Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Sandpark]

Its the same old "But look at the numbers!" excuse. Principle of design, Yoshi-P. Story should be a reward, not something to be handed to you on a silver platter. If you are incapable of getting a group or lacking the skills to take on a raid tier, then wait till they put a echo buff and gimp the mechanics on normal mode. I am a broken record here, but the team needs to know when to make an MMO, and when to make a Final Fantasy. Nice to see also how enthusiastic his team is about making the raiding content. Almost like it shouldn't exist.

Bad Principle then. Are you saying the CoP story gate in XI was perfect and anyone un-able to find a good static should have been denied to experience the story? They later nerfed the content and group requirements after realizing all that hard work was what was preventing people from advancing.

I beat it in it's vanilla, but I knew many who just could not find the people, the time, or lacked the skill to progress the story line.

Raids are the least popular endgame not only because the difficulty is hard. It requires perfect harmony in skill and forming same schedule/skill competent groups for long play sessions on a regular basis.

The point here is watching the metrics. If 4-15% of the playerbase is getting new story completing raids and the rest aren't. Something is amiss. In a sub based game, isn't the point of a dev to try and get the most players possible having a reason to log in? If it's not, then the game should go full on hardcore and then they would have a couple of hundred thousand that never quit, but everyone else not in that category would fly the coop.

Normal should be pretty difficult, but not Savage difficult, more lenient towards pugs and mistakes. Savage should have the BiS and require statics, guild type content but just marginally better or you get a cry for content from both sides. The super elite saying the rest of the game is too easy and the other side who says the game is too hard.