I am hesitant to say that the quality of the series has gone downhill until I sample the gameplay of Final Fantasy XIII.

I think that Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII are far more different than Final Fantasy X before it, and that alienated a lot of people who were unable to play the former and found the latter too different than its predecessors. In reality, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII were very similar in concept and Final Fantasy XII only took aspects of Final Fantasy XI to make it work offline; furthermore, they utilized the developer concept of Ivalice to flesh out the backstory of the game. Ivalice had only been used before that in Vagrant Story and the Final Fantasy Tactics series.

I think that the series would be faring far better were Final Fantasy XI called Final Fantasy Online and another title was made several years ago called Final Fantasy XI. I'm sure that they have the development notes somewhere about an unfinished game that was meant to be Final Fantasy XI before the company decided to move forward with the online title. Do you know what I mean?