Found this on MMORPG.com. They quote MMOsite as posting a rumor that FFXI will shut down. Appears a personal blog from a company member mentioned it, although its been taken down and denied officially.
It doesn’t surprise me, although it would be sad. The PS2/PS3 version has been dead in the water because of Sony quietly killing the DNAS servers for the playstation 2. FFXI players can’t get on because they can’t hit the Sony authentication servers. While the 360 is still active, its a blow for many who used the PS2 over it.
It was bullshit though to hear them saying “oh we wont replace FFXI” when they let you move your SE account over and use the exact (or nealy exact) same races. If this is true it just confirms it. It had to happen, but I think SE was not wanting to kill the FFXI cash cow.
I had a lot of fun times with FFXI, and a lot of anger too. Spent 3 full years of my life playing it, and for me it is my defining MMO. I’ll miss it if this is true.
MMO misanthrope 
This “endgame” is inevitable. It’s why I wish they would make these games playable as standalone products, especially console MMOs. Sure, that means they are more like “RPGs with optional multiplayer”, but that’s better value anyway.
There’s a joke that FF 12 is the offline Final Fantasy 11. However in MMOs case stand-alone products wont work. You need 6-18 people to do most things in FFXI, and there’s not much way to make that single player.
PSO tried it with its offline mode, but that led to some serious hacking.
Guild Wars managed to handle it via henchmen. *shrug* Maybe consoles don’t have the horsepower for it?
…and yeah, I can see FFXII as closer to an MMO than the venerable FFVI. 😉