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A new interview with Producer Fujito Yoji reveals that the game was originally planned to be shut down in 2024. The impressively long-running MMO set in the Final Fantasy universe has been out since 2002, taking players on a journey through the Age of Adventurers.

In an interview with Dengeki Online, Producer Fujito Yoji says that Translated from the original Japanese, Yoji states that 2024 was supposed to be the game's final year: "2024 was the year when FFXI updates would end."

The title would have then gone on to "maintenance mode" with no new content and support only for keeping the game running. However, as plans to sunset were starting to get underway during the game's 20th anniversary in 2022, Yoji says the dev team in charge of running FF11

Despite its age, FF11 still maintains over 5,000 daily players, according to MMO Population. This is a far cry from the 400K players of Square Enix's more recent entry into the MMO genre, Final Fantasy XIV, but the company nevertheless decided that After all, says Yoji, "stopping the service would lead to the destruction of daily life for active adventurers."

Source: MMO Population, Dengeki Online