Final Fantasy XI Closes Another World Due to Growing Popularity
On Oct. 1, 2025, the producer and director of Final Fantasy XI, Yoji Fujito, announced that the Bahamut World is experiencing a congestion situation, which can only be resolved by stopping new characters from being created in the aforementioned world.
This situation is not entirely new in Final Fantasy XI, as a few months earlier, the developers also had to close down Asura for the same reason. The press release Fujito published acknowledged that both Asura and Bahamut have been the most popular worlds in the game.
“Bahamut has consistently had the second most concurrent users out of all the Worlds and has been close behind Asura in terms of total character population, leading many new adventurers to begin their journeys there,” said Fujito.
Aside from the closure of Bahamut, Fujito also updated the players regarding the situation on Asura. “Although its overall player population has slightly decreased, the server load remains relatively unchanged, and will remain closed to new adventurers for now.”
Final Fantasy XI was initially released on May 16, 2002, for the PlayStation 2 and PC. The game received its Xbox 360 version in 2008. In May of this year, Fujito revealed that the game was supposed to be shut down in 2024, but fans have saved it.