Final Fantasy XI has been around for 24 years, but it’s been busier than ever lately. Over the past two years, three of its biggest servers, Asura, Bahamut, and Odin, have all had to stop accepting new players due to overcrowding. In a recent interview with Famitsu to mark the game’s anniversary, director and producer Yoji Fujito talked about what caused this unexpected boom and what the team is planning going forward.

Fujito pointed to a few things happening at the same time: the Echoes of Vana’diel collaboration with Final Fantasy XIV, a welcome back campaign, and free in-game events like the Mog Bonanza weapon coupon giveaway. Together, these brought a wave of new and returning players to the game.

What surprised the team, though, was that most of those players didn’t leave once the events were over. “Overall, the player count remained stable at a high level, and we never saw the kind of sharp decline we had anticipated, so honestly, the outcome exceeded our expectations and came as a surprise,” Fujito said.

Fujito made it clear that the development team is committed to keeping FFXI alive. However, bigger additions like a new world or story expansion are not straightforward right now due to two main issues: technical limitations and a short-staffed team.

On the technical side, a server replacement project that started around 2022 has made the game more stable. The newer setup relies more on virtualization, which cuts down on the need for physical server maintenance. The catch is that the core server architecture has not really changed, so while the game runs better, the groundwork for large-scale new content is not yet in place.

Beyond the technical side, Fujito acknowledged that the team is also dealing with limited staff. People who could work on new story content following The Voracious Resurgence are currently assigned to other projects at Square Enix. The team is looking at potentially bringing back former FFXI staff in the future, and engineers are also working on improvements to how the game handles graphical resources. Sorting that out could eventually make new cutscenes and similar content possible again.

For now, Fujito described the current period as a preparatory phase, saying the team is “continuing to lay the groundwork for that sort of future development.”