Final Fantasy XI's Besieged will get tougher

FFXI developers want Besieged to require more strategy, teamwork

July 10, 2006

Today, Square Enix announced updates to its persistent online RPG, Final Fantasy XI that will see changes to the way Besieged is run. In the game, Besieged is a form of defensive gameplay that occurs when beastmen attack the city of Al Zahbi, and all players inside are recruited to aid in the city's defense.

Square mentioned in a release on its PlayOnline Web site today that Besieged has become more popular than was originally expected. In most Besieged events, the population of Al Zahbi reaches its critical mass, and some players aren't even allowed to participate. Because there are almost always more players than enemies, the Besieged events are usually fairly easy to win.

In order to maintain the fearful spirit of Besieged, the developers of Final Fantasy XI are releasing modifications to the system in the July update to the game. These updates will increase the difficulty of Beseiged.

New Notorious Monsters (NMs) will be added to Beseiged. According to the update, these NMs will require "more than just numbers" to defeat, suggesting that players will need to determine the monsters' weaknesses and learn how to collectively exploit them to be victorious.

The team also said that the size and strength of the beastmen armies that attack Al Zahbi will be affected by player attacks on beastmen strongholds. At the moment, few players are eager to attack the beastmen unless they're retrieving something or someone that was stolen during Beseiged. With the update, it will become more beneficial (and important) to proactively attack the beastmen strongholds in order to weaken their forces and prevent an overwhelming attack on Al Zahbi.

"We feel that hundreds of characters of all levels participating in the same battle is what makes Besieged so popular in the first place."

One of the major problems with Besieged today, though, is the amount of lag that is caused by the sheer volume of players in Al Zahbi during the event. While the obvious solution is to continue to limit the number of players that can participate in Besieged, the developers would prefer to keep the city open to as many players as possible. They say they are continually investigating other options of lessening the load on certain types of lower-performance hardware (such as less powerful PCs and the PS2 system).

The Beseiged event was originally added in April with the release of the latest FFXI expansion, Treasures of Aht Urhgan.