Final Fantasy XI’s Sudden Popularity Forces Restrictions on Its Most Popular Server

Final Fantasy XI’s producer and director, Yoji Fujito, announced that the dev team is restricting access to Asura, the game’s most popular server. In the press release, the director showed gratitude to the players for playing the game and that the restrictions would be implemented on July 29.

According to Fujito, there will be three measures that will be implemented:

• The ability to use the World Transfer Service to transfer characters to Asura will be suspended.
• The ability to create new characters on Asura will be suspended.
• The Vana’diel Adventurer Recruitment Program will be suspended for Asura.

The developers also clarified that those who already have characters on Asura will still be able to create characters in it. Only new players will be affected by the second measure. Additionally, the developers also mentioned that this might result in other overly crowded servers having the same issues and that they are already considering potential measures to alleviate it.

In mid-May, Fujito revealed that Square Enix considered shutting down Final Fantasy XI in 2024. However, the players who kept logging in to the game were able to persuade the developers to keep going with the game’s development.

Final Fantasy XI was initially released on May 16, 2002, for the PlayStation 2 and PC. The game received its Xbox 360 version in 2008.