Deku said:
Concerning the FF MMO rumour, a successor to XI is obvious but I don't think it will be VII or XII. XII's graphics engine and battle system was basically a derivative of XI so doing an MMO of XII would be relatively lazy and unproductive. S-E would want to make a big splash and make a clean break. I would guess they would go further back than VII.
I personally think they'd got for a completely new world, so that it's not restricted by anything they've done before. However, it would be pretty nice to explore some untouched areas of the world in VII or XII.
It has to a universe with the appropriate job sytems to support an MMO which XII qualifies given its roots from the Tactics franchise, but there's alot going against it, including its lack of popularity in Japan and FFXI is by far still one of the most popular MMO there.
Jobs and races in XII are closest to what an MMO would need, but I still don't think there's enough variety in XII. Can't see them ever letting you play as moogles, so it would be left down to 4 races, which I don't think is enough for an MMO. I'd welcome an online FFT in the meantime though
Edit: Also I believe another FFXI expansion was announced already in late 2006 so the next MMO may be a ways off yet.
No, I don't think so. However, even if they're working on one, they would just put a small team on that and the main team would be working on the next MMO at this point. There is no conceivable way they are not working on a new MMO right now. They know FFXI's population is dwindling and they've been talking about the new one for a couple of years at least.