I was disappointed praying didnāt do anything.
Wait, bear with me, Iām not crazy. Itās story time! More like, āwar stories timeā, I guess?
Back in the 1.0 days, when all thisĀ āmonsters attacking Uldahā was happening, none of these things wereĀ acknowledged by SE, not in the patch notes, nor in the forums. Not only the monster attacks, but nothing at all related to āthe end of daysā was mentioned in official channels, it was just the people still playing posting about it when we discovered things (not everything was as blatant as monsters in the cities or a huge red moon in the sky :P)
So, one day Uldah was full of monsters. Cool. Well, not really, it was death everywhere, but you know what I mean. But we didnāt even know if that was like, a battle we could win and repel them, or if they would disappear after certain time, or it fighting them was useless because there would be no end to them. I really canāt stress enough how much in the dark we were every time somethingĀ happened, it was part of the wholeĀ ācalamity experienceā.
We fought them, of course, but if you think that you die a lot in the current event, know that this is nowhere close to the non-stop massacre that was back then (the terrible state of the servers helped. Helped the mobs, that is).
People soon started running away, hidding, praying for the dead or to be able to get away... there was a lot of pray emote spam. Some people started saying that praying actually did something, that it made some monster die or things like that. Good luck knowing why a monster died in that mess when the server didnāt even load half the players, so that helped too.
Now, thisĀ ādoing the pray emote make monsters dieā thing wasnāt THAT crazy of a theory. Previously in the wholeĀ ācalamity sagaā there were some rocks that spawned with the symbols of eorzean gods engrabed on them (Halone and all that, you know) and praying in front of them DID make things happen, be it cutscenes, npcs pop up and things like that. I feel the need to mention that so you donāt think we were that crazy, I know we were playing 1.0, but still, not THAT crazy!
So to the forums people go, to discuss if praying did anything. That was an incredible debate that soon devolved to something likeĀ āthis is starting to sound way to much like real life praying: weāre not sure it does anything, but we really want it to, and if it doesnāt whatās the harm, so letās all pray anyway!ā
The mods were so amussed by the dozens and dozens of pages discussing praying in the forums that, for the first AND ONLY time, they addressed us on something Calamity related: they told us that no, spaming /pray didnāt do anything, lol, stop arguing about it. But that they liked the idea of us organically coming with praying while fighting monsters like that so much that, as of next patch, it would (at this time, there were hotfix-like patches basically everyday).
So it did. Next day, doing /pray to a dead person acted like a raise, and for someone alive it gave them a buff (something like protect and regen, nothing crazy). If you prayed to a mob you got a debuff though, that was fun to find out :D
And this is the story of a silly internet rumor that became a feature because everyone were so into it, and I think thatās awesome.
Every time people talk about the final days of 1.0 itās always the āthere were monsters in the city/big red moon in the skyā what is mentioned, when there were SO MANY little things like this one or other little happenings far more interesting. People telling 1.0 war stories would make terrible bards, I tell you.
Sorry forĀ piggybacking in this with my own long ass war story and my terrible english, just remebered the praying thing with this event and thought it was a pitty it wasnāt more widely known.
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