First of, let me say that I don't care whether SE recognizes this tactic as an exploit (read: cheating) or not. The fact of the matter is that any system that rewards you more for failing an objective than completing it is broken and bad game design. The people who are using this tactic are by definition exploiting bad game design to rush through the game as fast as possible. It's not an opinion.

Now we have entry requirements on leve parties that you must have the most optimal leves for linking or you can't play? I see people shouting that in Uldah all the time. If this continues it will be just another huge turn off for new players. In addition, what new player is going to endure abuse from another party member because they completed what they thought was supposed to be their objective?

I think that the solution is to balance the rewards for leves and ensure that no subset gives substantially more SP than all of the rest. If they were all more or less the same, then there'd be no incentive to fail specific ones.

I guess my question now is, does anyone know if SE plans to address this in future updates? I haven't seen anything posted recently one way or the other.