserving it

[@unmeclambda4233]

Oh my, a "Marth Lowell" Among the people. A Fire Emblem fan back then !

[@Omio9999]

My only hope is to be able to wander the Fields of Carteneau once more, and see the scars for myself. Thank you for this gaze into history.

[@victerrynk]

I was there Gandalf, I was there 3000 years ago.

[@KenjiX438]

I remember this! I was in a field of it must have been 50 different other players in PvP and we were in the middle of battle when the cutscene happened but while I was fighting I heard Erie ominous music in the background "Answers" what a dark day for us even though the game is terrible it felt like I am I getting for all of the players

[@CronyneWARE]

This is plain cool to see. You've done your part v3lvetf4ir preserving a piece of history.

[@KitsuneRogue]

It's always so surreal to stumble upon recordings of this event in the game I love's history. While I was never a player of 1.X, only getting my first taste of it during 3.X, I've held an active sub to this game ever since.

[@Krystamyth]

I would do anything to go back in time and have joined the game when this happened...

[@velvetfair21]

As laggy as it was, especially with being kicked out several times due to the massive amount of people trying to get back in and crashing in one specific area where the main event was happening...naw..it was just horrible, lol. It was worth it though staying til the end.

[@Lechqu]

Enemies stormed Uldah? That’s pretty sick

[@onetwothreetwentytwo30]

this is so fucking scary this is a nightmare

[@KeziaTv]

Crazy how much better the u.i looks here than now

[@lovelydumpling]

Were there any 1.0 fans that really liked Louisoix and were really sad he died here?

[@ricky_pigeon]

Spoilers: Yes, super sad even today when you watch that first trailer. He was a badass, then we got the twins, ofc we were sad. Coils is still one of the best places for story in my opinion. It was cool to see Cid again, i remember wondering if he died. When Papalymo died that made me really sad too because he was a big part of what i remember in 1.0, if i remember correctly he was in the first cutscene with Yda. I started in Gridania, not sure if everyone saw the same. Mother Miounne was also involved a lot when i started, she was like a guide, i might be wrong with this last bit but i'm sure she used to look younger in 1.0.

[@lPsychoMax]

I wonder if this is how ff11 felt when ff14 1.0 was announced?

[@dragumkirisute1998]

Nah, I think most people went back to 11 like a month or 2 after 1.0 was launched if memory serves. It was bad lol

[@namenotfound8747]

People weren't brothered too much. Since a lot of us started at FF11 at launch as well and saw many MMOs come and go. When FF14 came out, people would run there FF11 for a couple hrs. then FF14. When FF14 was closed. People just went back to FF11 and some moved on because they were over FF11. when FF14ARR released I played it for a few months then didn't play it for 10 years before coming back. If you look at the credits in ARR, everyone who who there at the start had their names placed on the credits. My name is there under YunaA.

[@GameslordXY]

Wasn't there an EPIC cutscene? I watched some other area where players gathered together like this and instead of a sudden server error, there was an EPIC Cutscene

[@velvetfair21]

I probably didn't see that after the servers shut down but a video did drop on the official channel.

[@ColorOfSakura]

The cutscene was only posted to the FFXIV Official Channels AFTER the servers went down. The video you're referencing has been cleverly edited to make it seem like the cutscene played as the servers went offline, but in reality, that didn't actually happen. 1.0's servers were famously unstable and were barely able to handle the sheer number of people online at the time the servers went down. There would have been no way for them to stream a CG cutscene to all the online players simultaneously like that.

[@jean_leflambeur3534]

AWesome video, thanks for sharing!

[@KenjiX438]

Armageddon* let's just hope I never have to see anything like that ever again and with Final Fantasy 14 a realm reborn it was a huge turnaround the game is freaking amazing!!

[@ben_sisko2149]

The sound design for 1.0 was fantastic.

[@ricky_pigeon]

the music was great too, i loved the battle music. the city music was great too but they got repetitive fast. The sound/music was great then but its also good now, but the cutscene cinematics were better, was way more animation involved in the story telling.

[@Lola_3934]

Always wondered what happened to the characters from 1.0, if their data was sent to the ARR or people need to create once again new character. I've heard that these players got the scions tattoo for customization.

[@velvetfair21]

We had to create new characters but we did get the Legacy tattoo and had our names in the credits of A Realm Reborn.

[@Xport9]

I hope ya'll saved this video in your harddrives. This is an artifact.

[@KenjiX438]

but we knew it was coming

[@NatiiixLP]

I wonder if this video was recorded at 5 FPS, got incorrectly transcoded at some point, or if OP was simply playing at 5 FPS because that how awfully optimised the 1.0 engine was.

[@velvetfair21]

No, this is how it was for me since I didn't have the best computer back then. With all those players and mobs around, it was very chaotic.

[@NatiiixLP]

@@velvetfair21 Ahaha, I bet. Thanks for the context. I wouldn't even blame your computer. At that time, most people seemed to have shared a similar experience in terms of the game's performance. It looks quite pretty, though, that much I must admit.

[@rickydargence5948]

Honestly KINO.

[@lesanjisan2989]

How long did the servers go down back then?

[@velvetfair21]

The servers went down on November 11th, 2022 then 9 months later 2.0 was officially released.

[@velvetfair21]

Lmfao. xD

[@Catzzye]

What does CS mean :O

[@Jamalboseman]

Cutscene in final fantasy for short

[@elitebelt]

This is something sorely missing from 2.0+ FFXIV. To date, there hasnt been a single massive event like this that fundamentally breaks the natural order of the game. It doesnt have to be on a scale of like, the entirety of Eorzea being thrown into chaos, but surely they could've done something interesting and similar to this by now?

[@MegumiKeehl]

i get what you mean. events like spawning enemies into safe points is such a cool concept.

[@ricky_pigeon]

yep right on limsa aetherite, i want to see it.

[@tony8076]

Xiv is great and all but it seems like after 1.0 they really ditched any concept of RPG within their MMO. I'm a very new player but I went back and played XI and wished XIV had more of the player choice and open ended gameplay that XI had. People like to call XIV an RPGMMO but I really can't agree with that when all you're really able to do is superficial role-playing by pretending and purely going through a story with no actual choices as to what you're character is.

[@ricky_pigeon]

@@tony8076 i played 1.0 and no there was no concept of rpg where your choices mattered in that either.

[@melissas4874]

I would be nice if something like this happened - like the zombie event in WoW before Wrath.

[@rostbern]

That would be great for g4m3rs if SqEx let us try 1.0 since modern mid-range computers can hadle 1.0's optimization quite well at least at bearable 30fps (believe devs can fix a little bit of it). I know game was terrible in many way especially in UI (i liked it someway), but i liked how it looked and its real oped world XD (i wish 7.0 will finally get whole map back together in one piece)

[@Bonwikk]

1.0 is open world,realy?

[@rostbern]

@@Bonwikk yeah you could go from gridania to central shroud without loading screen. Just through long bridge.

[@brandonwhittaker85]

They could make an FF14 “classic” but they would need to fix a lot of 1.0’s many issues.

[@Lola_3934]

@@rostbern if they do that in 7.0 it would be amazing, WoW is much older and there are few places that are "closed" whole world is open, it would be also cool if we won't hit ceiling while flying, though in SHB and EW zones it's much better, but in these ARR it feels like the cage.

[@babarrett1]

I’m so confused…. Why does visually 1.0 look worse than 6.0 and yet somehow also look better than 6.0? I’m sooooo confused

[@OFreakshowO]

The game back then ran on an entirely different engine. It had (iirc) way better lighting than current FFXIV (but with Dawntrail's release we'll get better lighting, ayyyy). The old engine also allowed a ton of animations to be done with motion capture. Look at 1.0 cutscenes and you will see that the animations looked way better than current FFXIV. However, the engine apparently was terrible for an MMORPG, making fights very clunky and PCs back then were struggling a ton with the game's lack of optimization. So yeah, it looked pretty but it played like ass.

[@ricky_pigeon]

i played 1.0, one reason is the high polygon count, way more detail in the streets too, also the maps didn't have as much loading screens. Uldah was one giant city for example, not split up like it is today.

[@comical4609]

Framerate's pretty bad.