The graphics were better, but not very efficient. Character models were a lot better than they are now, but a ton of areas looked very very bland and copypasted. Some areas were downright terribly designed. There were some great areas (like coerthas), but they were the exception to the rule.
The combat and character development of the game at launch was extremely bad, slow and buggy. The combat in v 1.23 (final version before shutdown) was actually really good, and I actually like it better than the combat of ARR. Too bad that the combat in 1.23 was still greatly limited by the still awful user interface, which didn't just look bad, but also was very laggy and had way too many clicks to do even the simplest of actions outside of battles as well.
ARR retained the idiotic armory system from V1, even though they implemented jobs for every class in v1. I think the game would have been a lot more gooder if they just revamped the entire character progression system because right now it is a bastard of two poorly thought out systems brutally fused into one.
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