That success is even more surprising when you consider that FF14 is one of the few MMOs that still charges a subscription fee in an era where free-to-play dominates the genre. Square Enix recently released its 21st major update-one of its biggest not counting the three main expansions-and it's now been played by more than 20 million people worldwide. Not so final after allįF14 today might seem far removed from its disastrous origin story. Nothing was going on-the community was just fully absorbed in A Realm Reborn. "It made me wonder if the servers went down because I wasn't hearing anything-no one was contacting me, so we were like, 'what's going on?'" But as the servers stabilized and more people got into the resurrected world of Eorzea for the first time, an eerie silence settled over Square Enix's social media channels. For a few hours that morning, Yoshida, Murouchi, and the development team back in Japan scrambled to fix the crashes and respond to frustrated players. It was this FF14 world strategy war room in this tiny hotel room."Īs the beta test opened, there was an initial rush of panic as servers buckled from the sudden load. We pulled an all-nighter just monitoring the situation. There was a sort of excitement that night. "But this phase was where we got to start seeing the players, their reaction, and what they felt after playing the game. "We were exhausted from itself," Yoshida recalls. It seemed hopeless, but Yoshida had a secret weapon: Microsoft Excel In the column he used to write for Famitsu, Yoshida said that this moment was "truly do-or-die." Unlike the two tests before it, Phase 3 was almost a complete game-players could try out overhauled systems like combat, the new user interface, and even the first bit of the main story at the same time. on the last night of the event (early evening in Japan), FF14: A Realm Reborn's third beta test was scheduled to begin. with global community producer Toshio Murouchi to help Square Enix build excitement for the relaunch of FF14 happening in just two months.
It was E3 2013, and Yoshida had traveled from Japan to L.A.
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