The overall theme of the gameplay was emulating the entertainment of both player battles and normal player-versus-environment combat. Production of "Fantasy Earth" was beginning during the time when asymmetric digital subscriber lines were becoming common, but the idea of a hundred players fighting each other was highly ambitious for its time and caused several problems. The game design was intended to be fast and action-based similar to first-person shooters, putting it in contrast with the command-based character control of most MMOs at the time. Several planned elements, such as stamina in battles and item or currency-based loss penalties, were dropped from the final release based on player feedback. Other issues included the lead staff changing multiple times, with Kamitani's departure being one of the more notable, enabling voice chat without crashing the system, and the merger of Square and Enix during the game's production. The music was composed primarily by a team from Basiscape, a company founded by former Square composer Hitoshi Sakimoto. Sakimoto was on board the project from Kamitani's tenure. The music was co-composed by Sakimoto, Masaharu Iwata and Manabu Namiki. All three also handled arrangements for the soundtrack. Another composer who worked on the original version was Kenichi Koyano.