Ahhh such a contraversial subject.

Well honestly, you guys are right, Squeenix is a company, the purpose of a company is too make profit. I'd imagine around $200 or so to play a game for one year sounds like a favorable choice.
And honestly I don't mind the idea too much, MMO's are loads of fun and offer hours upon hours of entertainment not seen in your typical solo rpg.
Besides, the team from Final Fantasy XI needs something to work on, and the most obvious choice would obviously be another MMO. As long as none of the mainstream FF developers are "wasting" there time on another MMO, then there should be no reprocussion on any of the standard FF games.

However, two complaints.
First, I hate the use of Final Fantasy "XIV" as the title. Final Fantasy Online 2 would have been suffice. I like having the games in a nice chronological order, XI and XIV kind of make the whole series, Especially to people unfamiliar with Final Fantasy, a cluster**** of complications, and I assume many pointless conversations on the order and types of Final Fantasy's will be manifested.
Secondly, MMO genres consist of World Of Warcraft, and then other games that aren't World Of Warcraft. In my personal opinion, if anyone is going to topple Blizzard as MMO king, it is not going to be Square-Enix. The only advantage they have is that they have experience developing a previous MMO, which at best is subpar considering the quality of the other FF titles. If anyone is going to do so, I imagine it would be Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic, based simply on the fact the KOTOR 1 and Mass Effect were similar in gameplay to an MMO, and the KOTOR universe is a perfect IP to have an MMO based game.

So I'm sure, unless it really kicks ass (and I have my doubts), FFXIV will probably be another obscure title in the series, and maybe at E3 '11 or E3'12 we will here the announcement of FF XV.