A look BackFollow

I was stuck at work all day today and while I was there with not a whole lot to do I was looking at the FFXI and FFXIV forums and I realized that in all of the years I have visited Alla and played FFXI I have never went to the very first page in the FFXI general discussion forums before.

I only intended to read a few posts just for fond memories and some giggles of when FFXI was shiny new and before I knew it I had spent more than 3 hours reading posts. If any of you have never gone to page 1 and started reading some of the early posts I highly recommend you do. At the very least it will bring a smile to your face, just like this early post brought one to mine.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10&mid=10747122777830356

I was playing a few months before these forums opened (or so it seems) and I remember these types of comments going around ingame at the time.
There was a real sense of fear when new players intered in to the fray that they were thought of as an influx of noobs that didn't understand anything and would need patience to help them get past the first hurdles.

Of course the first hurdles that seemed impossible back then were to get a good party to actually progress well enough to gain some levels in exp party, complete subjob quest, level sub and get to Jeuno.
Everybody was competing for those exp spots and subjob items, it proved too annoying and difficult for some players that a lot tended to quit before they were high enough to leave the dunes.
(Zoning aggro was something common place.)

Even if you made it through to Jeuno, unlocked your chocobo, the next nightmare awaited you.
Qufim Island!
No map, no clue and to be so amazed why those accursed wights popped at night and aggroed you from afar on top of being introduced to one of the first zones that has magic aggro from weapons.
"Hmmmm blood aggro? Magic aggro? WTH is that?" **slap, slap, dead**
(Or why a weapon occasionally blocked your way to Qufim at the top of the passageway.)

It all added up to death, death, death, then party breaking up.


That is if you couldn't bribe another whm in zone to give you a raise but this proved difficult at times for some whm's who got annoyed with the whole thing and started going /anon.

Then there's mass trains in Garliage and CN to think about if you even got past those bits..
My first alliance exp party was in Garliage and it was amazing.
It didn't seem to matter if someone pulled a link as we had almost 3 full parties to take them down and the exp rolled in.
It annoyed me sometimes that not all the parties I had there would agree to alliance up and we would be forced to zone when another party messed up their pull.

I'm going to finish this post off with Genkai...
Impossible to complete! alliances would form, one or two items would drop after 2-3hrs of farming.
Alliance would disband and you would be left with nothing.
JP's wouldn't help because they found the language barrier too much and NA's who were lucky to get past the first Genkai wouldn't go back and help and then found themselves stuck when it came to key farming on their AF or to a greater extend being stuck at 55 because of the next Genkai.

Very stupid and hard! I nearly quit!
I was lucky to find some likewise people and made a static but if I hadn't found them I wouldn't be here today.

The memories...





PS:

I am starting to think that Adoulin might not be so hard anymore.

Edited, Sep 8th 2013 5:31am by Janeash