Valkayree wrote:
I'm curious as someone who did not play 1.0, what are some of the things that have changed? What are the biggest improvements? What are some of the things that the developers have done to draw your interest in ARR? Just wondering.
The graphics engine in 1.0 was poorly optimized. So extremely high end systems got a good experience, but mid range systems suffered with tremendous lag and bad frame rates. Lower end systems couldn't play it at all.
Targeting was a wreck (believe it or not it's worlds better now), and it was like FFXI where you got very little direction on what to do other than go outside and kill stuff. The job system was not even added until version 1.22. (A lot more abilities could be equipped cross class prior to that, but once the jobs were added there was a lot of spell and JA splitting and swapping.)
Leves were boring and repetitive. So were all the zones. The "seemless loading" meant that to get anywhere you had to hike through long tunnels between areas. Copy+paste terrain go!
It was a pretty game in its own way, and the story was nice and chewy, but the miserable lag and boring combat made it one of the most mediocre MMOs ever made - and that's after they fixed it to make it actually be playable at all.