The real issue is that everyone cares too much what others think and get way too offended when someone puts down the series. If they don't like it, that's fine. If you still like it, that's fine as well. Just expect to come in here and see more negative than positive, and those who continue to post here should already know this.
For me personally, I still enjoy Fairy Tail enough to press forward with it. However, I can definitely see the bad in it and while I agree to some extent that the downfall began around Oracion Seis, I still think Edolas was pretty good overall. I think the crap really began during Tenroujima, and during the Grand Magic Games things really started to fall.
This week's chapter was pretty good for me, but the problem is that I really do not give a rat's ass about the princess or the Arcadias stuff. Or Future Lucy for that matter. So there's some stuff going on right now, such as Laxus vs. Jura and Erza vs. Minerva, that I'm still interested in. The Grey vs. Lyon stuff is just meh, because I don't expect much to come out of that. And then everything else is just whatever.
So I'm still mildly invested, but Fairy Tail is in no way a well written series and I'm no longer going to try to defend it. Six months ago I was still defending it, but Hiro has proven that he does not care nearly as much as he should about writing a series, so I no longer care about defending it.