Crafting Final Fantasy XI's global community
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Oct 8th 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Culture, MMO industry, Final Fantasy XIV
A recent piece on Gamasutra discussed one of the more prominent and yet understated issues facing Final Fantasy XI -- the challenge of creating, bolstering, and supporting a global community. It's easy to forget at times that the game is sold and played in four different languages across three continents on the same set of servers, with a Japanese development team and customer service representatives across several countries. Robert Allen Peeler, the assistant community manager for the game, went into details about several of the issues, hurdles, and pitfalls the game has gone through over its near six-year multi-lingual run.
Peeler discusses the challenges associated in communicating the wishes of the fans to developers, who speak only Japanese and don't necessarily have a clear grasp of what the rest of the world's players want out of the game. He also mentions the now-infamous Pandemonium Warden boss encounter and explains that the issue was largely focused in North America, but due to the communication issues it began to be seen worldwide before the developers could adequately address the issues.
The piece also goes into some detail regarding the plans for how these same issues will be addressed when Final Fantasy XIV is released, which will most likely share the same multi-lingual support and servers. If you're interested in taking a look inside some of the problems of a global game -- or if you're a Final Fantasy XI player looking for more of an answer about why the developers don't respond to issues -- you should take a look at the article.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Superbeef said on 6:13PM 10-08-2009
I actually thought this was a pretty poor read as a long time on again off again FFXI player, and someone who is looking forward to FFXIV.
I understand that obviously there is a language barrier. But you can't overcome this .... in 7 years time? That's one heck of a cop out IMO.
FFXI has had a lot of problems over the years, and while they've answered a good deal of them finally, the speed in which they have done this was atrocious. And they're claiming its due to region differences? Guess what... all regions are effected the same way when something is broken and doesn't work. Delays are acceptable, inability and unwillingness to change problem over long periods of time... is not.
I hope SE gets their act together for XIV.
Best part of about this article.... I love that picture at the top of the page. Fan Fest Art ftw.
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-_- said on 6:24PM 10-08-2009
I beta tested FFXI and it was great with an all north american player server, then the beta ended and we were stuck on working servers with people that were there for almost a year already, i dont think i played long after that.
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Dblade said on 12:20AM 10-09-2009
Kind of shows how clueless the developers are. They don't expect players to fight pandy warden straight up and not realize there is a hidden trick to beating it, they act too casual when RMT steal accounts and players have little recourse because SE customer service sucks, they don't test updates enough to realize one tremendously nerfed elemental magic to make it not even work well...it just goes on and on.
The community team for NA can talk all they like, the problem was always on the japanese developer end, and that's the real issue, not translation. The SE devs routinely show they are clueless about the game and how players play it.
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onetrueping said on 3:55PM 10-09-2009
"The SE devs routinely show they are clueless about the game and how American players play it."
Fixed it for you. How American players and Japanese players play the game are not the same thing.
Dblade said on 5:03PM 10-09-2009
Uh, how they play it is very much the same thing, except for experience point party style, and that is mostly cursory differences. JP like to sub white mage to corsair while NA sub ranger, and tend to end parties at a set time rather than get replacements. Their DD classes tend to sub ninja for protection even when DoT could be raised safely by subbing SAM or WAR. They tend to be a little less hardcore than NA, which is why it was a NA shell that first fought pandy warden. They also tend to be more insular, and uncomfortable with western parties, either due to language barriers or xenophobia.
Other than that there really isn't that much difference, because FFXI is a very linear game. They do nyzul isle the same way we do, they do endgame the same, they mostly play jobs the same way and are affected by nerfs and buffs the same. There really is little regional difference in how to play the game in terms of mechanics.
If you don't believe me, Elmer the Pointy writes a great blog at http://www.jpbutton.com in which he writes about the japanese aspect of FFXI, and he often translates and shows SE news and japanese player info.