Short answers, pulled from the story.
Final Fantasy XI was released in Japan on the 16th of May 2002 for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows. The Xbox 360 version followed in April 2006. Support for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions ended on the 31st of March 2016, leaving only the PC version active.
Final Fantasy XI cost two to three billion yen, equivalent to roughly $17-25 million, to create along with the PlayOnline Network Service. Square Enix projected the game would become profitable over a five-year timespan, and it broke even by December 2003 when subscriptions exceeded 200,000.
The music of Final Fantasy XI was composed by Naoshi Mizuta, Kumi Tanioka, and Nobuo Uematsu. The game's opening features choral music with Esperanto lyrics. After Tanioka and Uematsu departed, Mizuta scored all five subsequent expansion packs alone.
The Support Job system allows players to augment their main job with abilities, traits, and spells from a second chosen job at half the current job's level. A Level 20 Warrior setting Ninja as a support job gains access to Ninja abilities up to level 10. Signature one-hour abilities are restricted to the main job only.
In early 2006, Square Enix discovered players generating game currency for real-money exchange and permanently banned 700 accounts while removing 300 billion gil from circulation. That July, the company banned or suspended more than 8,000 additional accounts for similar violations.
Final Fantasy XI remains active on PC as of 2026. A surge of new players in 2025 caused the servers Asura, Bahamut, and Odin to close to new characters, with Asura closing on the 29th of July 2025, Bahamut on the 9th of October 2025, and Odin on the 10th of March 2026.