Trivia / Final Fantasy XI

• No Export for You: The mobile spin-off Final Fantasy Grandmasters remained in Japan until being discontinued.
• Trolling Creator: The infamous Absolute Virtue from the Chains of Promathia expansion. Supposedly a superboss, the enemy was actually revealed to have always been intended to be a Hopeless Boss Fight; players were never meant to defeat it, it was supposed to be a death hazard that could spawn after beating the real final, killable boss of the expansion. In addition, not only did the developers never reveal Absolute Virtue was supposed to be unwinnable until well after the fact, but they released a video at one point supposedly showing a secret method to legitimately defeating it. Only thing is, the 'legitimate' strategy actually wasn't, to use it required breaking the game's Terms of Service, so the strategy video and Absolute Virtue in general were there just to troll players while making them think they had a chance of beating it so not everyone would just automatically run away if it spawned. This becomes ultimately subverted in the long run, as repeated exploits that actually allowed players to beat Absolute Virtue in addition with bad press from the Pandemonium Warden incident caused the developers to nerf Absolute Virtue, making him actually defeatable now.
• What Could Have Been: During early development, there was a pushback against making XI a mainline title from the higher ups in the company. It was Hironobu Sakaguchi's insistence that it be named Final Fantasy XI and not, say, Final Fantasy Online, because of his faith in the future of online gaming as well as not wanting it to be seen as a mere spin-off. Despite Sakaguchi leaving the company in 2001, Square eventually decided to make XI a numbered title because of Hiromichi Tanaka's perseverance.

---