Fantasy Earth Zero

Fantasy Earth Zero was a 2006 massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed for Microsoft Windows. Originally developed by Puraguru (now known as Vanillaware) and Multiterm under the title Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion, it was released by Square Enix as a paid product through its PlayOnline service. It relaunched under Gamepot as a free game, and was later handled by developers SoftGear and Ocean Frontier and was transferred back to Square Enix. Under the premise of a world where rival kingdoms engage in frequent conflicts, players choose an allied kingdom and fight against each other in groups of up to fifty players. The game closed down in September 2022.

Fantasy Earth began in 2001 as a project under Enix, with Puraguru founder George Kamitani steering the project away from its initial concept of humans fighting vampires to its current kingdom-based aesthetic. Kamitani and Puraguru left the project in 2004 due to differences with Square Enix, with Multiterm taking over production duties. Production met with several challenges including logistic issues, the technology required for large-scape online battles, and the merger of Enix with Square in 2003. The original music was composed by Basiscape, a company founded by composer Hitoshi Sakimoto.

The original release was unsuccessful, but following its re-release under Gamepot it became successful and profitable, gaining one million players by 2011. Reviews have praised its aesthetic and gameplay loop. Over the years, Fantasy Earth featured collaborations with several other video game series, and spawned two spin-off mobile titles. Kamitani and Basiscape would collaborate on all future Vanillaware titles.