While the newer, shinier Final Fantasy XIV remains significantly more popular, Square Enix’s 24-year-old MMORPG Final Fantasy XI has seen a newfound rise in popularity. Following a crossover event with its successor, the ageing MMO has proven too popular for its own good.
Earlier this year, Square Enix locked away its third Final Fantasy XI server away from new players to quash overpopulation issues. Alongside the crossover, a huge welcome back campaign and other events—such as the Mog Bonanza giveaway—has resulted in new players actually sticking with the MMO, much to the developer’s surprise.
“Overall, the player count remained stable at a high level,” director and producer Yoji Fujito told Famitsu in a recent interview, “and we never saw the kind of sharp decline we had anticipated, so honestly, the outcome exceeded our expectations and came as a surprise”.
With the stable player count, it seems that there is a possibility of some major content additions to the game in the future. While Fujito didn’t promise anything, the director explained that “there is a possibility that something new can be done” for the game. “There has been little movement around a new story, so I want to work on something,” he continued, although securing resources to do so is a major task.
“I may be able to lend a hand in the future, so I’m planning to have the FFXI team come back and create something else,” he continued. “The development of middleware that manages graphic resources in parallel is also supported by our engineers, and if that is solved, the production of new cutscenes will also be possible again”.
Fujito adds that they want to “continue as long as I can continue”, allowing the game to expand in new ways if the opportunity arises. As the game approaches its 25th anniversary, the director envisions hitting its 30th in five years. By then, perhaps, this new wave of popularity will have concluded, but the team still has a goal to last that long.
“Final Fantasy is a series that has always been challenging new things and unknown areas,” he continued. “FFXI is a numbered title that has jumped out among them and challenged a different field.” They added that, as Final Fantasy as a whole reaches its 40th anniversary, “FFXI will try to take another step forward”.
As the team continues to work on the game, Fujito admits there are technical issues they must overcome. Exactly like Old School RuneScape developer Jagex explained earlier this year, the MMO is running out of IDs that are used to create and manage in-game areas and other assets. However, the team is working on a way to fix this issue.
It’s rare that any game can last for more than 20 years, even in the MMORPG space, but Final Fantasy XI has done incredibly well to stay alive. Just like its successor, FFXI has gone through a lot of different iterations, and it’s done well to maintain a solid audience, and now bring in brand-new fans to its brilliant fantasy world.
