Final Fantasy XI is MMORPG from the Final Fantasy series, which has been released for the Sony PlayStation 2 and Windows PC. It is the first Final Fantasy that features online play.

The World

Final Fantasy XI takes place in a world called Vana'Diel, or more specifically, one of the parallel worlds called Vana'Diel.

As this is an online RPG, every Square Enix server used to host the RPG can only cope with so many players, so there are multiple servers and each of these represents a different parallel world. These worlds are named after summoned creatures from earlier Final Fantasy games (for example, Diabolos, Ifrit, Ramuh, etc.) and there are currently (as of January 2004) just over 30 of them.

A player is allocated to a random world when they are created, the only exception to this being that a player in a given world can buy a worldpass (a 10-digit passcode), give it to the new player and that player can then enter the worldpass to get onto that particular world. Once on a world, a player cannot move to another world, except via a special character called a World Shifter (put there by the administrators of a server when it has too many players and some need putting onto less populated worlds).

The four main places in each Vana'Diel are the cities of Bastok, Jeuno, San d'Oria and Windurst, though there are many other places to explore as well.

People and Politics

There are five playable races in Final Fantasy XI:

There is a sixth race called the Beastmen, who comprise all the 'evil' races of Vana'Diel. These are Goblins, Quadav (turtle-like humanoids), etc.

At the start of the game you choose whether you side with Bastok, San d'Oria or Windurst. The goal of Final Fantasy XI (insofar as there is one) is to take your country and help it conquer as much of Vana'Diel as possible.

As well as fighting against the other two nations, regions must also be taken from Beastmen control, where too many battles have been lost to them and the nation has fallen into their hands.