MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh writes this report from the recent Final Fantasy XI Fan Fest, a sold out event that allows players of the seven year old title to gather and share in their hobby.

The Final Fantasy XI Fan Festival held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles on the 5th & 6th of December was sold out just six hours of the tickets going on sale. A total of 550 fans shelled out $40 each for the privilege of attending this fourth Fan Festival in the US and this is the fastest that tickets had sold out. Not bad for an MMO that will celebrate it's 7th year in operation in May of 2009.

Development

The Fan Festival kicked off with a Development Presentation. Producer Hiromichi Tanaka introduced the packed Ballroom to three new scenarios in the works; The Crystalline Prophecy (ode of life restoring), A Moogle Kupo D'etat (evil in small doses) and A Shantotto Ascension (the legend torn, her empire born). These are strictly storyline expansions expanding on the history and myth of Vana'diel. Each volume is quite a bit smaller than other expansions to date and all are being developed concurrently with the current Wings of the Goddess Expansion updates. A new Dev team was actually brought on to work on these storyline scenarios. Each volume is scaled from the solo player of about level 30 all the way to alliances of level 75 parties. Each storyline will indeed require an alliance of level 75 players to complete the final battle.

Read Carolyn's Fan Fest Report