Square Enix Considered Ending Final Fantasy XI in 2024, But Fans Have Kept It Going - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 19 May 2025 / 3,134 Views
Current Final Fantasy XI director Yoji Fujito speaking with Dengeki Online revealed that before the game's 20th anniversary in 2022, Square Enix had considered ending support for the game in 2024.
"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," said Fujito (via Automaton).
As the game neared its 20th anniversary the development team received "a lot of support" from players to keep the game running.
"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."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Oh yeah... I remember some of these tough boss battles were deemed impossible to beat.... then some of the best guilds in the game, slowly managed to do it, and at first it was like "this took us 12 hours to beat".... then it was like "we found a new tactic, and now its 9hours" ect. Stuff like that was fun. Some of those Ultimate weapons (best in slot) for chararaters, took like years of doing guild raids, to collect stuff for.... and in the end, you look like a badass with glow effects around your weapons ect, and access to special weapon skills and such. Also if you met a person with such a item, you knew, they were dedicated to the game, and that class and darn well knew how to play that class.
I sold my Kirin's Osode. BIG MISTAKE.
just make it free to play already.... jebus... its the perfect game for ingame currency and consumables to be sold via stores. Everything in the game, is player made, thus the costs of potions is the value, of a person, spending weeks and weeks to level up alchemy, that time that they spent hunting for the parts that go into making said potions. (as a exsample). Some classes like Ninja, uses ninjitsu, consume tools everytime they use a ability. They burn through tons of these, and even if cheap to craft, its a time consuming ordeal (hense many that are rich, simply buy them off of a auction house, where some players craft and dictate the prices). Imagine how easy it would be to make, non transferable, items, buy-able ingame with real cash? F2P SE, do it.
