In the longer term we are working on the ability to store HTML instead for new wikis, in which case it might become possible to run without Parsoid if you don't need a wikitext editor front-end. This is not going to happen over night and will just be an option, so no reason to worry.
So right now, assuming I don't have Parsoid, Visual Editor creates pages in Wikitext, it just can't edit previously existing pages? I would assume that this also means that without Parsoid if I edit a page in the regular Wikitext editor, I won't be able to use Visual Editor with it anymore.
VisualEditor is an HTML editor and doesn't know about wikitext. All conversions between wikitext and HTML are done by Parsoid. You need Parsoid if you want to use VisualEditor on current wikis.
This is what I had originally thought, but then somehow along the way I managed to get confused. Thank you for clarifying.
Thank you, Derric Atzrott