The director of Final Fantasy 11 says the game was planned to end last year (and possibly shut down altogether) but fan support has kept it alive.
Final Fantasy 11 was originally released on PS2 and PC in Japan in 2002, before coming to North America and Europe in the following years. In 2006 the game also received an Xbox 360 port. Servers for the Xbox 360 and PS2 versions ended in 2016, but the PC version remains playable to this day.
In an interview with Dengeki Online (via Automaton) the game’s current director Yoji Fujito said that before the game’s 20th anniversary in 2022, Square Enix had already been preparing for potentially ending support for the PC version in 2024, after the game’s Voracious Resurgence storyline ended.
“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,” Fujito said.
The publisher even considered shutting down the game entirely, given that the game’s servers were reaching their end of life.
Instead, because players continued to log into the game – which has had the same monthly subscription fee of $11.95 since its 2002 launch – and showed the development team “a lot of support”, it was decided that the game would continue.
“We thought, if The Voracious Resurgence wrapped up and FFXI clearly started losing its momentum, then maybe we really should prepare to end it,” Fujito explained. “But that didn’t happen. I took this as a sign that we should keep running the game.”
Instead of closing down a game that originally launched on PS2, then, Square Enix announced on Friday that it was bringing a new batch of updates to the game, including a new high-tier mission battlefield, gamepad configuration adjustments, a new Morale gauge, the ability to change a character’s race and new content for the Limbus battle system.
Last year Final Fantasy 14, which is also an MMO, introduced a crossover Alliance Raid series which sees players travelling to Vana’diel, the land where Final Fantasy 11 is set.
