Final Fantasy XI - Interview @Twinfinite

Ed: Speaking of Absolute Virtue… Can you please share with me what was going through the minds of the members of the development team during these years where the strategy to defeat Absolute Virtue remained a mystery to players?

Did it torture the developers that players weren't figuring it out? How tempted were you to just give the secret away over the years? Or, did you secretly enjoy torturing us and watching us suffer at the hands of Absolute Virtue?

AM: Absolute Virtue was created based on a request from Tanaka-san to create an enemy that could be defeated in theory but not in actuality. All our other monsters that were really, really hard but not invincible, were always obliterated the moment they were released. In that respect, Absolute Virtue was the exception. I certainly didn't enjoy watching players suffer through it!

Ed: The Wings of the Goddess expansion, ultimately, I believe is remembered by many fans as one of the best storylines added in Final Fantasy XI. However, the amount of time it took to fully release turned off many players and, at least from my perspective as a player at the time, was a point where many long-time players started to lose interest.

Could you tell me a little bit about what was going on behind the scenes during Wings of the Goddess that led to such a long period of time between story and content updates? Was it a deliberate choice or were there constraints that players weren't aware of at the time?

YF: It was an issue of how quickly we could create the story. Any time we deal with past events, we are filling in a backstory that has to be consistent with the existing lore and verifying that everything matches up takes a tremendous amount of time. Additionally, the number and quality of cutscenes we added only increased from expansion pack to expansion pack, and the work that had to be put into creating the story increased as a result.

When people say that they enjoyed the story, much of the praise we got revolved around the way the story was expressed, particularly in animations and the like that aren't necessarily related the actual text itself, and the amount of work-hours put into ensuring they were high quality is difficult to overstate.

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