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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Square Enix recently celebrated Final Fantasy XI's 23rd anniversary by announcing big updates planned for 2025 and beyond. Among other tweaks and additions, the MMORPG will be getting a much-requested character race change feature, as well as adjustments meant to make solo-play more comfortable. Although these announcements paint an optimistic picture of the game's future, FFXI producer and director Yoji Fujito says that in another timeline, the game could have ended in 2024.

Speaking to Dengeki Online, Fujito reveals that at one point prior to Final Fantasy XI's 20th anniversary (2022), Square Enix considered ending support for it as a living game. "There was a real possibility that 2024 would be the year updates would come to an end, with the game shifting into a so-called maintenance mode, where only system upkeep would be performed." The original idea was for things to wrap up after The Voracious Resurgence storyline was completed. Furthermore, as FFXI's was reaching its server lifetime at the time, Fujito says that they even considered completely shutting down the game.

However, as the title's 20th anniversary approached, the dev team received "a lot of support" from players requesting for FFXI to be continued in the long term. Above all, Fujito emphasizes, players were still logging in and playing the MMORPG. "We thought, if The Voracious Resurgence wrapped up and FFXI clearly started losing its momentum, then maybe we really should prepare to end it. But that didn't happen. I took this as a sign that we should keep running the game."

Thanks to player interest still being high enough after 20 years, the team decided to update FFXI's infrastructure and keep supporting it as a living game. Fujito took over Akihiko Matsui's role as producer, and the (currently rather small) dev team was reorganized to work on new content and updates on a priority basis.

Square Enix considered ending Final Fantasy 11 in 2024, but player interest was high enough to keep it alive even after 20+ years - AUTOMATON WEST

According to Final Fantasy 11 producer and director Yoji Fujito, the MMORPG could have ended support or even shut down completely.

automaton-media.com

 

[The Lunch Legend]

So, is Square migrating everything to new servers?

 

[Scrawnton]

Port it to modern platforms. Put this shit on everything. Probably easy money.

 

[Felessan]

Port it to modern platforms. Put this shit on everything. Probably easy money.

It was already old-school and nostalgic play 20 years ago. Doubt that there will be any uptick in playerbase as game is very archaic by current standards
There was project to put FF11 on mobile, but it was shut down.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Port it to modern platforms. Put this shit on everything. Probably easy money.

I think the back end and server infrastructure is ancient right now.

 

[Power Pro]

Port it to modern platforms. Put this shit on everything. Probably easy money.

100% yes...I got PCs, but I'm still a console gamer at heart. I owned Final Fantasy XI on PS2 (and later on PS3 via BC), and Xbox 360, and played it mostly on them for all the years that I played. I just liked chilling out leaning back in my comfy couch with a keyboard next to me for when I needed it.

 

[Ma-Yuan]

Loved it stoped playing when i met my wife in 2010 but was playing it since the end of 2003 and had more than 500 days on my play counter

 

[RoboFu]

I remember building a pc just for that game when it was releasing.

 

[Silver Wattle]

Does this mean they will be updating the back-end client like what blizzard have done with WoW classic?

 

[rubik's dude]

Really glad the game is still up. It was a formative part of my childhood, and it's beyond cool that I can still log on and run around the zones and listen to the music. Nostalgia overload. I'd be super bummed if it was relegated only to my memories.

There's only so much they can do for the game though. They weren't using version control for the longest time (I don't even know if they are now, I hope so). So the game is literally just 23 years of legacy code being built and refactored upon.

For anyone who's ever worked with legacy code that old, making even the tiniest change can have drastic and unforeseen consequences, not to mention domain knowledge becomes thinner as people retire. It's commendable the amount of effort they're putting in to keep this game alive.

 

[mayham2199]

Crazy this game is still going. I remember playing it with my cousin when it first came out. He hated it, which I don't blame him the combat system is very unique to the point you either love it or hate it. It didn't help that at a certain level you needed a team to continue leveling and for some classes it was very hard to find a team.

I ended up playing it a lot longer then I thought but eventually had to quit the grind was to crazy.

 

[Palabragrís]

Take some of the storylines and release them as FFXI offline spin-offs on every platform under the sun (or as manga, anime, children candy, whatever). Use the brand 'Final Fantasy XI' name to its fullest and look for ways to differentiate it from FFXIV, a far most successful MMO.

There's a lot they could do instead of leaving it alive with a skeleton crew under the shadow of FFXIV and other MMOs.