Final Fantasy XI, A 23 Year Old MMORPG, is Experiencing Server Congestion

Final Fantasy XI, which released back in 2002, announced yesterday that they're taking measures to alleviate server congestion on the Asura server. Yes, that's right. a 23 year old MMORPG that hasn't had a major update in 5 years not only retains a loyal playerbase, but is actually growing.

MMORPGs running into server congestion issues isn't unusual, especially after a big expansion, but Final Fantasy XI isn't new and didn't have any major updates since The Voracious Resurgence launched in 2020. Still, the game is facing surface.

Greetings, everyone. I'm Yoji Fujito, the producer and director for FINAL FANTASY XI. First off, I would like to thank all of you for playing FFXI!

I'd like to take a moment to explain what we will be doing to help combat periods of congestion that we've seen on Asura recently.

Thanks to you, FINAL FANTASY XI recently welcomed its 23rd year of service and continues to be enjoyed by numerous players around the globe. In fact, thanks in part to players that are new to the game, as well as those that are returning home to Vana'diel after being away for a while, the overall player population has been trending upward recently.

The Development and Operations teams have been working hard to help all of you enjoy your gaming experience even more, but it has been discovered that the concentration of player populations on certain Worlds has led to a series of unexpected issues that have managed to affect the quality of that experience somewhat. This includes things like system messages not displaying properly in Vana'Bout, for example.

We have especially noticed such issues occurring on Asura, so to help ensure stable operations going forward, we are planning to implement the following measures from Tuesday, July 29 (JST) in order to help even out the World player populations. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding regarding this matter.

====
Steps to be taken
- 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. (*1)
- The Vana'diel Adventurer Recruitment Program will be suspended for Asura.
*1: This restriction will not apply to accounts which already have an existing character on Asura.

Source: Official announcement