Release date is early next year, I believe. I think the beta is slated for January.
As far as success goes, theyve done a remarkable job at keeping whats left of the playerbase happy while keeping others optimistic with their changes and openness about whats going on. Its been fun to follow. They also still havent tapped into the PS3 players yet. That could help them out a lot depending on how many people there still care. PS2 was huge for FFXI for a while.
I think that handling ARR as a re-launch is the best they couldve done too. Forget the old version and treat this as a new game.
I do wonder how itll fare as a subscription based MMO in todays F2P world.