I wasn't able to participate in this particular event, but those that attended did tell me, "It was just really freezing." I had an opportunity to visit the venue almost 10 years later, but the weather was wonderful, and there were a lot of energetic people like the characters you might see in an American TV show. The west end of Route 66 had quite the refined atmosphere. (Yoji Fujito, Director)

It was my first directing role and the first event I ever attended, not to mention it was overseas! I remember the coordination and preparation for the trip being really hectic, but I feel like the Development team was even busier.
Thinking Santa Monica in the spring would be warm, I dressed lightly going to the venue, but it turned out to be freezing cold! But even in that weather, once the event took off, the bustling excitement from our fans just blew the cold away. It was the first time so many people were clamoring for my autograph, and it made for a memorable experience. (Koichi Ogawa, Director)

As a matter of fact, it was our first event where we managed everything ourselves. For the venue, we set up a circus-size tent on an empty part of the pier. This meant we were at the mercy of the frigid sea breeze blowing through the gaps in the pier, and I remember shivering intensely in the bitter cold.
Stage events were managed by our team from Japan, while setting up the gameplay booths required sheer willpower and combined effort of the Japanese and English Operations teams.
Although we didn't have any major accidents, I only just remembered that we hadn't accounted for sound leaking out during our rehearsals. It made the rehearsals really difficult, especially the ones for musical performances.
It was also back in the day when we were unable to procure high-resolution screenshots and art assets, so we went through a ton of trouble preparing various props for the venue.
However, when the new jobs were revealed, the crowd erupted into cheers and any weariness I had was blown away. So in the end, I thought, “It was really rough, but I hope we do it again.” The power of players is truly amazing!
Now that I think about it, this event may have been what started the tradition of wrapping up our FFXI and FFXIV Fan Festivals with a musical performance. (Kazuyoshi Mochizuki, Lead Community Planner)

This was the first time we ran our own dedicated large-scale event within the FFXI team and we learned a LOT. Things like "don't assume because we're in sunny Santa Monica that we won't have a random thunder storm hit during the show" and "we should never host an event on a pier under a giant tent again." Despite the inclement weather (and rush to buy tons of blankets and portable heaters for attendees), we had a blast celebrating with the players. We hosted developer panels, Q&A, hands-on with Aht Urhgan, and more! (Matt Hilton, Director of Community)

FFXI was my very first MMO and this was my first MMO fan event to attend. I was able to meet in-game friends that we have never met in real life. Participating in the live quests, collecting gil and exchanging for prizes was fun! I still have and use the Fan Fest 2006 moogle hat from time-to-time! I participated in the Tarutaru Marathon event and got second place too! During the Live Q&A panel I remember asking a question in Japanese all nervous about red mage AF2 drop rate in Dynamis Xarcabard being really low! (My linkshell had really bad luck with red mage drops.) As an FF fan boy, this was also my first-time meeting Tanaka in person, and I remember having a big smile just shaking his hand, being able to meet my gam dev. idol who designed FF3. (Anthony Caraway, Manager of Community)

Treasures of Aht Urhgan began from a plan to create a fully playable treasure island. Unlike previous continents, we didn’t have to worry about how it connected to other areas, and since we were designing the map from scratch, we had a lot of creative freedom to do things like scattering Alexander into pieces that would later come together.
Also, our original plans were to add four jobs, but things happened and we ended up with three. I uh, don’t remember what the fourth job was supposed to be. (Koichi Ogawa, Director)

In Chains of Promathia, system limitations prevented us from having more than 15 jobs, and the lack of new jobs was received very poorly. Therefore, in Treasures of Aht Urhgan, adding new jobs became the Battle team’s highest priority. We made a very conscious effort to select and design jobs that didn’t overlap with existing ones and ended up picking jobs that were familiar to fans of the FINAL FANTASY series.
As for how puppetmaster came to be, we had decided on a job that used pets, and one of our ideas was a necromancer job that controlled corpses. However, it seemed out of place for a FINAL FANTASY game, and we eventually settled on puppetmaster. (Akihiko Matsui, Producer)

Assault was designed as something even players of a relatively low level could enjoy with a small group. Enabling players to complete it regardless of level meant that we couldn’t rely on elements that could be resolved by simply dealing damage, which I believe naturally led to more puzzle-oriented content. I think we struggled more than usual when it came to designing things based on these ideas and making them fit into the game. (Yoji Fujito, Director)

Around the time other companies began adopting instanced dungeons as the new standard, I was also considering them since FFXI was facing congestion issues with battlefields. As I was contemplating how to propose the idea, a certain senior staff member encouraged me and said, “You just decide if we’re going to do it, leave the rest to us,” and implementation was decided. In order to keep the content fresh for multiple playthroughs, we designed maps with different variations and elements of destructible terrain to allow players to interact with the map itself. It was also nice how the Planner, Battle, and Lore teams were able to coordinate and implement everything as a part of Salaheem’s Sentinels. (Koichi Ogawa, Director)

Besieged was born from the concept of defending a city from oncoming monsters. Monsters had to make their way from a stronghold to attack the city, and it wouldn't really be a siege if they were defeated before they made it to the city. To address this, monsters were given defense and HP values that were considered immense at the time. Even then, there were still instances where players could defend with sheer numbers, so it was really hard to balance. (Yoji Fujito, Director)

The proposal began with “siege” as a keyword, but since we already had large-scale offensives in Dynamis, we thought it might be interesting if an area where players normally reside became a battlefield and decided to make an urban defense. From there, we added various factors as we considered things like what conditions would need to be fulfilled for enemies to attack, or the types of battles and events that would occur as a result (Astral Candescence, capturing or liberating NPCs). With the technology at the time, we couldn’t make them quite as expansive and intense as we’d imagined, but I’m glad we were able to create a large-scale battle that turned everyday locations into extraordinary events, something we hadn’t had in FFXI before. (Koichi Ogawa, Director)

When the time came for us to begin taking concrete measures against RMT vendors, the existing Operations team was centered around customer support and had completely different duties, so we pulled members from the GM team to form an independent specialized team.
As we cracked down on RMT vendors, we learned more about their inner structure, which involved roles like farming gil, holding onto the profits, and conducting the actual transactions.
Coming up with better ways to eliminate these vendors and devising new countermeasures against elusive groups became our day-to-day battle. We frequently convened with a member of the Legal team to develop criteria for evaluation and penalties, especially in our early days when we had still had little knowledge of these matters. (It’s a battle we still fight today!)
I don’t remember who started it, but our weekly STF meetings came to be known as “strategy meetings,” owing to the fact that we investigate and expose RMT activity to round up all the perpetrators. Even today, these strategy meetings are still held every week. (Toshio Murouchi, Global Community Producer)