In my opinion a MMO is a "success" if you could imagine being able to convince even one of your friends to play it for any amount of time.

I have tried. Even former players who have thick nostalgia goggles are fed up with it. Those are folks that have already cleared a lot of the roadblocks (some of which still cockblock me after years of casual play). Those are returning players. People who wouldn't have to scale the cliff this game has instead of a learning curve.

Crevox did a great job outlining the huge barriers for a brand new player. No one wants to subscribe to an MMO to play by themselves for months. The only really party based content is at endgame. Therefore, in order to get people into playing, endgame needs to be accessible. It isn't. I am starting to wonder if it can be fixed. They boxed themselves in with ilevel - as the playerbase gets higher and higher ilevel - they will abandon lower ilevel content (look at WKR - already people hardly do it) - making it hard/impossible for newer or more casual players to catch up. It feels like if you aren't doing content in the first two weeks it comes out, you are pretty much boned, and if you hadn't already been doing the newest content prior to it, you won't be invited to the new stuff.

I feel like difficulty currently swings between extremely difficult (shutting people out completely) or so easy it is eye bleedingly boring (hallo rala/cirdas/yorcia skirmish). I can't believe it but I am missing voidwatch because it felt a heck of a lot more tactical and there were roles less perfectly geared players could play.

I'd like more things like that, where you could win some, and lose some. Yes, as time went on (and weakening items were added) it got easier - but people all had a role to play in hitting procs and making the run a success... now it is either SUPER STRESSFUL AND YOU WILL PROBABLY FAIL, NOOB or it is OMG I AM SO BORED WANDERING AROUND HALLWAYS LOOKING FOR AN EXTREMELY BORING NM