The Ancient Ones

So this is something I have been wondering about for quite some time now. Whenever I need to know how many moat carp for Lu Shang, whenever I needed help with subjob, whenever I needed help with a quest, etc... there was always a more experienced player to assist me with such matters. Now I am a bit experienced and help beginners. But I have always wondered...

What was this game like for the VERY FIRST people to have EVER played FFXI? Who was the first to discover it takes 10,000 moat carp for Lu Shang (cuz you know SE didn't post the first walkthough)? Who was the first to discover Jeuno as a city or get a subjob? Was it big news back then? What was the economy like with but a few thousand gil in circulation (cuz selling to npcs and mob gil drops are the only sources of new gil in circulation).

Has anyone here been around waaaaaay back in the very beginning? If so, I will refer to you as "An Ancient One" for simplicity. If you are, or know someone who is an Ancient One, please have him/her tell their stories of what the game was like way back then. I am very interested.

-Wales

It was a lot harder lol. I'm not an "Ancient One" by any stretch of the word, but I've heard stories. Aside from not having the info on every quest/mission available and not having higher level help, the game mechanics were also harder; only 6 jobs, less JA's, less spells, 50 was the highest level. I believe it was quite a while before people even found the benefits of partying. People didn't know to go to Dunes at level 10.

Unfortunately, very few English speaking players were playing when it first came out, as it was JP onry for a while I believe. So these are stories that we may never hear.

This should get you started. 2001 Updates Page also exists but it's really just a few notes on the very first Beta Testing.

Well first of all it was JP only until Zilart came out. So they already handled alot of the lowest lvl BS by the time it came to NA. As far as figuring out missions and such, site like BG, alla, wiki, and gamefaqs back in the day were the key. Everyone who was attempting anything new would just post their findings on the sites and strategies are quickly formed.

The game was much much more "difficult" pre ToaU.

Some stories hmmm.

I remember forming an ally of 18 just to leave Rona the first time. We were all like lvl 8-12 and had heard of this amazing place called Valkrum and wanted to go there. We set out into la theine killing everything in our path, rabits / crows / seedlings were crushed. Then off in the distance we notice a really really really big sheep. We think nothing of it and decide as an ally of 18 to go check it out. Well we roll up on the thing and it turns and one shots someone causing a mass panic. At least half the ally was destroyed by the ram and the rest died from just running in panic and agroing several other mobs. We all had to homepoint and everyone was too scared to leave rona again, so the ally broke.

Thank you, that was particularly informative. I kinda wish I could have been around to see all these things. I can't even imagine how the ingame economy went from having a few hundred/thousand gil in circulation to an economy where many successful players personally own millions. I can only imagine how many mobs and npc sales it took to put that much into the game.

Still, it is no substitute for being able to actually talk with an Ancient One.

OMG, that was awesome. Thank you very much for sharing that with me. The idea of building a 3 party alliance just to leave Ronfaure to reach the promised land of Valkrum is awesome. You guys must have had fairly poor gear though to not be able to take that ram. Sad that you guys never made it to Valkrum :(

I don't know why, but these are the kind of stories that make my day. If anyone out there knows of more, please keep them coming.

-Wales

Lol, funniest thing about that is that even if you'd succeeded, you'd still be in Dunes and dead in 2 minutes, not many people passing by that can randomly raise you back then :p

Pft, have like a million of those, the thing about ffxi that I miss the most from the early days is just how big and huge it felt back then. It was scary and awe inspiring, and is what really got he hooked at the start.

So much fun stuff back then, like doing my first Eco-Warrior to making it to jeuno the first time with my ls braving jugner and battila.

One of the great memories that I have was an epic five hour rescue mission to windurst.
My very first shell of 6 people had all started in sandy and thats how we all met. Well I had a friend from work also buy ffxi but he created his character in Windy and had no idea how to get to Sandy. We then decided to go as a group to fetch him and bring him to Sandy, but none of us had ever been to Windy either. We knew from the stories of others that there was 2 ways to get there, either by boat or through jeuno. At this point none of us were over lvl 15 and from what we had heard of area's like Jugner and Batilla we did NOT want to take that route, plus the idea of riding the boat seemed like the greatest thing ever. So we hoofed it from Sandy to Selbina with out incident, but took like an hour lol. We all boarded the ferry when it arrived but were really let down when we "found out" it was just a box you rode in on the inside. Well we get to mahura and it spits us out. We then spent the better part of 2 hrs sneaking through the windy zones and actually making it to windurst. We were really happy we actually made it but were annoyed at the maze like structure of the city. Well we pick up my friend and head back out towards mahura to take the ferry again. This time we cut the travel time to 1hr since we were now masters of these areas. We board the ferry with about 20-30 other people (common back then). As we are traveling someone discovers that you can open the door and go topside. Everyone freaks out and goes up to check it out. We are all so happy to see the water and what not when whata know, bad music comes. Lolpirates. Everyone panics and runs back below deck, but my friend from work was slow and was crushed. Now we are really down, everyone on the boat was low lvl like us and if he homepointed it would be all the way back in windy. We were convinced that he would never ever be able to make it to Sandy. However!!! Just before he is about to HP, an /anon taru who was below deck gets up and goes up near him and OOOO starts to cast raise on him. All 20 people on the boat start to freak out and spam emotes and chear the taru on. which then lead to about 7 or so tarus to form a line and start doing /panic and everyone stood around and clapped till the ride was over. We made it back to sandy and all agreed it was a truely epic moment.

Looking back who knew riding the ferry and raising someone would be one of my best ffxi memories ever.

Jungle Gob at zone = hi2u. lol

Depends on the ram, if Lumbering Lambert or Steelfleece Baldarich were up they didn't have a chance. Also, panic kills.
I'm post-TOAU, unfortunately.

Yeh, I'm old enough to remember those days... Made the entire exp experience entirely different, very few people camped just inside zones, because it meant zoning every time one person even from other parties zoned a mob. And Yhoator Jungle was just a *** nightmare with all the gobs that got zoned there.

All the skilled players had this!

LoLz! ~epic journey to dunes

Damn, arrows only used to stack to 12 >,<...there was probably no Quiver's either lol. Gigas used to drop almost 1k ;;. I wish you could still put up 8 items on the AH 'stead of 7 lol. That JP button link is pretty interesting to read. ^^

HA!! I had both editions!!

Lucky for me, I knew that War was a decent subjob but not really useful as a main, and that mnk/rdm was great to do some decent damage and was able to cure in an emergency.

Yeah.. Back then CN was so much fun b/c you were limited to like 3 camps at the 34-38 level and had to be VERY careful pulling and zoning in because if someone trained the zone... You were screwed.

I remember everyone sitting in Selbina looking for parties.
Someone would zone in and yell, "OMG 6 Gobs and a Bogy out there, don't leave!"

I was actually afraid to ride the ferry to Mhuara, because people told me that the krakens aggrod you anywhere on the ship!
(It wasn't true, people would get aggro and run into the ship.)

I remember having statics to do "Eco-Warrior".
When I had 3 jobs level 20+, everyone thought I had been playing a long time... lol.

~Yote

Does anyone even do Eco-War's anymore? lmao

No, they don't.
But, to this day, it's the biggest boost to a nation's fame that you will find.

~Yote

Haha I had it too and was ALL about getting every quest done that they had in there. Because I thought they were the only ones that existed. Then I found Alla and was sadly mistaken.

My favorite memory was my first time doing Eco-Warrior. We had a full alliance and a "OMFG lvl 40PLD!!!" to escort us down to the pop spot. We killed it and I have never felt like I have achieved anything greater.

Eco-Warrior! I forgot about that one.
Nope, i havent done it yet. I should, but i am not even sure of the reward for it either.
Too lazy to look it up.

One of my earliest memories and funniest stories follows my first week in my first LS.
I was level 22 WHM, riding a choco to Jeuno.

I normally see the Tremor Rams, and walk around them.
They were pretty scary for me, and as I understood, if you are on a chocobo, you couldn't aggro.

This time was different. I saw jobs that were level 50 and level 60, dead.
I saw about 6-7 bodies.
Then, I saw a shout about the NM.
This was the Notorious Monster, Bloodtear.

So, I choco'ed up, nice and close to see him.
And I found out, AOEs hit people on chocobos.

I was knocked off my chocobo and died.
Too shocked to do anything else but watch as a level 65 RDM came and killed him.

I still laugh to this day about it... lol.
~Yote

I also remember freaking out seeing people using Flee in town, thinking "How the f*ck can I get that?!?!?!"

lmao

I didnt start till like late 2003 but I remember some crazy stuff. My ls had a small advantage in that the leader had gotten the original jp version and so was higher lvl and knew a whole bunch of stuff. Plus he was a whm so we had him tele and raise our ***. I still remember him trying to raise 15mil for Raise 3 lol.

6 man lvl 10 pt in tahrongi on dhalmels.... how i miss those days *sigh*

Or even having one soldier crawler and 30+ minions @ CN exit XD that was fun, when a bst came by and charmed it to bring it back where it belongs 20 ppl were like WOOOOO our personal herooooo!

I sadly started @ EU release (right after CoP came out) so i missed all the good exploring fun, everyone could give you tips for nearly everything. But exploring ToAU and WotG was fun, maybe they felt a bit like that back then? ^~^

Ive heard horror stories about Garliage Citadel. Mobs would aggro someone, and while the person tried to zone it, the mob would attack everyone in its path. Back then the mob couldn't be zoned, it would be waiting till that person got back in.