Released in Japan on May 16th 2002, Final Fantasy XI was inspired by western MMO’s of the time like EverQuest. Hironobu Sakaguchi, which many refer to as the “Father of Final Fantasy,” was establishing an office for Square’s movie cinematic studio, Square Pictures, when he discovered EverQuest.
Interesting facts about Final Fantasy XI
-It was the first MMORPG to feature cross-play between PS2 and PC gamers. Players from either system could play with each other online.
-There was an Xbox version planned, but was canceled due to the limited 8GB HDD it had, thought it would later be released for the Xbox 360.
-It is claimed that the PS2 version of the game is referenced as being the first game to receive a patch update.
-Because of Nintendo’s use of friend codes, FFXI was not brought to the Wii.
-By June 2012, FFXI became the most profitable game in the series at the time.
-At it’s peak, the user base for the FFXI was between 200,000 to 300,000 active players in 2006. And for the Xbox 360, it was the 6th most played game for the console that year.
-The Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 servers were ultimately shutdown on March 31st, 2016.
Final Fantasy XI on Wikipedia
Gameplay by Redwolfxx via Youtube
