A couple things I noticed — the dev team (influenced by Brenlo) are definitely making changes to encourage the less-hardcore amongst their audience. Someone complained about the research assistants, and specifically complained that it reduced what he could sells Masters at. Brenlo’s response? ‘As a 76 ranger with 30pp to my name, I don’t consider that a bad thing’. I’ll point out as well that when the research assistants were mentioned at the opening night kickoff, there were a cluster of young men who loudly booed; the rest of the crowd cheered. It appears that even amongst those hardcore enough to pay for Fan Faire, that it was in general a popular move.
During the session in which the change to all raids going forward was discussed, such that at each pull of a boss mob one can, through lore, set the difficulty level, a top-tier raider complained that this reduced his guild’s sense of accomplishment. This elicited a handful of responses: From the devs, they pointed out that since it IS handled through lore, the entire encounter changes based on the difficulty level, such that one might not even face the final boss on ‘easy mode’, and Rothgar pointed out the likelihood of achievements that indicate the mode/boss killed. Brenlo’s response was a bit more pointed — this is one of the few times I’ve heard a producer of any MMO state outright that it is a business decision. It is not cost-effective to produce raid zones that only 5% of the population ever sees (Brenlo’s stated percentage), and this change is in part to greatly increase the number of guilds that can work their way through the zones, and both see them and experience the lore.
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Blizzard has also been relatively upfront about it not being cost-effective to produce entire raid zones that most of the players will not see. I’m sure that SOE is watching WoW’s various attempts at “hard mode” raids to see what works and what turns out to be stupid.
It’s not clear to me how vocal Blizzard has been about the whys and wherefores since I don’t read their boards, but it is certainly true that they are making changes to encourage more people to participate in raids as a way to keep them playing after max level. (And similarly to what I heard this weekend, there was plenty of whinging from their bleeding edge about the ‘dumming down of the game’) I certainly hope that SOE is watching them to see what works — why reinvent the wheel?