FINAL FANTASY XI Producer/Director Yoji Fujito has prepared a message regarding measures that will be implemented to address congestion on the Asura World.

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Greetings, everyone. I'm Yoji Fujito, the producer and director for FINAL FANTASY XI. First off, I would like to thank all of you for playing FFXI!

I'd like to take a moment to explain what we will be doing to help combat periods of congestion that we've seen on Asura recently.

Thanks to you, FINAL FANTASY XI recently welcomed its 23rd year of service and continues to be enjoyed by numerous players around the globe. In fact, thanks in part to players that are new to the game, as well as those that are returning home to Vana'diel after being away for a while, the overall player population has been trending upward recently.

The Development and Operations teams have been working hard to help all of you enjoy your gaming experience even more, but it has been discovered that the concentration of player populations on certain Worlds has led to a series of unexpected issues that have managed to affect the quality of that experience somewhat. This includes things like system messages not displaying properly in Vana'Bout, for example.

We have especially noticed such issues occurring on Asura, so to help ensure stable operations going forward, we are planning to implement the following measures from Tuesday, July 29 (JST) in order to help even out the World player populations. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding regarding this matter.

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■ Steps to be taken
- The ability to use the World Transfer Service to transfer characters to Asura will be suspended.
- The ability to create new characters on Asura will be suspended. (*1)
- The Vana'diel Adventurer Recruitment Program will be suspended for Asura.
*1: This restriction will not apply to accounts which already have an existing character on Asura.

Note: Since there is a possibility that similar issues may arise on other overly crowded Worlds, we are also considering other potential measures that will help equalize the populations across Worlds.
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We plan to continue monitoring the number of logged-in users as well as various other factors and will seek to resume the above-mentioned services and functionality when appropriate.

In addition to developing and revising in-game content, we are working hard to maintain an environment where players around the world can enjoy the game, so we appreciate your continued support of FINAL FANTASY XI!

FINAL FANTASY XI Producer/Director Yoji Fujito