Here's my view.

If a piece of content requires you to put multiple sources of exclusive content to populate it, and still does not populate enough. Then it's time to review the content itself.

There is nothing wrong with Alexander Normal. Alexander Savage is tuned too high for the majority of the players in this game to enjoy.

In my opinion, that means Savage shouldn't exist, not in the state that it does anyhow. It's not about the rewards, but the content itself. People just don't have the time nor the desire to gather 8 people together once to twice a week to beat their heads on difficult content - the rewards are irrelevant. Forcing them to in order to enjoy story, will just hurt our subscription base in the wider portion.

I have ideas on how to retrofit the content to be challenging, enjoyable, and still competitive without the insane level of difficulty we currently have. But I'm not sure such a view is welcome here.