At a time where there is constantly word of this or that game shutting down, even successful ones, it will never fail to surprise me that Final Fantasy 11 is still going. You can’t play it on PS2 anymore, but there’s still an active community on PC even now. The MMO just celebrated its 23rd anniversary yesterday in fact, with a new update video and letter from the producer Yoji Fujito released to highlight some of the new and upcoming features.
For one, in a future update more monsters are getting added to Limbus. There’s also a new morale gauge system coming to Besieged that gives your forces a stat boost. Perhaps most interesting of all is a feature you might take for granted in modern MMOs, which is the introduction of the character race change service. Dodgy name aside, this will allow you to change your character’s race, gender, face type, hair colour, and size.
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Updates over the last year even added in something as small as gamepad configuration adjustments, and as big as a new master trial, Wing of War.
Fujito’s letter further explained that even now, the team is looking to help new and returning players, particularly solo ones, have an easier time with the game. Currently there’s something called the alter ego system, which is similar to Final Fantasy 14’s trust system in that you can recruit NPCs to help you on quests. According to Fujito, the devs will be looking to allow you to upgrade these alter egos “as a means of enhancing the solo player experience.” They have other plans to smooth things over too, which is honestly a little wild to me for a game that’s been running for so long.
I’ve not dived into Final Fantasy 11 myself, there’s always too many games for me to play to even consider touching an MMO. Still, it’s comforting in a strange way that knowing that it’s there, trudging along, ready for myself or anyone else to give it a go. Kudos to the team!
