Square Enix Still Hard at Work on FFXI Follow Up

Very happy to finally hear some new news about their MMO!


President Yoichi Wada reasserts they have more in store for the MMO space.

For an MMO that doesn't have the words "World of Warcraft" in its title, Final Fantasy XI has maintained quite the strong following, even over five years after its release. But all things come to an end eventually, and Square Enix recently reassured their investors that when FFXI starts to fade away, they'll be ready.

Making an address to said investors last month (via Kotaku), president Yoichi Wada reasserted that work on a new MMO was still underway, saying that during this "transition" period, "the question is where do we go from here, and we are currently developing a post-FFXI flagship title." News of a follow up MMO has been public for some time now, but just what exactly Wada meant by "flagship title" is up for debate. By the sound of it, you'd expect the new MMO to also be set within the Final Fantasy series, but way back in 2007, FFXI producer Hiromichi Tanaka said that "it still hasn't been decided whether [the new MMO] is going to be a game in the FF series, a continuation, or a totally new game."

More recently, when we had a chance to speak with a few of the developers behind FFXI last year, we managed to squeeze out some info about the new MMO: "The next-generation MMO that we'll be working on is going to be different than Final Fantasy XI," Tanaka said. "And even though we have the same staff working on the project, and we have seen the good things from XI, and we've also seen the things that the players maybe didn't like as much...while we're going to be using that info while we make the next MMO, we're not going to make something that'll be exactly like FFXI."

As for when we'll finally see this new MMO, it's anybody's guess. Wada evidently made no mention about when they plan to announce it, but again, we probably won't see it until Square Enix feels FFXI has officially run its course, so to speak, and are ready to move on.

I hope it runs its course faster. I wants me some new Square action xD.