This is the quick translation of an interview with the FFXI staff regarding the future of the game:
Concerning battles:
Dark Knight will be able to summon a Demon. (Not sure if this is similar to the Dragoon's Wyvern, or a one-shot attack, or what).
Summoners will be updated. They are *not* adding summon monsters any time soon, but will be updating the summoner class to make it much stronger than it currently is.
They're considering changing things so that if a party is attacking a strong monster, there will be less collateral damage (i.e. area of effect spells it uses won't effect other people not in the same party as its attackers, if a party zones to escape a strong enemy it won't just go on a murderous rampage and kill all the newbies at the zone, etc.)
Concerning Limbo:
Limbo is a set of capturable battlefields for really high level players. (i.e. they count for conquest)
It won't be easy to get out of. No simple teleporting in and out of it.
There will be new Burning Circles there called Giant Burning Circles that will require a new type of alliance, an Over Alliance, to stand a chance. Over Alliance will have more than 18 people (but they don't specify how many).
You will have to walk into and out of the Limbo areas, no teleporting around. And this is a 'direct quote': "It's no picnic, and we plan to keep it that way. This stuff is going to be hard."
It will be impossible to survive there without having a party go in together, and have a really good strategy for staying alive.
There's a purpose to going into Limbo, but they're not saying what it is yet. There will be quests to go there and retrieve items and such.
Concerning PvP:
Has nothing to do with Limbo. Nothing at all.
You have to complete some quests before you can participate.
You won't be able to just kill anyone. (I'm assuming this means only others who have finished the quests, and even then there could be some restrictions).
Concerning Missions:
Nation-specific missions aren't going to be expanded any time soon. They're planning some stuff for them, but it's too early to say anything. (Currently they only take you to rank 5 or 6 now anyway, and then the Zilart missions kick in to get you to rank 10).
There will be no further Zilart missions.
They will definitely be continuing the storyline with further missions, however. (possibly Limbo-related).
Big Plans for 2004:
Job balancing for PvP. (I really, really hope this only affects job balance at PvP levels, and doesn't interfere with the way things work now. I've seen so many games go horribly astray when they start castrating classes to make them PvP safe. But so far Square hasn't let me down, and they seem to know what they're doing, so there's hope )
More Content for level 30-40. (Sounds neat, especially since I'll be there soon.)
The interview can be found at gameonline.jp
-AshTS