The 3rd podcast stated that online franchise was a long-term goal. I took that to mean it won't see much improvement next year and I was criticized heavily for saying that pretty much killed a lot of my interest in 12 already.
It's only December, no official news has been released yet and in this podcast they noted how the community is split between strictly offline and strictly online gamers. If they totally ignore online and concentrate strictly on offline franchise, I have a feeling they will get the same reaction from the community Madden 11 got, only in reverse and I think they would like to avoid that scenario.