The Ishgardian: August 2018

Impressive and heart warming innit?

Its already been five solid years since FFXIV A Realm Reborn made its debut and its amazing to see the evolutionary changes throughout the journey.

This year's rising event is especially joyful for me because it recounts the last days before the calamity and how fiercely we fought to defend Ul'Dah (the central hub for players at the time) from repeated waves of notorious monsters and troops from Nael's VIIth Legion. And ever so often, the GMs would keep increasing the stats of the mobs so as to skew the difficulty!

So much fun in those last days... it was epic.

I loved the camaraderie between all the players and the fact that we all got relics under our beds at the Inn to help us out in our battles. There were also several minor events leading up to those last days... the final battle with the White Raven, the Living on a Prayer quest and the Foundation Day event (where the GC recruited us to fight Atomos and help gather over aspected crystals).

Speaking of which, the rewards for this year includes the White raven earrings to which some Legacy players cried foul for SE giving them as rewards. To be honest, I don't see the big deal as it pertains to the reward itself but I do have an issue with how the Devs categorically mentioned that these were amoung the rewards that would always related to 1.0. Granted, the earrings were a prized loot that was given to players who were able to complete the HARD version of the fight... and it reminded me of the Sup earrings we got from defeating Divine Might in FFXI.

Statistically, I want to say only about 10% to 15% of the Legacy players base (or maybe one in five at most) actually got the earrings and I wasn't one of them because I eventually gave up attempts to beat the fight. We kept getting Darnus to around 40% (which was frustrating) and the vast amount of stress and time just trying to re-form a party for it took HOURS... and I had summer classes for my graduate courses at the time; henceI had, limited periods of my time to waste. So nope... never bothered again with it, and never regretted not having them.

It is a shame however, that over 90 pages of this nonsensical issue has proceeded unabated on the forums and I've simply chosen to ignore the thread with a very long yard stick. Nonetheless, I think SE and the Dev team should have at the very least just called the earring rewards "Replica White Raven Earrings" or established an NPC in town where people with the original could trade them in for a version with better stats. But they didn't do that and I personally do not believe its a big deal if the Devs can make an official statement on this and then we can all move on with our lives, dear people.

Anyway... back to my trip down memory lane. I can't seem to find my first images when I started 1.0 in September 2010 but I do have a lot of images from when I returned in April or May 2011 and again full time in November 2011.

First, this is what the main menu (at the log in screen) used to look like back in 1.0. Btw, I dunno why I can't remove that image of Prince Maximillian from Valkyrie Chronicles. Strange... I'll need to email support or something. It may well be because I've just uploaded over 500 images... dunno...