Though FFXI was a glorified FFIII, so it fit in just fine with the main series lol. Renaming XIV will likely bring in even more criticism for it, like "They had to rename the game to fool people into buying it!"

They could probably stick with it's Rapture codename, but they're trying to turn this game into a FF and FF Mystic Quest was just as much of a FF game as FFII or X.

Only spinoffs styled games tend to be outside of the numerals..like Tactics, Crystal Chronicles and so on since they tend to be a completely different style of game, but FFXI for example was every much of an RPG as it was an MMO just like XIV is.

To be fair though, both Final Fantasy XI and XIV are still "Final Fantasy: Online" as seen:




And