The article linked to says:
"The biggest invention is the ability to cobble together a group of five fighters from your single-player game and take them online to fight against your friends."

I would think that this is talking about that bullshit from FE7, but the IGN article they link to says
"You begin an online battle by first creating a team using up to five units that you've built up in the single player story mode. Battles take place over versus-specific maps."

If there are maps, I would think that this would mean that there is actual multiplayer.
As a huge Fire Emblem fanatic, I honestly couldn't care less. Fire Emblem does not lend itself to multiplayer like Advance Wars because you don't have nameless units that you can regenerate as much as you want. FE has specific characters who, once killed, never come back to the battle (in single player, they NEVER come back, but I would presume that they're only gone for the battle if you're in multiplayer). Plus, all of these characters have stats that determine their skill. In this case, it sounds like Fire Emblem's multiplayer would be more like a numbers contest and a flip of a coin.