FF14 Players Hold In-Game Vigils After Band Bassist Eikichi Iwai Dies
Final Fantasy 14 players have been holding in-game vigils across the game’s servers after the death of Eikichi Iwai, bassist in the MMO’s official rock band, according to a report from the gaming outlet whose article is the basis for this story.
Square Enix confirms the death
Square Enix confirmed on November 11 that Iwai had died suddenly at the age of 57. In its official statement, the company said the news “has come as a profound shock” to the whole team.
Iwai played in the official Final Fantasy 14 rock band, which lead composer Masayoshi Soken started in 2014. The group turns the game’s music into heavy rock arrangements for fan events. The source says Iwai had played a Fan Festival set in Tokyo just ten days before his death, which was where players last saw him.
Vigils spread across servers
Within hours of the news, players on several servers began gathering in tribute. The source notes the gatherings echo vigils the community held for Berserk creator Kentaro Miura in 2021 and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama in 2024.
The largest took place on the European server Omega. Players there arranged a ring of campfires around the Aetheryte Plaza in Limsa Lominsa, the city’s main teleport hub, and sat side by side along its edges.
Players on the Zodiark server lined their own plaza with campfires. On Japanese servers, a crowd gathered around a glowing blue statue of Ifrit, the fire god players meet early in the story, and waved red glow sticks, much like a front-row audience at a concert.
One group of players also staged an in-game tribute concert. In Oceania, a player who began a solo vigil in the glowing flower fields of Elpis reportedly found others were “still here 7 hours later.”
A community with a record of support
The report points to other examples of the FF14 community looking out for one another. During an outage last month, players reportedly watered the crops of locked-out strangers so that nothing wilted.
It also noted that other Square Enix MMO communities have rallied in similar fashion. Earlier this year, the original developers of Final Fantasy 11 paid tribute to a 91-year-old player who spent nearly two decades in Vana’diel.
No further details about the circumstances of Iwai’s death were included in the source material.
Source: dexerto.com
Image: Kyle Gaddo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
