“We won’t make a mistake like FF 14 again.”

The realm is now reborn.

The game was badly broken, and the best option was to rebuild it from the core.

However, the process was not that easy – providing new content to the original game and working on its remake at the same time definitely took a lot of work.

Updating the original version raised questions from some of the staff; Yoshida answered that it was important to gain back the trust of the players who purchased the initial game, and the updates could be used to test the new features while establishing the standards for A Realm Reborn.

To keep up with the already tight schedule, he changed how they previously worked with the game so that they could work on several aspects of the game at the same time, minimizing downtimes and ensuring continuous development.

However, he emphasized on giving the lead positions to those who had MMO experience, thus implementing only the ‘standard’ features a regular MMO would have.

It took two months for his team to finalize the game design, and that was when the programmers were given the go signal to start coding. The coding process did not start until the design was complete, thus reducing the updates to the original design, streamlining the work process.

Lesser-experienced personnel were also forced to repeatedly play the game in order to understand its flaws and to prioritize player experience above anything else.

Open communication with the game’s fans was crucial in the game’s redevelopment. Yoshida and his team read the game forums and implemented fan feedback. While Square Enix thought it was a risky move, this act established a solid connection to the players to hear them out and motivated the team to continue what they started. Livestreams were presented to let fans have an idea what was happening on the developer’s side of the game.

The FF 14 development team was insistent that the game should not be released until it could be deemed ready. “We won’t make a mistake like FF 14 again – if we did, it would be like at the level of destroying a company,” Yoshida said.

Several months after the initial coding of the remake, Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn was finally launched, receiving positive remarks from the press and fans, even gaining recognition as the best MMO of 2013 and reaching 4 million game accounts since its initial release.

The game’s first expansion Heavensward is expected to go live in June 2015, and will feature Ishgard, a city-state in the north, vast fields and unique dungeons, three new jobs, a new player race, and more.