There are already quite a few things reminiscent of FFXII (I believe the art director might be the same?) which I think is a very good thing. I love the similarities in art style and the semi-modern looking versions of armour coming out that seem similar to stuff in XII.

I do agree though, I always thought XI would've been great if it'd been made after XII and taken on some of it's gameplay aspects (not the targetting-eye-lasers mind, those got kind of annoying) it could've been a much more interesting game. Here we are in the next MMO after XII and it sort of feels like they forgot a lot of the neat things they'd done there, though obviously it's a lot harder to implement things in an MMO scenario than offline.