Like the title says, I'm bored at work interested in what changes you guys would be willing to put up with from the original game if they decided to, say, rebuild XI in Unreal Engine or something. If the answer is full on purism that's cool, I'm just curious. Just hypothetically, for me anyway:

1) I think I'd be ok with graphical updates (ala the HD mod), sound remastery, general upgrading of models, etc. In other words, a I think on a purely visual level upgrading the game wouldn't phase me as long as it kept the original style. Frankly the game reuses a lot of models, I think they could take this chance to diversify things a lot. I'm not saying introduce stupid overly fancy bullshit like XIV, but it seems fine to introduce different models for different doublets, for example.
2) Similarly I think I'd be happy if they introduced modern cutscenes and pacing, complete of course with the ability to skip cutscenes. I think this still goes into the bucket of "retaining the same content but taking advantage of modern technology"
3) Personally I'd be fine with them adopting some of their later additions related to class balancing. For example we could get the whole utsusemi nerf cycle out of the way, or keeping from the beginning the blood pact rage and ward separations. I wonder if that would be controversial, but really the balance in the base game was whacky
4) I believe the inclusion of all the NMs added into the game over the years from the beginning (like the pilgrim's wand nm, for example, or the RSE sachet nms) is essentially only a net positive.
5) having better UI elements for hotkeys and chat only. The game would be manifestly worse with a quest log or minimap, but the ability to assign the 'F' key instead of alt+1? Sign me up. Likewise keeping macro books and equipsets in from the beginning would be fine.

Idk, there are other things but I'm more curious what people would be ok with if they did start a new server.

We all play here so we don’t care.

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I wouldn't be interested in a FFXI re-release, honestly. The graphics and way it is is part of the charm. There's always XIV if you want some modernized game... but that's just me.

I think you guys kinda fundamentally misunderstood me, which I admit might be from the title. The question is more like: fundamental aspects of the game changed dramatically between NA release and wotg, let alone retail. A true classic server would not have equipsets, utsusemi would be obscenely overpowered from the start, summoners would not have the Bloodpact split for 2 years, etc. Knowing that, are there things you would be willing to see added to an official classic server that would not technically have been era-appropriate?