Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 Gameplay (Recorded Nov 2022)

[@Wogle]

Hi, Thank you for all the comments, messages and views! This video blew up more than I expected! I've added some further information in the description of the video; especially about things I haven't been able to show

[@NalaLeaf]

The fact the beginning area is coerthas but not snowy is wild

[@toji6476]

oh right because the calamity caused snow to flaw on coerthas

[@mrdoormat6809]

Ye, dalamud shard make the aether in the place tipped to ice.

[@althelor]

I know right? I only recently started leveling summoner/scholar, and it wasn't until the heavensward job quests where you have to track down a thaumaturge that took some book and you find he died on a ship in the middle of a frozen lake that it actually clicked for me that coerthas was so drastically changed by the 7th calamity. I'm almost certain they did say it before, but it never really sunk in until I realized that these frozen lakes and rivers used to be warm enough for people to sail across them regularly. And then after the calamity, in 5 short years, the land completely froze over.

[@Jeezes718]

@@althelor they mention a couple of times in heavensward msq that coerthas has been struggling due to the nuclear winter. They also mention somewhere that IL mheg from shadowbringers is the first's counterpart of coerthas.

[@RinoaL]

It isn't the beginning area, you start in Limsa, Shroud, or Thanalan.

[@pleaserespond3984]

It is 2022. PCs are finally powerful enough to render the flower pots in FF XIV 1.0 Gridania.

[@MAKExEVIL]

Apparently at only 720p.

[@TheGreyParse]

That pivot when changing direction in the running animation is something I had no idea how *_desperately_* I needed.

[@Keromimi]

As far as gameplay goes it was very clunky-- it wasn't just an animation but an actual small slide. Ditto a small start-up to moving from walking to running. As far as charm goes though it was great. My personal favorite and I don't even like Lala's much is theirs by far-- they do this really dramatic slide because of their proportions.

[@flvx4693]

Yeah it makes the character feel weighty and actually looks like a single player character instead of an mmo character.

[@PrinceAzura]

Imo realistic momentum changes is one of the single most important factors in how a game feels to play. Characters that lean into their turns, or put a foot out to stop their momentum. It's a HUGE change to the feel of gameplay

[@Kayune]

Looks like i'm opposite. That was the change I hated most lol.

[@DeathMetalViking]

I remember seeing the maps for this when it initially released and thinking how bizarre their set ups were. Wife and I have 3 years in now and multiple maxed out characters with the current system and still love it.

[@longtimenosee6169]

Man, feels bad.. That one guy got left behind and survived all alone in that empty world. Not even a monster to keep him company, just him and the intact remain of his own civilisation

[@azfortuna9398]

Remember us......remember that we lived.

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

@@azfortuna9398 Emet Selch. I feel bad for him, really I do. The best bad guys are the ones that are doing the same thing you might have done, were you in their shoes.

[@ElYoinkySploinky]

Man is living his own Overlord

[@S0L1nv1ctus]

Bad? More like paradise!

[@Affekakao]

Today Limsa Lominsa ist more like a sodom and gomorra ..

[@kairasakamoto3187]

Seeing Camp Dragonhead be this tiny place in a grassy area, knowing that in 5 years a whole fort was built amidst constant snow and cold is so strange. I can't imagine seeing Dalamud show up and then get bigger and knowing that everyone around me was seeing it too. Sounds legit incredible how the FXIV team pulled that off and made it so important for the future.

[@kurisu7885]

Or Revenant's Toll. At one point there wasn't anything there. Now it's a thriving town with big stone walls.

[@AkumaSephitaro]

@@kurisu7885 The old camp is still there, next to RT.

[@kurisu7885]

@@AkumaSephitaro Ah, ok, guess I didn't see it on my visits, I';ll need to take a look.

[@sakurya972]

When I first started playing dalamud was a tiny spec in the sky that grew into a massive red meteor by the time the servers was going down.

[@kurisu7885]

@@sakurya972 And now there are giant pieces of it all over the place.

[@bamcki991]

Limsa plaza being empty is just cursed

[@JustSkram]

Still better than it currently is

[@DaRoyalCrab]

Where are my jades? It’s just not the same

[@cutejustice]

That Uldah without the erp’ers too omgness. It’s cursed children, cursed

[@pine_9356]

Liminal space fr

[@ziongamer6905]

@@JustSkram If my Limsa isn’t lively, something is wrong

[@sleepykot]

this is so crazy to see. when ffxiv was new, i was like 8 or 9 and would watch my dad play it and sometimes he let me play too. its wild seeing how the game used to look and having memories come back to me that i had completely forgotten, such as the old title screen and aetheryte in limsa. something that really shocked me though because i didn't see it as a kid, is the old coerthas. theres not even any snow, the land is so barren. anyways im 18 now and still play this game, it's one of my favorites.

[@orionstardust2060]

It's so cool how they made that part of the lore too, if I remember correctly it now has snow because of the calamity that happens before ARR

[@pxvncss]

im 18 and started in 2013 and its so crazy, cause i remember my mom playing this and i watched wanting my own account.

[@dimitriosgladio059]

I’m 17 and I started playing when I was 11, time flies

[@l1iv122]

Not one original experience, same here man. I'm 18 now as well and I vividly remember watching my dad play the game as well as an 8-11 yr old. Today both me and him still play the game

[@leventemeszaros8664]

im 17 and started playing when i was 17... good old times

[@ResidentLune]

I know it ended up not being conducive to good gameplay, and so it got the axe during the overhaul and then re-release, but something I liked from a technical standpoint was the "weightiness" of movement in 1.0. How your character wouldn't simply turn right around if you tried to do so, but rather would come to a braking stop and then turn around. Or simply the fact that they'd come to a trotting stop like any normal person would who isn't moving forward, rather than stopping on a dime. I know that ultimately isn't good game mechanics, at least not for an MMO-style game, but I still found myself appreciating that.

[@tyhjyys]

yeah i noticed right away how great the animations look. the way the character even leans into their run and has actual stopping animations is kinda crazy

[@emachine310]

I dream of the running physics from time to time. I played a Lalafell at the time and they were little goofier when turning and coming to a stop

[@TheMan21892]

That small detail is something I wish present day XIV had.

[@arolimarcellinus8541]

You want that feature, play XI. That's what real "weightness" that you want, even the weightness in gameplay too

[@IrionMonk0]

The Magic of mo-cap

[@demonjin6876]

For those unaware, some of the fluid animations in movement such as running to a halt and turning to run and such are only reused during cutscenes in the modern XIV with some minor changes I think the only aesthetic thing they didn't bring back was armored protected tails for Miqo'tes when they wear heavy plate armor plus the unique change to skirts in accommodating their tails prevent lazy clipping

[@TheDragonsPit]

Actually the armored tailed stuff carried over for a couple of sets that were brought over from 1.0 to 2.0 (Example the Dragoon Artifact gear.) More recent sets in 6.0+ also have tail armor as well.

[@IanChunck]

I love whenever I find a set that has tail armor or even just anything that incorporates the tail. It always feels so forgotten by game devs and even a lot of regular artists too.

[@foxdavion6865]

Problem was... 1.0's engine barely ran on systems at the time, especially the PS3. It runs just fine today because hardware has caught up with the terribly optimised Crystal Tools - modern computers and the PS5 can run this even as a MMO with no issues - they are even capable of software simulating the old servers, but that is because of their hardware profile can brute force it, doesn't change the fact that version of Crystal Tools sucks. The main two issues was that all the netcode was scripted and inconsistent model polycounts. Both caused tremendous issues for the PS3 making the game have 30fps at the best of times and it would drop down to 10fps during the one raid the game had (Cutter's Cry), NMs and during Trials. Game ran like Meridian 59, a MMO from a decade and a half prior... in 2010... which is unacceptable for 2010. The only systems it ran smoothly on were jacked up DX10 capable high end 8GB RAM PCs - so yeah $2000+ systems. It would be the equivalent of trying to make a MMO using Red Engine in 2016 or CryEngine in 2005. You can't use an unoptimized mess of an engine designed for single player games that uses render tricks to save frames as a MMO game engine - because you can't use the same render tricks and you have to retool how the engine registers all assets, it failed in the past for other developers and it failed again with 1.0 for SE; SE was blind to this historical lesson because the only person in a position to make decisions at the company who played MMOs was YoshiP; Everyone who worked on 1.0 came off FFXI thinking they could just do the same thing again but with a better graphics engine and pretty graphics... and well we know the rest.

[@LazerzZ]

Seeing Gridania here was so oddly nostalgic despite never having played 1.0. It’s my home region in XIV and having trekked across it countless times, it felt so strange seeing it here in a state before I knew it, yet reminiscent of the place I’m so familiar with. Almost like seeing photos of your hometown taken decades before you were born.

[@hkoizumi3134]

It's crazy how the vibe of 1.0 feels like FF11 online. The town, layout, and even the music feels nostalgic but also new for former FF11 online player.

[@Deuzen_FIN]

Ul'dah's music especially hits me in that FFXI nostalgia nerve.

[@harrylane4]

1.0 has ff11 vibes (since it was essentially being treated as a remake of 11) and 2.0 takes a LOT of influence from ff12

[@yScribblezHD]

I vastly prefer the art and UI based on watching this. It feels so much more like a classic final fantasy title than XIV visually anyways.

[@Miriam_J_]

1.0 was made by the guys who made FF11. It basically was supposed to play and feel like an FF11-2, but they somehow made it worse lmao

[@Infindox]

@@yScribblezHD I... Don't understand the UI. The UI is very bland to me here.

[@joshthejuicy]

Videos like this are really important for preservation. It's important to remember what people really got when they first bought the game, not what's been patched into the current game

[@davidbrent2069]

Video game preservation is not important at all lol 😂

[@szunaloneheart3148]

i really love the fact that 1.0 was seemless... true open world. everything seems to be bigger back then and seeing coerthas without any snow is freaking insame

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

The thing about the seamless transitions between areas is that, yes, there were no loading screens and abrupt transitions, but the transition areas were VERY long. They had to be long enough that you could be transferred to a new zone and be far enough way from the previous zone that when you looked back, you wouldn't have the jarring artifact of players being there one moment and gone the next. The transition area had to be as big as the largest possible viewing distance in the game. that makes for a lot of pointless, long running to get anywhere. I think I actually prefer a 5-10 second loading screen to running for 45-60 seconds to get there.

[@LuisRamos-oe6te]

That's why the game had much glitches, it was literally to ambitious at the time.

[@Calculusman1084]

This is just nuts. The story of 1.0 is insane, and to see it running in 2022, is .... crazy!

[@goldentrout4811]

9:45 Good to hear the Twin Faces of Fate ost in Uldah again. Wish you showed Uldah at night time too, the Twilight Over Thanalan theme is just magical. Thanks for the video!

[@BunnychanFarabee]

Seriously, 1.0 Ul'dah music feels like it captures the vibes of the city much more accurately.

[@Dusty_Inkwell]

I started playing FFXIV about a year ago now, seeing this old version is absolutely wild! Thank you for this

[@feelyourlines]

ohi doost

[@Dusty_Inkwell]

@@feelyourlines ohi eli :3

[@misanthropiclusion]

This is fantastic in a game preservation sense, incredible

[@VioletElite4]

You know how people were like, "Give us Classic servers for WoW" lol imagine any demand for classic FF14 1.0 servers

[@Onebie]

To quote Yoshi P "NIGHTMARE!"

[@captainsteve0]

It would definitely be interesting to check out. I bought a PS3 to play 1.0 before it got scrapped for that system, and at the time I didn't have the spare cash laying around to buy a PC for a game that was barely running. But it would be kind of neat for some of this, even if it was just the old zones with the new UI, like an event or quest line along the lines of XI, when you went back in time to the wars against the beast tribes or whatever it was lol

[@Paintguy75]

It works for WoW since there are so many expansions beyond vanilla they can use. FFXIV stopped at 1.23b. There is no way they would invest the resources to port HW, SB, ShB, or EW, even if the engine for 1.0 is better.

[@gianghuynh9570]

Best I can see is they slowly put the 1.0 story into a field content like Eureka, patch after patch, like a time portal or memory exploration. That way they don’t have to work with 1.0’ atrocious optimisation, but still deliver story and make some money out of that.

[@Doseqies]

It would be novel to play 1.0 but honestly I'd be interested to play ARR and HW trials and raids again as intended. I think the design team took alot more risks and had interesting bosses and gameplay as a result of this. The bosses in Alexander for example are peak design IMO they use their arenas so well.

[@keiyangoshin3650]

Oh my gosh.... it’s all coming back to me!! I can’t believe it’s been over 10 years!! This looks like it was just before the meteor fall, so to speak. I’m glad they changed some of the city music. The maps of the cities themselves didn’t change much. Ah man... so many memories. 😭 Thank you so much for this video. Excellent quality!

[@StatusQuodium]

Damn, Rowena really came up from struggling in these skreets #selfmade

[@tcxiv3767]

One of the good things about 1.0 was the seamless map,the only loading screen you had was either going to your Inn room,going to the retainers market or using teleport.Also i just remembered watching this that the scale of the world in general was much bigger!

[@jordanio0825]

Shame the rest of it was garbage.

[@Thavleifrim]

@@jordanio0825 wow what a crazy original opinion to put out into the world.

[@TorManiak]

Yup. Kinda wonder how the game would hold up today had it been running as it should and was actually coded properly. I guess it's still gonna be crappy, but at least not as outrageously slow as it probably was, considering the whole story around its development(watch the NoClip documentary for context). Yet, would it have been going in the same direction as the 1.0 we got? I mean, if the systems were running fine, and only their design was the worst, it could go both ways:one would be the same as going to 2.0 and the other was to fix the problems directly, as Yoshi-P directed the team do while developing ARR. Pretty sure it's not gonna be nearly as popular as it was in today's version of the game or even just compared to FFs and MMOs in general though.

[@TheDaxter11]

Yeah, with the technology we have now and the fact that the PS5 has come out I'd hope to see an update that would remove most loading screens and have it be a big open world, though still having to load to places that you'd be taking a boat or airship to would make sense. Hell, I'd even just be happy with Square removing loading screens in the capitol cities. I get the limitation on the PS3, but the PS4 and especially PS5 could easily handle that much, and given that I had been playing WoW on its lowest settings on a craptop from 2011 that wasn't even designed for gaming for years since 2012 until 2016 surely everyone has a PC that could handle Ishgard, Limsa, Ul'dah and Gridania having their loading sections removed and just being able to go everywhere without loading screens.

[@Boyzby]

@@TheDaxter11 It's not something as simple as "getting rid of loading screens", but I don't know anything about making games. There's nothing tying one area to the other, so they'd have to restructure so many things to make them connect. Doing it would also probably mess with the scale of the world, since it's not like we see all of the paths between, so they'd probably have to add things to make it alright. It seems like a huge amount of work for not a real noticeable gain. I'd much rather it be one consistent world, it would be amazing to fly from Kugane all the way to the Azim Steppe, but it's never going to happen. Then again, developers added flying to ARR and underwater sections, so maybe they could add them slowly backwards. It feels like an expansion feature to bring back a connected world, while they are redoing lighting and other graphical things.

[@Noel_Tamura]

If only there could be a world where we could experience the atmosphere and graphics from 1.0 with 6.X's gameplay

[@shanks547]

it'll be 7.0, they announced a graphic update

[@harrylane4]

@@shanks547 it won’t be the same unless 7.0 includes flowers that, when loaded in, immediately tank the framerate

[@OfficialDjTalksick]

@@harrylane4 one can dream that their ps4 will catch fire trying to walk past a fucking pot

[@Phyllion-]

@@harrylane4 Please, it wasn't flowers but a flower pot. Get your facts straight :p

[@OfficialDjTalksick]

@@Phyllion- no he’s still right those flowers were also part of the 10 bagillion pixels they needed to sacrifice your graphics card

[@Jisaji]

Can we talk about the OSTs? These areas have amazing music wtfffff. Ul'dah is really good imo.

[@Wogle]

You can unlock the old city tracks either as a random prize from the Ishgard Fete presents, or as a reward from the Lost Canals of Uznair (accessible via portals opening at Gazelle Treasure Map location)

[@ItsCassius]

@@Wogle Yup Limsa - The Navigator's Glory Gridania - Beneath the Boughs Ul'dah - Twin Faces of Fate All done by Nobuo Uematsu. They reuse a lot of 1.0 music like Tears for Mor Dhona (old Mor Dhona theme) and On Windy Meadows (old La Noscea overworld theme) in the new version but sadly the main city themes never got that treatment.

[@ChristyCub]

I use to sit outside Ul’dah and listen to the music and enjoy the sandstorms.

[@UOTQAUIBO]

You know, I wouldn’t mind an offline remake/spin off of 1.0. You could even change some mild events to better foreshadow revelations that were revealed in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Could also be the perfect way to get people interested into the MMO, since most people are put off by the fact that it’s an MMO, and think nothing of it.

[@TastyDoorstop]

I'm a 1.0 vet, been with the game from day one,People who never played 1.0 because they listen to cridic and didn't even touch the game, now wishing they played. Really Burns me. It was people like me that didn't give up on our wonderful Dev team that we have a great game now.

[@LeonScarlet-fr]

@@TastyDoorstop the dev team own you nothing lmao FF14 1.0 was trash and god the loading time was awful on ps3 People missed nothing Ff14 1.0 was almost unknow like FF11 is still unknow to a lot of people Glad they killed it

[@TastyDoorstop]

@@LeonScarlet-fr 2.0 would not exist with out all the people that keep playing it even though it had problems. and it was the 1.0 players the gave the dev team feed back on improvements. and there was also a 1.0 players that ended up getting a temp job with them as a beta tester. my self included. and being a part of the team we do own a lot to our fellow 1.0 players. it was a team effort with the dev team and players. you can even see it in the team now with how they take feed back from players and do there best to make it happen. flying in the 2.0 areas are a perfect example when yoshi-p said they will not make the zone for flying mounts the dev team took it upon them self's on there own time to make it happen. they love the game and its players.

[@Miriam_J_]

@@TastyDoorstop It's really funny, cause most of us would most definitely stop playing very quickly if we actually played 1.0. Yet there's so many people pretending like they would totally play a bad game for longer than a day or two

[@boi248]

I'd love to play this, too! I didn't even know about this game before a few years ago, so I'd like to see what I missed.

[@ofarndenBTM]

I really wish I could explore old Coerthas. Seeing it without snow is quite a pleasure to look at.

[@hotelmarioenjoyer3752]

I'm waiting patiently for the server emulation code to be up to snuff so people can finally host true classic servers, I'll be all over it. I'm very grateful that ion and the others put as much effort as they do into this important preservation project

[@Catzzye]

Isn't this impossible though? You'd need source code only SE has?

[@hotelmarioenjoyer3752]

@@Catzzye nah it’s not impossible, just very difficult and time consuming. Pretty much everything has to be reverse engineered, having the code from the client helps, along with some data archived by players at the time, but otherwise it’s a process of trying to understand how something worked in the game, then writing the code to replicate that. It’s been a wip for many years, but it’s progressing slowly but surely.

[@louislee9544]

I think if we got Heavensward and Stormblood patches running I'd be interested in playing. As someone who started in late Shadowbringers I've heard some wild shit about how the game used to be and I'd like to try it for myself

[@mattcasper7372]

@@louislee9544 same here

[@youreverydayrae]

this is like looking into another timeline. all these areas i'm so familiar with yet are so different. Despite how bad 1.0 seemed to be, i kind of do want to play it just to experience how far this game i adore has come

[@UmatsuObossa]

It wasn't bad, just very grindy and not casual friendly. It was basically a new ff11.

[@Kyrrial]

Parts just weren't great, like having to manually unsheathe your weapons to enter "Battle" mode, having to manually attack because there was no auto-attack, melee characters requiring TP for most all abilities (I can't even remember how you got TP back), etc. The combat gameplay left much to be desired, but I still miss a lot of aspects of 1.0. Chief among them is the transition-less navigation of zones. Or at least zone groups: I think areas like Limsa and all of La Noscea were one transition-free area, but going to Thanalan or The Shroud required loading. Don't quote me on that. I miss this aspect of 1.0 *SO* much.

[@mikoto7693]

@@UmatsuObossa I’d have been fine then, I played FF11 and grinded it for years.

[@Jimmymatthewb]

​@@UmatsuObossathe game was absolutely bad. You're just looking at it with rose tinted goggles. This game is like a proof of concept compared to what we have today

[@UmatsuObossa]

@@Jimmymatthewb I'm betting you never played it or only played pre-Yoshi-P. The game was good. It was like a better FFXI. FFXI is good as it's continued existence will attest, and 1.0 was almost identical to it, just way more polished. Even if that's not your kind of game, doesn't mean it was bad.

[@naota8]

Thank you for sharing this! It brings back memories for me as a 1.0 FFXIV player, and it's also just inherently fascinating to see all the differences.

[@Kritigri]

Grassy Coerthas? Camp Dragonhead as an ACTUAL CAMP? Garlean airships (I presume) roaming overhead? Tiny Aetherytes? Seamless transition between upper and lower Limsa? Decent graphics (for its time) and more intricate running animations? Gridania is oops all corridors? Carpentry without Beatin? Teleporting has an "anima cost"? Those cute red bridges?? Waaait wait wait. Seamless transition from Gridania to Shroud?! That lane to the right of the Ul'dah aetheryte? Rowena just chillin? CAMP REVENANT'S TOLL? Silvertear Lake being the centrepiece of an entire zone? ...no Crystal Tower? Coerthas was just an entirely different zone topographically huh? Okay, so counting that up, this video blew my mind... 17 times over. Thanks so much for shairng!

[@BootGonnaEatShoes]

Anima cost was a pain. You had 100 points, it cost 6 to teleport between regions, 4 within your current region, half the normal cost to a city's central aetheryte / favourited locations, and 1 for teleports between crystals / back to camps after levequests. You could still get free teleport offers within parties though. You recovered 1 point every 4 real hours, so you had better get used to walking or taking boats/airships that move in real time on travel schedules. 2 regional teleports is already gonna take 48 hours to recover from, nevermind 16.5 days if you fully deplete the points...

[@jeveritt8398]

Whilst the seamless transions seem impressive it was not good for hardware at the time. 1.0 ran so bad

[@Kritigri]

@@jeveritt8398 oh I'm sure haha

[@Kritigri]

@@BootGonnaEatShoes ooooof

[@SamusKnight2K]

Incidentally Crystal Tower did exist, though it was only in story. There was no real Crystal Tower in 1.0, just some scholars talking about it and hypothesizing where it might be buried. After the Calamity the tower shot straight up to where it now stands today. It's a shame however that out of all the zones Mor Dhona was butchered the most. Only the northeastern half of the zone is available, with the south and west portions being completely inaccessible.

[@UmatsuObossa]

Oh, such nostalgia. I still miss this version of the game sometimes. How huge and open and dangerous and immersive the whole world felt. Sure, traveling town to town was a pain sometimes....but you felt like you were really living in that world because you really had to travel that vast distance, wary of dangers and memorize the best routes. I would go fish or mine on one side of the map and travel to sell on the other side for a profit. I got a very "traveling merchant" feel out of it that I adored.

[@FackeYu]

you can play a skyrim mod and turn off fast traveling for that same experience. no need to wish for an entire mmo to be hot, worthless garbage, just so you can roleplay as a traveling merchant.

[@UmatsuObossa]

@@FackeYu What, are you afraid my nostalgia is gonna magically manifest into reality and overtake the current game? Go touch grass, I'm allowed to have my opinion.

[@FackeYu]

@@UmatsuObossa the usual response when someone has the most braindead, shitty opinion. "i'm allowed to have my opinion. wahhh." yes. you're allowed to have your opinion. i'm allowed to point out how braindead your garbage opinion is.

[@yeahnahmate7]

He isn't wrong tho and your typical bad insult xD lmao even, come up with something new

[@UmatsuObossa]

@@yeahnahmate7 You're both idiots because I never once suggested they remake the game. You literally think my having good memories of it is a threat to you somehow. Grow tf up.

[@kinakomono]

It's so nice seeing that red dalamud moon up and hubs were much nicer imo. This Gridania with now graphics would be amazing, also that Limsa main aetheryte place seemed bigger and spacious. I wish I had a chance to play this version

[@WH1MS1]

genuinely so fascinating, thank you!

[@GoddessCynthia]

the way you described the animation in question 3,,,,makes me really wish there was a modern day menu MMO. Imagine if FFXI was remade today with improved animations and all that. It'd be so nice

[@althelor]

"modern day menu mmo" honestly that makes me think of the .hack series, which is a psuedo mmo (as in a single player rpg where the story is that you are a person playing a mmo) and has a lot of menu based combat. I know it's not the same, but similar vibe.

[@ralf8799]

Dragon Quest X is a modern day menu MMO

[@DeKitten]

It's really cool to see how far this game has come! Thank you for posting this. :)

[@shaitful]

This makes me feel nostalgic without having even touched 1.0.

[@dragumkirisute1998]

When you teleported to Limsa I damn near cried, Navigator's Glory is just that good

[@inplane9970]

I really wish they still implemented the running pivoting animations. It doesn't have to be super realistic and exaggerated like here, but anything other than just having characters run and suddenly gluing their feet in place.

[@TheMan21892]

Immediately I’m struck by how fluid the running animation is. The character _leans_ toward the direction they’re about to run, and the model doesn’t abruptly come to a halt when they stop running. There’s even an animation for that. It’s a small detail but it adds so much life to the characters. Everything is so much more *stiff* now 🫤

[@yoso378]

That fluidity came at a cost though - it definitely felt sluggish starting, stopping, and changing direction (this is speaking as someone that played a lot of 1.0). FF14's current gameplay wouldn't work with it since they went for responsiveness over aesthetics.

[@pluna3382]

It's always easy to criticize when you're ignorant of the process and costs

[@Miriam_J_]

You can see the animation looks quite clunky, though. I personally don't see what's so good about it. There are slight jumps in animation when you make too big or quick of a turn, making it look a bit choppy. It also felt worse than what we have today, according to people who actually played 1.0

[@ChristyCub]

I can appreciate both types of movement. The old style was very immersive but you felt like you were fighting under water. Then again, the battle were longer and slower so it felt more strategic.

[@lunyiea]

What about having more realistic movement in general, but fast movement (like we have now), when entering a battle? :3

[@maxv658]

I always wanted to play 1.0, but at the time I didn't have the super computer necessary to run it and by the time I did have a PC powerful enough it was on its way out. Maybe one day I'll be able to experience it through a fan project like this or something. Awesome stuff!

[@mikoto7693]

I’m in the same situation. I tried but my PC just couldn’t handle it. I’m a bit bitter about that really. I’d have to legacy character if it could. But my character barely got from the boat to Limsa before being unplayable. Ah my Lorei. What we could have been.

[@Ruinour]

Man this music is so much more atmospheric! Bring it back please!

[@Dextaaa]

Yeah and most of it was written by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu too! They've actually brought most of the 1.0 songs over (check out the Before Meteor album on Spotify), but I would loooove to hear the old city songs again.

[@ricky_pigeon]

a lot of 1.0 is still in the game and still used even in dawntrail,, but if you want to hear the cities themes, you can buy the scrolls in game and play it inside your house. that's the only way :(

[@sssdeb9573]

Incroyable de voir d’où est parti le jeux et ou on en est aujourd’hui… j’ai commencé il y a 3ans mnt et je ne l’avais jamais vue sous cet angle, merci bcp pour cette vidéo 👍🏻

[@israelquiles9127]

I crack up at the detail they noted on the documentary -- indoors, despite light sources -- your shadow is still based on the moon or sun outside. Not the lights directly above you.

[@curumo014]

The night sky was gorgeous, and the ambience was so beautiful. Too bad I wasn’t there for those days.

[@ITyphoonI]

im in love with Ul Dahs theme

[@yamchayaku]

omg that opening sound

[@apathy_syndrome]

How come no one's talking about how good those footsteps sound? And the forest sounds when walking around in Gridania?

[@Phyllion-]

The game still uses those sound effects to this day, but minor sound effects (so basically anything that isn't a skill's sound effect) have a very low sound scaling. If you want to have the same level of immersion in the current game you need to lower every scales except sound effect and ambient sounds then increase your own volume. The only problem with that is that abilities and spells will be loud as hell as a result, which is pretty jarring. I really missed that immersion so I did my best to find an adequate balance for my setup but I never could get it to a point where both sound effects and ability effects were perfectly balanced, unfortunately.

[@koresoteira447]

I played this version for nearly 2 years. Vid hit me in the feels. Modern FFXIV is great, but I do miss the old game world and the insane challenge of "normal" primals and dungeons.

[@DB-zj7wv]

The game combat was more strategic in how resources were used back then before they removed tp. It was more similar to FFXI in the open world sense. I miss being able to just wander into a dangerous dungeon like I did with Tamtara.. it's rare in the current version of the game that you even get any adrenaline from exploiting the open world. There's almost no danger.

[@michaelhanson5773]

Part of me is sad watching this knowing i never got to experience it personally... I started playing right after 2.0 was released... I really love the music and just something about the animations and graphics just makes me smile... 🙂

[@Miriam_J_]

It's funny how we're sitting here like "Man, I wish I was there!". Players who experienced 1.0 must think we're insane lmao

[@Berguna645]

@@Miriam_J_ as former 1.0 you are insane 😂😂

[@Section.9]

As a former legacy player myself, 1.0 had its charms, but we were all glad when A Realm Reborn came about. Just having our names in the credits, having the 9.99 subscription forever, along with the meteor tattoo on our original character is enough of a reward to tolerate all the issues the original game had. Lol

[@mikoto7693]

And yet I still wish my computer had been able to run 1.0 properly. I would have kept playing and I’d have a legacy character. I still feel cheated.

[@Berguna645]

@@mikoto7693 how come you feel that way?

[@vecialesca3014]

seeing coerthas be green feels wrong somehow

[@player554]

Snow and 1/5 is wrong.

[@SLEEPYDOGINU]

Il Mheg is the "mirror" of Coerthas in Norvrandt

[@player554]

@@SLEEPYDOGINU and not in a good way, sadly.

[@williamburgei8849]

Yeah Coerthas in 2.0 is one of my favorite areas strange to see it without snow.

[@Elesthor]

For all its problems the graphics and animations were *chef's kiss*

[@daranae]

Any time I really think of it or see old footage, I am clueless as to how they took this much more readable map from 1.0 and turned it into what we have now. I miss those little movement animations too.

[@FackeYu]

are you like... joking.... or??? i can't tell. i just hope you're joking, somehow. if you're not joking: visit an ophthalmologist, immediately. you really need to get that taken care of.

[@toa9329]

The fact that this music is still being used in the game is crazy.

[@TheHairline]

Oh wow, the animations have so much more weight to them. I love them more immediately.

[@BlackShogun]

I was thinking the same thing…did the animations and graphics suffer in the relaunch? Crazy to imagine, but sacrifices had to come from somewhere I guess

[@Xerkrosis]

@@BlackShogun They removed the acceleration and deceleration for quick gameplay. In 1.0 battles required little to no movement, while from ARR on there is a lot of aoe dodging.

[@Jimmymatthewb]

​​​@@BlackShogunThe graphics didn't "suffer", they were intentionally downgraded. Nothing suffered, everything was intentional about arr. The game looks far better than it actually felt. And the graphics were far too good for their own good, as you could not run this game on basically any hardware. Battles would net you like 10-20 fps on a $1500 computer. 30fps during exploration. If you actually had this game right now, you would immediately regret wanting it. It was slow, archaic, and it just kind of....barely chugged along even on the best hardware. Yes the graphics were downgraded and there's no mocap for the movement, but in return we have a huge, expansive and complete game, where you can actually move during combat to avoid attacks instead of just standing there and sifting through menus while the enemy moves like a flip-book. The game we have today is an actual joy to play, unlike this old-fashioned chore. If they didn't reboot the game, FFXIV would be completely dead by now. There's zero chance that this engine could have supported the kind of content we have in ffxiv today.

[@GeneralCane]

Having never played 1.0 this is such a strange view of old Limsa. Just seeing one lone player running around knowing that every little corner you see was a spot that at some point in time two random players bumped into each other and became friends for months... maybe years. It's such an empty feeling... like exploring an abandoned mall.

[@kobrraful]

This brings back a lot of memories from the before times. Thanks for the upload!

[@dragonknight2785]

FFXIV team now presents to you FFXIV 1.0 reborn, the game that turns the famed FFXIV now into a single player / co-op rpg with its own adventures and what not. Great video :)

[@MrMcslammer1]

I really wanted 1.0 to work out. I had so much fun figuring out the first crafts before any guides online and being one of the servers main black smiths. The style, music, scale had so much potential. It had that XI feel but it was just sooo broken. ARR is good, I just lose interst in the flashy theme park modern mmo style

[@babarrett1]

I feel like the only land that looked better (in a way) and very unique was Coerthas. Also the bigger maps is definitely a plus. In Mor Dhona being able to go around Lake Silvertear is pretty cool. I just can’t get over how different Coerthas looks. Makes me miss the lush forests to the frozen tundra it became

[@LZ02-OVERTURE]

At first glance yes but 1.0 suffered from having copy pasted maps where it looked big but it was all just copypasted terrain. Coerthas used to be the one map where this was most obvious. You'd run a while and feel like you had looped back to start when in reality it was just because of the lazy map pasting.

[@xahjk]

I played a lot back then so this is incredibly nostalgic! I'd love to just be able to walk the zones again.

[@iamworried34926]

Would be interesting to know your specs seeing how poorly some of the areas run with absolutely no players

[@Wogle]

It was an Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop: Ryzen 7 6800H 16GB RAM GeForce RTX 3060

[@iamworried34926]

@@Wogle Yoshi P really had his work cut out for him 🤣🤣

[@Calculusman1084]

As far as im aware, thats just 1.0 being 1.0, lol.

[@raypol1]

Well if the engine is not able to utilize its resources efficiently then it does not matter what specs you have. A lot of other mmos cant keep up when there is a lot of players in one place, as most of the engines used for them are old and are made for either single or dual core configurations and cant utilize modern multi core CPUs to handle extra load. The same is applicable for 1.0 with old DX implementation and knowing crystal tools it is probably having memory issues just like ff13 and it might be 32bit only which would limit it greatly.

[@kingjakewolf5348]

Welcome to the magic of crystal tools

[@TEKKAH_]

on god we need these sound effects to make a come back

[@VivisDoomsday]

This absolutely blows my mind. Started playing in 2.0 and I just can't even comprehend how different the previous iteration was. Mostly talking about the UI itself but gah damn! This looks ancient to me lol

[@Ralexand1988]

Every once in a while someone uploads 1.0 stuff and everyone goes crazy. :D I miss it too tho, ngl.

[@USMC49er]

0:30 The melancholy music that plays during cutscenes was used for an overworld...huh

[@Nonekogon]

wow. right in the nostalgia. i was in a crew called the french onion brigade, and we played from 1.0 launch right up until a few months after 2.0 came out. crazy how many people play now.

[@VAFranky]

What this game was and what they managed to turn it into is just incredible.

[@SasamiRari]

To anyone who wants to see more of this, including Wogle, I have access to some physical servers and am pretty savvy with setting up private servers for games… I can get this project meteor stuff installed in my physical servers and potentially get it up and running to check out anywhere and anything people want…maybe potentially let some people on. Just let me know if there would be interest for something like this and I can start spinning up the server and buy some dedicated storage for this game, separate from the games I already host.

[@CetranRage]

my first mmo and i absolutely loved it. first started in nov/dec of 2010 and was simply amazed by the sights and music. 1.0 is in some ways still better with different leve and battle music for each nation zone, actually going into a market and seeing retainers wearing the weapons and armor, just the running about to attune to aethrytes and sneak by the level 99 mobs like hellbenders, doomvoid guivres, and smolenkos while ureaus would one-shot you from yalms away [ pre-nerf ] with faction leves and that wonderful lore. still amazing looking after 13 years as well.

[@cyrinius1979]

lol those markets were a nightmare but it was different. I just wish there had been an easier way to find what people were selling instead of checking each npc 1 by 1 in limsa, then running to uldah to do the same and gridania.

[@shinichigojir12]

I wish they could reuse the OST for certain events in major cities. Also, you should show Thanalan after the sandstorm, when it clears up, it’s absolutely breathtaking.

[@pushpopthemoogle]

oh man this is giving me flashbacks when I played 1.0! I miss it sometimes

[@hereniho]

Patrolling the Coerthas Central Highlands almost makes you with for a calamitious winter.

[@tamamoland4247]

I remember going to Middle Limsa Lominsa back in 1.0 when the game lagged to shit while I was going up the stairs in Limsa and clipped me right through them, leaving me stuck running around while floating 20 feet in the air

[@Puduck1er]

So this is Yoshi P's "nightmare".... Looks pretty!

[@RyuNoZero]

I love the seemless maps in 1.0 I know we have loading corridors but it's a better effect than Loading Screens imo and Tears for Mor Dhona is awesome!

[@Boyzby]

You know how they talk about how Square Enix wants every Final Fantasy to be playable to preserve the series, even the MMOs? I've always wondered if they would include 1.0 in XIV Offline. If they're already making a whole game with all the story this game has so far, I feel like including one that was cut short wouldn't be an issue. While the map is horrendous and looks equally annoying to navigate due to the scale and layout, it just looks good everywhere else. Seeing the models, the animations, the lighting and music, it all makes me nostalgic for a game I never even got to play. I do wonder-even with the annoyances of gameplay-if I would have loved the game for these aspects like I do now. XIV isn't my first MMO, but ARR was the first one I was just so infactuated with. I would love to have the chance to play this part of it.

[@Fonheart]

Am I the only one who prefers old town music in 1.x ? 😭

[@XUIW]

The good ol days, I remember playing this in the beta test and it was absolutely phenomenal playing with the community. Gameplay was rough though and wasn’t the best, but it certainly grew over the years!

[@Aegis.]

i love the movement animations and sound effects.

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

At first, it was total disorientation, but as soon as that Ul'dah theme started, I was instantly teleported back to 2010. I was in the first wave of players to start playing XIV. I started in Ul'dah, and never made it very far from that home town. I did enjoy playing, but the story just kind of stopped. I don't know, maybe I just missed the person I was supposed to pick the next quest up from, and could never find the NPC that I needed to talk to. I started playing around with gathering some, and the gather minigame was kind of neat. Whenever I tried to leave the area, I'd get aggroed by a giant ant looking thing and killed almost immediately. The one thing that really strikes me about this version vs ARR is how much more open ARR is. The maps appear to mostly be a series of pathways that connect places together in this one. In ARR, they are relatively open, large expanses for you to explore. In the end, I am glad I played the original XIV before they shut it down, even though it was pretty broken and buggy in a lot of ways. It's a part of gaming history that will never be playable again, at least not as it was back then.

[@GArvelo]

This bring back so many memories, I remember your level and job level was two separate thing. I would be level 20 but my gladiator job is level 5. Also you get your companion that your custom. That companion would join you in your story and quest.

[@dakumauler]

Old 1.0 beta tester here. This brings back old memories/a while. Copy paste experiences. The only thing I miss are the seamless switch from city to zone.

[@bigquazz3955]

Some of the animations are legit better than they are now. Almost like characters carry momentum in their smaller movements more realistically. Things like starting and stopping moving look better.

[@DerpHavenn]

i love the irony behind the name 'project meteor' for this project

[@toji6476]

movement looks more realistic with the pivot

[@pantherman8719]

Mmhmm. See it's animations like that should've been saved.

[@VaffReverie]

3:50 running steps sync with bgm

[@iiliiliiliil3444]

Why did they get rid of that uldah ost? It fits the city so well

[@thatrandomguycommenting1261]

I kinda miss the 2.x days right after the shutdown. Finally getting to item level 90, the alliance raids. Seeing the 6 people on the whole server with i110- 130 gear from the impossible coils who looked like God amongst men. Now everyone just hops patches like brain dead zombies just trying to hit max item level as fast as possible. 2.x was a different breed of ff14. I feel like content was fresh and new then. Now it seems like the same recycled mechanics with a different flavor with everyone with maxed gear just waiting on the next patch to do it all over again. But maybe that's just the mmo curse.

[@Y.Moroboshi]

I still miss 1.0 Coerthas. Those highlands felt so vast and intimidating. I would have loved to see the stories that were meant to play out in that version of the game.

[@bipedalanimeskull]

i never knew how much background npcs helped the scenes until they were gone and what the hell Rowena was just a small little merchant, and 5 years after she became the cut throat merchant that everyone fears

[@stephbun]

SO LONG AGO... but I remember. The twin Faces of Fate... Tears for Mor Dhona... Unspoken. 1.0 lives forever in my heart and was never as terrible as everyone says. Youre welcome btw, people like me and us who stuck around gave you the WoW killer that XIV is today. We. The Original Warriors of Light, who refused to give up on a world.

[@genericworm2346]

the theme of mor dhona is still around to this day - in floor 97-100 of Palace of the Dead it's always fixed to play.

[@SamusKnight2K]

I'm going to be honest, current and new players really don't owe legacy players anything. And this is coming from a fellow legacy player. We already got a ton of thanks from SE for sticking around, a memorable experience, a permanent subscription discount for life, a whole unique story for ARR and the Binding Coil of Bahamut, special mark on pre-ARR characters, two exclusive mounts, and several other small goodies. Yeah we stuck around when other players just quit, but I certainly don't believe they owe us thanks for it.

[@cathyas3749]

I like how much more “final fantasy” this feels aesthetically. I don’t know how to describe it but current xiv feels like it’s lacking something that ends up making it feel a tad generic at times

[@mycutedog7]

Its interesting to see that most zones didn't have loading screens. But seamless transitions to one zone to the next. In the Ul'dah segment. I wonder if they will ever being that kind of feature back.

[@noppornwongrassamee8941]

Doubtful. Even the latest dungeons and alliance raids will run you through loading screens, so loading screens don't seem to be going away And I think I can see why. While seemless zone transitions are more immersive, they're also more taxing on computer and creative resources, simply because you have to create and animate areas that do nothing but look pretty to walk through. By using loading screens, you can skip "dead zones' where nothing happens. How aggravating would it be if you had to spend a couple minutes running/riding across a long empty bridge every time you wanted to leave or enter Limsa Lominsa to/from Middle or Lower La Noscea?

[@Lun4t1k]

omg that footsep sound! i wish we had the sound for stone floors of 1.0...it sounds so much better then the actual stone footstep sound X_X

[@JJMomoida]

It's definitely interesting comparing the game how it was back then to how it is now. Personally I don't like the color palette the game had back then... But I do like the animations. They're very smooth for the most part. When characters turn, start, or stop, there's a momentum to them. It gives things a sense of weight. Animations nowadays are much more rigid... but they're also faster and it fits the current game's combat system. That said, I do cringe just a smidge whenever a character does a robotic 180 and marches off-screen.

[@danielaquino6874]

I’d take it a step further. I really don’t like the current game. I love 1.0s atmosphere, the animations, the folly, the music, the textures, the hud UI, the scope of the world. I’d turn up the saturation, but it’s overall so much better. Too many people are to in love with an overall super bland MMO that they are very quick to not give any credit to what this game did well. It’s a shame.

[@PrimevalDemon]

Oh lord I've yearned for this! I've heard tales of a particular plant ~

[@Lxx00Jxx00]

the character movement is soooo good omg

[@boosk2127]

A 1.0 server just to go back and wander around in would be pretty cool

[@cyrinius1979]

damn this brings back memories .. sometimes I wish I could run around the old areas again. Also, ugh @ anima cost of teleporting. I remember that crap. Took forever to get it back so you had to really use teleport sparingly