Quote Originally Posted by Velhart View Post
This is hard to give a definite answer to. I would be interested to see how hard Savage would of been to approach if midcore players had something more FCoB level before hand. The mechanics in general would be familiar at least.
Based on the WoW numbers, where they have the two intermediate difficulties and see similar levels of player engagement, I suspect it might not have made a huge difference. That's something I'd like to be wrong about though.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's practical even with a much larger development team (if it's even possible) to get small enough gradients to get people from where Alexander Normal is to where Alexander Savage is. Even more so if you're doing it by repeating the same fights multiple times at slightly higher difficulty each time.

It'd be interesting to know how many people who couldn't beat A3S prior to having weapons from Thordan extreme obtained them and went on to beat A3S.