Rumor: Final Fantasy XI to Be Closed this Year

Highly doubt this will happen....FFXI has been far too successful and not everyone is going to want to move onto XIV! Especially those that only have a dial-up connection still in the US, which I know many players in XI, like Bareta. Plus a place for those that still wanna do end-game during down times in XIV; having two MMOs subscribed.

Quote :

MMOSite is reporting on a rumor that Final Fantasy XI may be shutting down this year. The rumor originates from a "Japanese game media" that has published the supposed public admittance from a Square Enix employee that Final Fantasy XI would be shutting down this year due to the release of Final Fantasy XIV. According to the MMOsite report, Square Enix Yoichi Wada has since denied the report.

GameCrep (via VG247) appears to have a bit more information, stating that a top human resources employee at Square Enix posted the following on their personal blog (which has since been taken down):

"I think some amongst you will know, but FF11 started in 2002 … Well, this year it’ll end and the stage will shift to FF14.”

Given Final Fantasy XIV's similarities to the original game, Square Enix's desire to allow players to transition easier (such as the ability to carry over one's name), as well as the fact the blog post has since been taken down, there is certainly some plausibility to this rumor. However, since we cannot confirm anything either way at the moment, this story remains a rumor.

We'll be contacting Square Enix for comment, so stay tuned!

Though I'm assuming their add on releases will be likely halted for Final Fantasy 11.
I don't see them shutting the game down. At least I hope not. One day I would like to go back.
If for nothing else just nostalgia.

Most companies build their new MMO alongside their old one, and don't completely overwrite it... besides, if XI is closed what happens to those that want to play the entire series but never got to XI? :o but the main reason I don't think it'll happen is that if they close it they can't earn a bunch of money off an old game they're just gonna leave sitting there :p it's all about the $!

If it's cancelled it'll be due to too many people leaving... and they've mentioned something about facilitating things for people who want to play both at the same time, so they're trying to avoid that. We'll just have to wait and see. But I doubt it'll close before XIV is put out there and the numbers are put to the test.

I can see them merging servers over time but not out right shutting it down. It is still the top mmo in Japan.

It was a mistranslation. It's not that the game is going to be closed, they are just talking about shifting more of the team from ffxi over to ffxiv.

They aren't going to shut down the servers just because they launched another MMO, that'd be silly. Until we see server mergers, I don't see FFXI going anywhere.

yea its not closing RSS feed says they are prepping a new patch to be announced at vanafest

http://www.massively.com/2010/02/25/this-week-on-the-mmo-report/#continued


Watch, and be at ease. FFXI lives on. Now stop spreading rumors ;p

Well, it's obvious it won't be this year but it's not looking good for dear ol FFXI. Then again, I'll prolly be too busy with FFXIV to care.

lol i woudl say that ffxi jst had a new beginning

Sure the level cap increase will bring in more players and give it more life, but I wouldn't expect it to do well after next year.

FFXIV will be a very different game from FFXI. There will be plenty who don't like FFXIV that will stick to FFXI. Saying FFXI will be ruined by FFXIV is like saying that it will be ruined by WoW or EVE, or that EQ would be ruined by EQ II. They're completely different games. FFXI's pop will probably go down pretty sharply for the first few months of FFXIV, but then a good chunk of the pop will likely return to FFXI. Although I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that FFXIV will have a larger pop that FFXI...