Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 16, 2013

Final Fantasy XI is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. Designed and produced by Hiromichi Tanaka, it was released in Japan on May 16, 2002 for Sony's PlayStation 2, and for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers in November of that year. The game was the first cross-platform MMORPG and the Xbox 360's first MMORPG. The story is set in the fantasy world of Vana'diel, where player-created avatars can both compete and cooperate in a variety of objectives to develop an assortment of jobs, skills, and earn in-game item rewards. Players can also undertake an array of quests and progress through the in-game hierarchy and thus through the major plot of the game. Since its debut in 2002, five expansion packs have also been released along with six add-on scenarios. In 2006, between 200,000 and 300,000 active players logged in per day, and the game was the dominant MMORPG in Japan. Final Fantasy XI has a user base of around 500,000 subscribers, and the total number of active characters exceeds 2 million. It is the most profitable title in the Final Fantasy series. (Full article...)

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