Steps of Faith was fine. You only needed to follow some mechanics and expecting everyone to play his own class with a minimum - normal understanding and willing to give it's part. Which in my opinion is the least I should expect of anyone willing to pay monthly sub game to play with in the first place. The problem it had it was that gated a entire expansion behind it.
All I know is, whenever it showed up in my roulette, it almost always ended up in wipes, vote abandons, or both -- all in all, a bunch of wasted time. Much like Royal Menagerie. And yes, the fact that it gated the expansion meant its nerfing was inevitable. People were not going to stand behind an expansion they didn't even get to play.

With how much stuff is gated in this game, difficult content shouldn't be in the storyline (and I mean difficult in a general sense, not specifically what *you* subjectively think is difficult. If the DF regularly fails it, as far as I'm concerned that means it's difficult in a general sense.) That's what extremes/savages are for.

Having played XI I must say that delevel-Exp loss system wouldn't work in nowadays gaming experience. Too much frustrations, more if you die because of some else's fault as someone said above. But we DO need something, for example, like PotD where a party wipe can kick everyone out and lose progression.
Oh, I wasn't saying this game should have EXP loss. It has far too much reliance on cheap instawipe mechanics as a means of fake "difficulty" for me to condone such a thing.

Just saying, if there WAS experience loss, we would obviously be able to get a buffer like we can in FFXI, rendering the whole "nigh impossible to stay at max level without deleveling" thing moot.