In 2012, a Japanese MMORPG was taken offline. A player managed to log in in 2025 and writes on Reddit about what he found: Final Fantasy XIV 1.0.
What kind of game is this? Reddit user sianrhiannon posted a screenshot of their new character in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV – but in the 1.0 version. The game originally went live in 2010, but it faced such significant problems that it was shut down in 2012.
Issues included a very awkward UI, bugs, a too complex crafting system, and excessively high graphical demands for the time. For example, player characters were very detailed. And there were flower pots that consisted of as many polygons as those detailed characters. The resulting graphical load was only matched by a few PCs back then.
But actually, 1.0 was already shut down in 2012, and the game should no longer be playable. Nevertheless, sianrhiannon somehow managed to get into the game, only to find yawning emptiness.
Where are you? In A Realm Reborn!
How does the community react? Beneath the Reddit post, there are a bunch of very well-mannered players: The most upvoted comment simply responds to the where are you
-question, A Realm Reborn!
Polenicus (via Reddit) is quite honest: sianrhiannon started in the starting area of Gridania, where help isn’t possible. This hints at the fact that the currently most popular base-game hub among players is the pirate city of Limsa Lominsa. But it also indicates that Gridania was surrounded by nasty forest mazes in 1.0. The latter is also lamented by Partyatmyplace13 (via Reddit): I started there. What a disaster. […] It took me a whole month to get out of there.
Others like Xizelia (via Reddit) and SamhainHighwind (via Reddit) think they would really like to experience 1.0 in one way or another themselves. Just like sianrhiannon does in the post.
Can you still really play 1.0 in 2025? Officially, all servers of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 have been shut down. This version of the game is also finished and has even been buried
with its own cinematic. The last 11 minutes of the servers can be still seen on YouTube.
sianrhiannon and some other very dedicated players have discovered ways to still try out 1.0 even 13 years after its end. The now-defunct Project Meteor was one of those options. sianrhiannon posted an explanation about how they got in themselves in comments on Reddit.
However, if someone just wants impressions and background knowledge without directly setting up 1.0, they might find it on YouTube: The podcasters from the Speakers Network have a 11-part YouTube series The Fall and Rise of Final Fantasy XIV
, in which they explore 1.0 and its development history in detail.
Most players are satisfied enough with the current version of Final Fantasy XIV not to long for 1.0. A holder of the free trial recently took on one of the currently grindiest contents in the game: New player masters the dullest grind in Final Fantasy XIV – Asks now if he should buy the MMORPG slowly
