Today, May 16, marks 18 years since Final Fantasy XI released in Japan for the PlayStation 2. Despite the closure of its PS2 and Xbox 360 servers back in 2016, its developers still nourish a healthy PC community with consistent updates and events, outlasting so many other MMORPG games that came and waned from relevance. Even after all this time, being exposed to more modern iterations of the genre with technological and design advancements, I’ve been unable to shake FFXI from my mind for, well, about 18 years now.
Something about FFXI stuck with me, glued into my brain with a strong nostalgia for when MMORPGs prioritized players over loot—but those times haven’t been lost. You can still experience FFXI for yourself right now, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. If anything, its world of Vana’diel is getting more populated in 2020.
To celebrate, I got ahold of Director Yoji Fujito and Producer Akihiko Matsui to ask them some questions about FFXI's currently thriving landscape, how they've managed to maintain it after all these years, and what they've got planned for the future.
