http://e3.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/696020/Live-…

Biggest criticism for FFXI was the fact that it didn't cater enough to the casual crowd, as the game required large investments of time from players in order to level up (by post 60, you would need to dedicate many hours to gain only a few levels). The other big problem was there was very little you could do on your own by the later levels. Leveling solo was only possible by less than a handful of job classes (with appropriate subjob combinations) but even then, these strategies were make-shift and no where near optimized by SE.

"A: Another very important concept that takes a different direction from FFXI, for FFXIV we want to make it so the player can choose to play solo, in a party, 40 minutes, all-day… there will be content for ALL of those play styles and systems for all of those play styles."

The ability to be able to choose between playing in parties or playing solo and still be equally productive is certainly a correction SE is making from XIV's predecessor.

“The development for FFXIV started 4 or 5 years ago with primary ideas. Development started a few years ago, while FFXI was still being supported. FFXI will continue to be supported. There is another year of content planned. There are no plans for the near future to stop development on FFXI. ”

“As with WoW, we want to aim a bit for the casual user. However, we don’t want to make a copy of WoW. We believe we will have things that are unique and will stand out from that game. ”

“All of the knowledge and experience we gained from FFXI will be used in the development of FFXIV. At the launch, we intend to have content for solo players as well as large-scale battles. We want a wide-variety from the start.”

“The current plans are to have worldwide servers that are cross-platform and cross-region. We will do a beta test and look at the balance and player experience. We want to look for a good balance between region and cross-region play. ”

“We envision users that will hopefully play XI one day and XIV another. They will be independent, but users are free to play both. ”

“We are trying to implement a lot of new systems that other MMO’s haven’t used in the past.”