If you have joined Final Fantasy XIV in the past 10 years you might be wondering why the base game is called A Realm Reborn, and why is it numbered as 2.0. What happened to 1.0? Can we play that? And if you dig a little deeper and ask your fellow Warriors of Light who have been around before the Seventh Umbral Calamity hit Eorzea, you will realise you do not want to play 1.0. Why?
Because it was a disaster.
I only started playing FFXIV in 2015 so all the information which follows comes from my own research when I wanted to learn about 1.0 and what friends told me who have been there on that fateful day, when Dalamud has fallen. But let's not rush ahead that much.
FFXIV 1.0 released in September 2010 and was so badly received (the best score it got was 5.5 so think again if you want to complain about one of the recent games not getting the highest score), that Square Enix had to apologise for it and change the development team.
This new development team, lead by Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) as director and producer tried to fix the flaws of the game and according to some Reddit reviews I found, the battle system got considerably better and actually there are some perks which 1.0 players were sad not to see in 2.0 (like each skill having a single-target and multi-target version which you could toggle) the team still thought it was best to start new from scratch with a new engine, server structure, a completely revamped story, world and battle system.
The game looked absolutely stunning for its time, and featured very realistic motion graphics, thanks to the in-house Crystal engine developed by Square Enix. But it was not suitable for an MMO, as even the software-based cursor was running from the game servers and caused constant delays.
I could tell you about all the issues 1.0 had, but you can look that up anywhere. What I want to show you is how much effort they put into ending this failed game instead of simply shutting the servers down. And at that point, they wouldn't know yet that the revamped game would not just be a success but still running strong after 10 years.
On 11th November 2012 players logged into the game and were greeted by disturbing communications. They all gathered on a field and watched helplessly as the lesser moon, Dalamud slowly descended from the sky.
The end of this clip, is one of the best cutscenes of the entire FFXIV including the latest expansion, and the music is my other favourite from Nobuo Uematsu: Answers.
They could have just pulled the plug and shut down the servers without spending more money on an already doomed project, but that wouldn't have been worthy of someone like Yoshi-P. The man is not one to easily accept defeat, and if you have played through Endwalker, you will know that neither is the Warrior of Light, the player. We forge ahead.
We can look back at A Realm Reborn and complain about the long main story quest, about all the mistakes and all the annoying features which are outdated today, but for those who had to witnessed their entire world ending, 2.0 was a light in the darkness. A promise for a new adventure.
So if you start Final Fantasy XIV today and watch that opening cutscene of your sprout adventurer setting foot in their starting city-state think about those who have walked that road before you.
The story of 2.0 starts 5 years after the Seventh Umbral Calamity when Dalamud had fallen and the elder primal Bahamut broke free from his prison. The cost of stopping him was too high, and the Calamity has reshaped the world. No one remembers the heroes who stood on that field on that fateful day. But if you were one of those heroes, then upon reaching lvl 50 and finishing the main story, there was a surprise waiting for you:
(spoiler warning in case you haven't completed the main story of 2.0 yet, you don't want to watch this)
MURRRAAAAY asked for the biggest turnaround in video games history earlier this week, and this is my answer. One cutscene and the endless effort of a development team to listen to players' feedback which has turned a failed project into one of the most popular MMOrpgs.
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