History of Final Fantasy: Expanding the Franchise (Final Fantasy XI) - Article
by Taneli Palola , posted on 05 February 2017 / 9,569 Views
First a disclaimer. I have never actually played Final Fantasy XI. I wanted to at least quickly try it before writing about it, but simply didn't have the time. As a result this article will have a somewhat different focus than the other articles in this retrospective series. For obvious reasons, I can't really talk about whether the game holds up or not, or what the best or worst parts of it are, at least as far as gameplay is concerned. I can still at least comment on the title's development process, music, visuals, and even the story to some extent, but naturally a great many aspects of the game will be lost on me. With that said, let's get started.
Square had been toying with the idea of adding online elements to the franchise with Final Fantasy X, but those plans never materialized at the time. It wasn't until the next main installment in the series that Final Fantasy made the leap into online gaming. In 2002 the MMO landscape wasn't yet quite as ubiquitous as it is today. World of WarCraft was still over two years away and as a result there wasn't that one massive game that all other MMOs looked to copy.
MMOs in general weren't nearly as huge as they would become in the years to come. Even the most successful of them could generally expect a player count in the few hundred thousands and few ever broke above 500,000 subscribers. The genre was still a fairly niche form of gaming that most people weren't really that familiar with. This is the environment into which Final Fantasy XI was developed and released.
Unfamiliar Territory: Final Fantasy XI
Early development of Final Fantasy XI began in late 1999 at the suggestion of Hironobu Sakaguchi. He had recently discovered various western MMORPGs, perhaps most notably Everquest. These had impressed him and inspired him to start developing an MMO based on the Final Fantasy series.
The development team behind the game was largely the same as that which had recently finished creating Chrono Cross for the PS1. Its producer, Hiromichi Tanaka, was a Square veteran who had worked on the first three Final Fantasy titles, Secret of Mana, Xenogears, and the aforementioned Chrono Cross. The game's director, Koichi Ishii, had likewise worked on early Final Fantasy titles, as well as Secret of Mana and other games in the Mana series.
The main score was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, Naoshi Mizuta, and Kumi Tanioka, while music for the game's five expansion packs was composed solely by Mizuta, after Uematsu had left Square to work freelance and Tamioka had begun work on other projects for the developer. Uematsu, who also produced the score, later said that composing the music for the game was particularly difficult because, unlike with previous games in the series, Final Fantasy XI didn't have a linear plot line that every player would follow from beginning to end.
Final Fantasy XI was heavily influenced by Final Fantasy III, and this can easily be seen in its use of the series' classic job system, as well as in the battle and magic systems. Hiromichi Tanaka has since stated that the team included many features in Final Fantasy XI that they were unable to use in earlier titles due to technical limitations.
Early on during development there was uncertainty at whether the game would be part of the mainline Final Fantasy series or if it would simply be called Final Fantasy Online. However, once the title's main storyline was finished it was deemed worthy of being considered a mainline entry. Final Fantasy XI entered beta in August of 2001, and a full release followed on May 16, 2002, in Japan on the PS2. A PC release followed in late 2002 and a western release came the following year in the US and in 2004 in Europe.
Unlike most MMORPGs at the time, Final Fantasy XI placed much of its focus on its overarching storyline. It takes place in the world of Vana'diel in the aftermath of the Crystal War, which players deal with in the original game. The expansion packs further elaborate on various aspects of the war and the overall mythos of the game's world.
Final Fantasy XI features five playable races, each with their own distinct attributes that separate them in terms of gameplay. These five are the Elvaan, Hume, Galka, Mithra, and Tarutaru. The Hume are the most balanced of the races, while the diminutive Tarutaru are skilled users of magic but have the worst physical attributes. There are also various races of Beastmen which serve as the main source of conflict throughout the story.
As mentioned earlier, Final Fantasy XI features a job system similar to those found in FF III and V, currently boasting 22 different jobs to choose from. Initially the player can choose from six jobs, with the later jobs becoming available as the player levels up the original jobs and completes specific quests. Each job has its own unique passive and active skills that are accessible only to that specific job.
Final Fantasy XI also boasts an addition to the job system called “support jobs”. Essentially, this allows a player that is currently using one job to also have access to skills from another job at half the level of the main job. So, for example, a level 30 dragoon can use the skills and traits of a level 15 black mage. This system allows for a variety of job combinations that had not been seen in any prior Final Fantasy.
In addition, each job has access to a unique special ability that is restricted to that particular job. As such, these abilities are not available through a support job. The battles in Final Fantasy XI take place in real-time on the overworld, a first for the series. In previous titles the battles had taken place within a special battle screen separate from the rest of the game. Monsters roam the world freely and can be attacked to initiate combat. Some monsters will attack the player in a nod towards the random elements of the series' older battle systems.
The game's original level cap was 50, but this has slowly been increased over time with the releases of numerous expansions and add-ons. The level cap now stands at 99, having reached that point in December 2011. Leveling itself is based on experience points gained from battles, quests, or story missions. There's also a crafting system, which allows players to create various items, such as weapons and armor, and various hobbies that players can take up, including fishing, gardening, and chocobo breeding.
Final Fantasy XI puts relatively little emphasis on PvP, focusing mostly on PvE instead, somewhat contrasting with a lot of the other MMOs on the market. This is perhaps a result of the game's heavy focus on telling a compelling story in a genre where gameplay has usually been the most significant aspect.
Making history, Final Fantasy XI was the first ever cross-platform MMO, allowing players across all systems to inhabit the same servers and play together. In addition, there are no region specific servers. Players from different countries are all placed in the same world and can then interact by using a set of automatically translated sentences from a library of phrases.
Visually, Final Fantasy XI had to make some concessions to its massive world and online infrastructure that would allow thousands of players to inhabit the same game world. It was certainly a good looking game at the time of its release, and even today it holds up decently well thanks to its smart visual design, but understandably it doesn't look as good as Final Fantasy X, for example, simply because X didn't have to worry about online elements and massive player numbers.
Upon release, Final Fantasy XI received positive reviews and very quickly became one of the most successful MMORPGs on the market. In December 2003 Square announced that the game had over 200,000 subscribers, at which point it began to make a profit for the company. Square has continued supporting it ever since, releasing a steady stream of new content. The last large expansion – Seekers of Adoulin – was released in 2013. Thanks to this continued support Final Fantasy XI has gone on to became the most profitable game in the entire series, as of 2012, according to Square president Yoichi Wada.
How is Final Fantasy XI Today?
FF XI is a more old-school style MMO than most popular games in the genre today, featuring quite a lot of grinding for one. However, the job system allows for a lot of flexibility and variety in combat, and you're unlikely to run out of things to do given the wealth of content that the game has amassed over the last 15 years.
Visually, Final Fantasy XI is definitely starting to show its age. Not only is it a game that originally released on the PS2 in 2002, it also had to feature a massive world that could comfortably house thousands upon thousands of players at once, something other games in the series haven't had to worry about.
The score varies wildly in quality across the numerous expansion packs, and even within the base game. There are some absolutely stellar pieces of music, however there are a lot of fairly forgettable songs as well. Still, on the whole the score was very well done and there are numerous memorable tunes that can be picked out.
One of the main selling points of Final Fantasy XI compared to most other MMOs at the time was its heavy emphasis on story. The developers felt that without a compelling story it simply wouldn't be accepted as a true mainline Final Fantasy. It's certainly a plus that the story is interesting and well told, especially for a game in this particular genre, but it's likely never going to remembered alongside the series' most revered tales all the same.
Some of the NPC characters from the game have however managed to branch out into other Final Fantasy games, perhaps most notably with the inclusion of Shantotto and Prishe in the Dissidia games, and some of the title's key characters have clearly defined and memorable personalities.
Even after all this time Final Fantasy XI is still actually going quite strong. It has an active, if not necessarily huge playerbase that is still devoted to the game. Regardless of that, I'm not sure if I would recommend it to new players at this point in time. Not only has Square Enix released a highly successful successor to the game in Final Fantasy XIV, but FF XI still requires a monthly fee to play. In an era when nearly all MMORPGs are turning to free to play to retain players, that's a lot to ask for a 14 year old game. Square also shut down the game's PS2 and Xbox 360 servers in 2016.
It might be an interesting game to try out for a while, and I can see how some would genuinely enjoying getting into the game's lore and world, but with Final Fantasy XIV being a thing that exists I'd probably only recommend it to someone who's itching to play a Final Fantasy MMO. It's an interesting milestone in the history of Final Fantasy - one that took the series in an entirely new direction and proved highly successful regardless of its departure from the series' norm, or perhaps exactly because of it.
Fun Fact
At its peak, Final Fantasy XI had over two million active characters, a milestone it reached in 2009. The active player count on the other hand topped off at around 500,000 in 2006, with 150,000 players online at any given time. This made it easily one of the most successful MMOs around at the time.
Additional Sources:
-Wikia
-PlayOnline
More Articles
For someone who admits not having played the game, you sure managed to create a well-written post that keeps the same spirit of these articles you've been doing, while being informative enough in the process. Congrats.
You can replay XI in its 2005 glory days. Look up Nasomi ffxi. Free to play, great server and ever rising population.
Yeah, I saw your comment on the previous article about it and I really wanted to go and try the game there, but just didn't have the time unfortunately. Been really busy recently. If I do get the chance I will give it a try at some point. Just not going to happen anytime soon I'm afraid. Still, thanks for pointing it out to me.
A couple of notes: If I'm not mistaken, PS2 and PC players were together, but Microsoft required Square create contained servers that were XBox Live only. Also worth mentioning is Square is apparently working on "Final Fantasy XI mobile" which will sort of be a reboot to give the game a new life on mobile devices.
Never played it too, must admit that i was a little shocked after the announcement, because i thought they would make a spin-off for that project and not the mainline series
I've played FFXI since NA launch on PC all the way up to the release of FFXIV. Must of been like 7 years.
