Final Fantasy 14 players flooded a server to meet the MMO's composer in-game, but now worry it was an imposter all along

Final Fantasy 14's Hildibrand looks shocked — (Image credit: Square Enix)

The Final Fantasy 14 community has met up with composer Masayoshi Soken's in-game character - or, rather, who they believe to be Soken's in-game character.

Square Enix has recently been holding a slate of stress tests for Final Fantasy 14's cloud servers throughout all regions worldwide. According to the player below, someone with the in-game name 'Masayoshi Soken' crashed the farewell party for one of those temporary servers, with everyone immediately flocking to the beloved Final Fantasy 14 composer to snap a picture with Soken's character.

Apparently soken crashed a final days party CloudTest01 and they've started a line to take a pic with him aka "NA fanfest simulator" from r/ffxiv

The trouble is, no one can really work out whether this is actually Masayoshi Soken. It's important to note that Final Fantasy 14's development team does have in-game characters, and periodically drop into the MMO to chill out and Raid with players - game director Naoki Yoshida even has a semi-regular broadcast where he strolls around and checks out housing estates.

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"I thought they had special symbols?" writes one Reddit comment in response. "Yeah, staff accounts get a thingy to distinguish them," chimes in another player. A third player comments to point out that Soken's name quietly has one too many 'i's on the end - a classic shitposter staple used by Twitter grifters pretending to be famous people.

According to the Reddit post above, players queued up for a fair while to get a pic with Soken. The Final Fantasy 14 composer is utterly beloved by the player base, so you can see why people forgot about the odds of an imposter and lined up for a picture. It'd be nice if this were the real Soken, but unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Not only have we possibly been forced to endure an imposter, but we've also been forced to endure a player with the name 'Pregnant Spider-Man' in the screenshot just above. Never change, Final Fantasy 14 players.

Final Fantasy 14's staff recently got more than they bargained for when they asked players for their favorite mount (you can probably guess where that's headed).

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.