和田洋一
In December 2010, he was taken off the "Dragon Quest" team and placed in charge of the staff that developed the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Final Fantasy XIV", which had been unsuccessful since its launch several months before. Then company president Yoichi Wada attributed this decision to Yoshida's experience, "charismatic" leadership skills and "passionate" will to satisfy customers. Yoshida was not acquainted with any of the "Final Fantasy XIV" team's members and thus had to demonstrate his dedication to the project first to gain their trust as director. He then talked with the individual developers to find out their ideas for improvements to the revised version known as '. He proceeded with describing to the team the precise goals to achieve. Yoshida drew some inspiration from his long-lasting enthusiasm for MMORPGs, having played such titles as "Ultima Online", "EverQuest", "Dark Age of Camelot", "World of Warcraft", "Warhammer Online", "Rift", ' and "Guild Wars 2". As a result of his direction, reviewers and commentators have credited Yoshida with "rescuing" the "Final Fantasy XIV" project. He went on to work with Matsuno in creating the Return to Ivalice raid for , saying he "was able to fulfill [his] dream to work with Matsuno-san".