Final Fantasy XI, also called Final Fantasy XI Online, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). It was first made by Square and later published by Square Enix as the eleventh main game in the Final Fantasy series. Hiromichi Tanaka designed and produced the game. It was released in Japan on May 16, 2002, for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows-based computers in November of the same year. The game was the first MMORPG to allow players to play together across PlayStation 2 and Windows platforms. It was later released for the Xbox 360 in April 2006. All versions of the game require a monthly subscription to play.
The story takes place in the fantasy world of Vana'diel. Players create avatars to complete tasks, work together, and develop different roles, skills, and earn in-game items. Players can complete quests, advance through the game’s structure, and follow the main story. Since its release in 2002, five expansion packs and six add-on scenarios have been added. Each expansion and add-on introduces new storylines, areas, quests, events, and items.
In 2015, Square Enix released the final main story for Final Fantasy XI, called Rhapsodies of Vana'diel. Final Fantasy XI became the last active game on the PlayStation 2 online service. Support for PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions ended on March 31, 2016, leaving only the PC version playable. A mobile version was being developed by Square Enix with Nexon using Unreal Engine 4, but it was canceled in late 2020. A mobile spin-off game, Final Fantasy Grandmasters, was released on September 30, 2015. In 2020, a new episodic story series called The Voracious Resurgence was added to the game. In May 2022, rumors spread that Final Fantasy XI might shut down. Yoji Fujito stated that this was not true and that the game’s services would not be ending soon.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy XI is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). It is different from earlier games in the series in several ways. Unlike previous games, where main characters were already decided, players can create their own characters with some choices. These choices include picking from five races, selecting a gender, choosing facial style, hair color, body size, job, and nation allegiance. The game also takes place in a fully three-dimensional world where enemies move freely. Battles happen in real time instead of using random encounters, a feature used in all numbered Final Fantasy games since.
There are currently 16 public game worlds available, down from 32 at the game's peak. Each world has about 15,000 to 20,000 players. A private Test Server was opened in mid-2011 for eligible players to test updates. The servers are named after monsters from earlier Final Fantasy games, like Ifrit and Diabolos. Players can move between servers, but Square Enix charges a "world transfer" fee. There are no region-specific or system-specific servers. Players from different languages can play together in the same world and communicate using automatic translations from a library of phrases. The game servers are managed by Square Enix as part of their PlayOnline network.
Players can use a keyboard, mouse, or controller to play. By default, players using a PlayStation 2 or Xbox 360 use a virtual keyboard, but external USB keyboards can also be used for communication. The head-up display includes a log window, menus, and game information. The log window shows system messages, battle messages, and text from other players. Players can filter what appears in the log. Menus let players access commands, status windows, and settings. The "action command menu" appears above the log window and offers options to interact with the game. Some menu options can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts.
Story-related gameplay includes missions and quests. Missions tell the main story and allow players to advance in rank, unlocking new areas, privileges, and storylines. At first, players can only complete missions for their home nation, but they can later change allegiances to access other nations' storylines. Quests do not advance the main story but help build the game's world. Completing quests gives rewards or "fame," which increases a character's reputation with NPCs. Higher fame allows new interactions and quests with NPCs. Over 100 quests were available at release, and each expansion pack added new missions and quests. Players earn in-game money called "gil" by completing missions, quests, and defeating Beastmen. Gil can be traded between players through the Auction House or used to buy items from NPCs.
Unlike some MMORPGs, Final Fantasy XI focuses more on player versus environment (PvE) than player versus player (PvP) combat. PvE activities include instanced events like Dynamis, Salvage, Assault, and Nyzul Isle, which involve 6 to 64 players. These events have objectives and time limits. Shared spaces activities include hunting Notorious Monsters, rare enemies that drop valuable items.
The only way to attack other players is through "Conflict" competitions. One type, "Ballista," involves scoring points by throwing petras into a structure called a Rook. Another type, "Brenner," uses a capture the flag system.
Special seasonal events are held occasionally. These events last for a limited time and offer rewards. They often have themes based on real-life holidays, such as Valentione's Day, the Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza, and the Starlight Celebration. Events are open to all players, often limited to level 1 to allow new and experienced players to join together.
Battles in Final Fantasy XI take place in the game world, unlike earlier games where battles happened on a separate screen through random encounters. Random encounters are triggered by aggressive monsters that attack players based on factors like sight and sound. This format continued in future Final Fantasy games. Monsters use a system called "claim" and "enmity." A monster is claimed when a player attacks it, and it can only be attacked by the player's party or alliance. A monster focuses on the player who has built the most enmity. Players can use spells, abilities, or items to control enmity, which is important in group battles.
To defeat strong monsters and gain experience, players can join a party of six members. A balanced party includes a healer, a tank (a player with high defense who draws enemy attacks), and damage dealers. The enmity system helps keep enemies focused on tanks instead of weaker players. Parties can expand into alliances of up to 18 players. Alliances are needed for difficult challenges like missions, quests, and defeating Notorious Monsters. End-game play often involves alliances working together to complete challenges, including entering player-owned instances like Dynamis.
Final Fantasy XI's version of Limit Breaks is called "Weapon Skills." Physical damage done and received fills a Tactical Points (TP) bar up to 3000. Any TP above 1000 can be used to perform a weapon skill. These skills have different effects depending on the weapon used.
Plot
The world of Final Fantasy XI is called Vana'diel. It has many different environments, such as cold northern glaciers, hot southern deserts, magical places, and floating landmasses. Vana'diel is divided into regions, which are further split into smaller areas called "zones." These zones include open areas, dungeons, cities, and towns. Players can explore parts of Vana'diel, such as the Middle Lands, Near East, and the Near West after the release of the Seekers of Adoulin expansion. Six city states exist in the game: The Republic of Bastok, The Kingdom of San d'Oria, The Federation of Windurst, The Grand Duchy of Jeuno, The Empire of Aht Urhgan, and the Sacred City of Adoulin. Most areas can be reached by walking, but players can also use transportation like Chocobos, airships, and special spells to move around the world.
According to ancient stories, Vana'diel was created as a place for the Gods and their children, who were born from a giant, living Crystal. The children tried to build a path to paradise to join the Gods, but they were punished for their actions, and their cities were destroyed. The Goddess Altana cried five tears, which created the five Enlightened Races of Vana'diel. The God of Twilight, Promathia, believed Altana's sadness was a weakness and cursed the five races with conflict by giving them traits like apathy (Humes), arrogance (Elvaan), rage (Galka), cowardice (Tarutaru), and envy (Mithra). Promathia also created the Beastmen to fight the Enlightened Races and prevent them from uniting again. These stories about the Crystal, Gods, and races are important in many game expansions, and the Beastmen are major enemies in the game.
The game's story takes place 20 years after the Crystal War, a war in which the Middle Land nations of Bastok, San d'Oria, and Windurst defeated the Shadow Lord and his Beastmen army. Players explore the aftermath of this war in the original game and can travel back in time to help during the war in the Wings of the Goddess expansion. Other versions of the world, like Dynamis and Abyssea, show what happened if the Beastmen had won the war.
Final Fantasy XI has five playable races known as the "Enlightened Races": Humes, Elvaan, Galka, Tarutaru, and Mithra. There are also two non-playable Enlightened Races, the Zilart and the Kuluu, which are the focus of the first two expansions. Many non-playable characters (NPCs) help with quests and the story. The game includes enemies like Goblins, Sahagins, and Tonberries, some of which are called Beastmen because they are more intelligent and have culture and religion. The conflict between the Enlightened Races and Beastmen is a major part of the game's story.
Final Fantasy XI is represented in the Dissidia series by Shantotto, a female Tarutaru Black Mage from Windurst, and Prishe, a female Elvaan from Tavnazia, who is the main character in the Chains of Promathia expansion.
The story is followed through missions in the main nations and expansions. Players start as residents of one of three main countries: San d'Oria, Bastok, or Windurst, and must help unite the nations against the Shadow Lord.
The Rise of the Zilart expansion reveals that the Crystal War and the Shadow Lord's return were planned by the Zilart princes Eald'Narche and Kam'lanaut, who survived their race's extinction. They aim to become Gods by opening a path to paradise, and players must stop them.
Chains of Promathia focuses on an Elvaan girl named Prishe and the dead God Promathia, who cursed the Zilart race. The story involves attempts to either complete or stop Promathia's resurrection, with the wyrmking Bahamut trying to destroy Vana'diel to stop Promathia from absorbing the world's life.
Treasures of Aht Urhgan introduces the Empire of Aht Urhgan, which has ended its isolation and becomes a new power in the world. Players are sent as representatives to the empire and get involved in court intrigues and fears of war.
Wings of the Goddess takes place 20 years before the main game, during the Crystal War. Players travel through time portals with Lilisette, a Hume/Elvaan mix, to help reduce suffering in that era. They face Lilith, an alternate version of Lilisette who wants to keep the war ongoing.
Seekers of Adoulin focuses on the western continent archipelago of Adoulin and the Sacred City of Adoulin. The city was once a major colony but shifted to trade after colonization failed. Now, new colonization efforts are beginning, and players can explore the area.
Rhapsodies of Vana'diel concludes previous storylines with the threat of the Cloud of Darkness and an alternate version of the player from another timeline.
The Voracious Resurgence, a follow-up to Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, involves mysterious "world eater eggs" appearing across Vana'diel.
Development
The idea to create Final Fantasy XI as an online game came from Hironobu Sakaguchi when he helped start Square Pictures in Hawaii. He saw Western MMORPGs like EverQuest there and encouraged Square to make their own MMORPG based on the Final Fantasy series. Because creating an MMORPG was considered an important goal, Final Fantasy XI was developed by combining four teams: the Parasite Eve II and Brave Fencer Musashi teams from Osaka, and the Mana and Chrono Cross teams from Tokyo. Development began in November 1999. This was the first game made under Square’s new plan to create games for all platforms and media. Hiromichi Tanaka, the game’s producer, said Final Fantasy XI was greatly influenced by Final Fantasy III, especially in its battle and magic systems. Tanaka explained that Square included features in XI that they could not add to earlier Final Fantasy games because of technical limits, making XI the most representative Final Fantasy game. The game used the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti GPU, which Square’s president, Yoichi Wada, called the most powerful graphics processor available at the time. Creating the game and the PlayOnline Network Service cost between two to three billion yen, about $17 to $25 million. Square expected the game to become profitable within five years. By creating one shared game world instead of separate ones divided by language, development costs were reduced by 66%. Because monsters in the series had different names in Japanese and English versions of other games, Final Fantasy XI used both names for the same monsters.
A release on the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows at the same time, along with a simultaneous Japanese and American launch, was first planned but later changed. There was also talk of an Xbox version, but it was canceled mainly because the Xbox had a small 8 GB hard drive. The game was first announced on January 29, 2000, at the Square Millennium Conference in Yokohama, but received negative press. People questioned why the game was called the eleventh in the series, as it was unclear if it would have a story, which it did. The title Final Fantasy Online was suggested instead. After a beta test in Japan in August 2001, a public Japanese beta test was held in December 2001.
After its PC release, Final Fantasy XI was listed as one of IGN’s most anticipated PlayStation 2 games of 2004. Sony ran a large ad campaign to promote the game and the PlayStation 2 hard drive add-on needed to play it. Because it was released on both the PlayStation 2 and personal computers, it became the first cross-platform MMORPG. On June 14, 2002, the game’s servers were down for four hours for maintenance, bug fixes, and a new patch. This is believed to be the first patch ever released for a console game. Early problems included complaints from American players that Japanese players had already completed all quests. Square Enix added new servers to create game worlds with fewer experienced players.
Final Fantasy XI was one of the first cross-console games and has been updated to run on newer consoles. In March 2007, a patch allowed gameplay in French and German. Square Enix noted that Nintendo’s use of “Friend Codes” was the main reason XI was not brought to the Wii. In December 2006, the PlayStation 2 versions of PlayOnline and Final Fantasy XI could run on the PlayStation 3. However, the Vana’diel Collection 2008 discs for PlayStation 2 had issues on PlayStation 3 until Sony released a firmware update in December 2007. This allowed backward-compatible PlayStation 3 models to play XI. After working with Microsoft to fix compatibility with Windows Vista, Square Enix released a downloadable version of the PlayOnline client for the operating system, though some small bugs appeared.
In September 2010, Akihiko Matsui became the director of Final Fantasy XI. Three months later, Matsui left to work on Final Fantasy XIV. Mizuki Ito replaced him as director. In 2011, Square Enix considered bringing XI to the PlayStation Vita. In June 2012, Hiromichi Tanaka stepped down as producer for health reasons and was replaced by Akihiko Matsui. In March 2023, Yoji Fujito became the new producer, while Matsui continued supporting the game.
In 2006, between 200,000 and 300,000 players logged in daily, with 500,000 total active players and about 150,000 online at once. By April 2009, the number of active characters reached over 2 million. By June 2012, Final Fantasy XI became the most profitable game in the Final Fantasy series.
The music for Final Fantasy XI was composed by Naoshi Mizuta, Kumi Tanioka, and Nobuo Uematsu. Yasunori Mitsuda was asked to contribute but could not because he was working on Xenosaga. Mizuta alone scored the game’s five expansion packs after Tanioka and Uematsu left. The game’s opening includes choral music with lyrics in Esperanto, chosen to symbolize the developers’ hope for cross-cultural communication. Uematsu noted the challenge of composing for a game without a linear story, a change from earlier Final Fantasy games. New music was added for events, like the holiday score “Jeuno -Starlight Celebration-” played in Jeuno each December since 2004.
The game’s music has been released on CDs and featured in concerts. Some tracks, like “Distant Worlds,” were available on iTunes. A compilation CD box titled Final Fantasy XI Original Soundtrack Premium Box was released in 2007, including the game’s original soundtracks and unreleased tracks. The concert series Dear Friends -Music from Final Fantasy- included “Ronfaure” from XI. A ten-track album inspired by XI, Music from the Other Side of Vana’diel, was released by The Star Onions in 2005.
Expansions and add-ons
Final Fantasy XI receives updates every few years. Large updates, called expansion packs, introduce new stories, character roles, game areas, missions, and other content. Smaller updates, called add-ons, include fewer of these items. Before the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 versions of the game were discontinued, all expansions and add-ons were available on PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox 360. The exception was Seekers of Adoulin, which was not released for PlayStation 2 outside Japan.
Reception
Final Fantasy XI received positive reviews from critics. Websites that collect reviews, such as GameRankings and Metacritic, gave the PlayStation 2 version an 85% score based on 57 reviews and 85 out of 100 based on 49 reviews. The PC version received an 82% score based on 44 reviews and 85 out of 100 based on 25 reviews. The Xbox 360 version received a 69% score based on 32 reviews and 66 out of 100 based on 25 reviews. Famitsu gave the game a score of 38 out of 40. Computer and Video Games Magazine said the game was one of the most welcoming MMORPGs, even though the setup process was difficult. IGN described the game as well done but not very original, and noted that North American players had to play with Japanese players who were already experienced. GameSpot criticized the game at its release for having an unusual control system, a long installation process, and no player versus player (PvP) features. Other issues included the need to fight many battles to progress in the game and crowded areas where players gather. Expansions added more content and were mostly praised, but some said the game’s graphics were becoming outdated. IGN’s review of the Xbox 360 version said the game had a lot of content but required a long setup and took a lot of time to play. This game was the first in the series to take a very different direction while still being part of the main numbering line, unlike other games that became separate series.
The PlayStation 2 version had limited players at first because of low sales of the PlayStation 2’s hard drive and network adapters needed to play the game. The Japanese release of Rise of the Zilart sold 90,000 copies in its first week in 2003. Treasures of Aht Urhgan, released three years later, sold over 103,000 copies for the PlayStation 2 in Japan in 2006. In the United States, the PC version sold 340,000 copies ($15.5 million) by August 2006, after its release in October 2003. It was the 51st best-selling computer game in the United States between January 2000 and August 2006. The Final Fantasy XI All-in-One Pack was number 36 and Wings of the Goddess was number 40 on the top 50 best-selling Xbox 360 games in Japan as of December 2007. In the April–September 2004 financial period, Square Enix saw online gaming, especially Final Fantasy XI, sales increase by 101% and operating profit increase by 230.9%. Subscription revenue stayed steady in the summer of 2006, but by fall, Square Enix said online subscription revenue was “unsatisfactory.” By December 2003, there were over 200,000 subscribers to Final Fantasy XI, allowing the company to break even and start making a profit. Between 200,000 and 300,000 players were active daily in 2006. As of August 2006, the Xbox 360 version was the sixth most played game on Xbox Live. By 2008, the game had 500,000 subscribers. By June 2012, Final Fantasy XI became the most profitable title in the Final Fantasy series. While many MMOs now use free-to-play models, Final Fantasy XI kept its monthly subscription price at $11.95 since its debut in 2002.
Final Fantasy XI won the grand prize from Japan’s Consumer Entertainment Software Association (CESA) for 2002–2003, along with Taiko no Tatsujin. It also received GameSpy’s 2003 PC MMORPG Game of the Year Award and IGN’s Game of the Month for March 2004, which praised the game’s customization and its cross-platform and cross-language game world. It was a runner-up in GameSpot’s 2004 “Best Massively Multiplayer Online Game” award, losing to World of Warcraft. At the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the expansion Chains of Promathia was nominated for “Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year” but lost to World of Warcraft. The following year, The Vana’diel Collection was nominated for “Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year.” Final Fantasy XI was mentioned in the online game Minna no Golf Online as a themed lobby.
Square Enix released the second MMORPG in the series in 2010, titled Final Fantasy XIV Online. The original version received mostly negative reviews, and a new version, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, was released in 2013. In 2024, the fifth expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, Dawntrail, introduced a crossover raid series with Final Fantasy XI titled Echoes of Vana’diel.
The game inspired several written adaptations and merchandise. Starting in 2003, a series of Final Fantasy XI novels was written by Miyabi Hasegawa and released in Japanese, German, and French. In 2004, Adventure Log, a webcomic by Scott Ramsoomair, was commissioned by Square Enix and began in 2007. Final Fantasy XI PlayOnline Visa and MasterCard credit cards were available in Japan, offering no annual fees if cardholders remained PlayOnline subscribers and other rewards. Limited edition posters, phone cards, keychains, and T-shirts were released in Japan. Stuffed animals and gashapon figurines of different races from the series were also available for order in North America. A clock that showed the in-game time and CDs of the game’s music were marketed as well.