Quote Originally Posted by Deifact View Post
There's a problem with making content difficult though and that is that theres a huge number of incompetent players. The other issue is that dungeons are fun for the first X number of times you run them, but when you start getting into double digits it's no longer fun. This is where incompetence and repetitiveness would compound to create a really frustrating experience.

Sure struggling through a difficult dungeon is fun the first time, but can you imagine doing it over and over? This game is molded out of repetition. Whether this design was due to the fact the game had to have a really fast makeover when 1.xx flopped and the repetition is to buy them time to make the expansion, or whether the expansion will just be more of the same, who knows?
In a harsh and uncompromising game the incompetent players would just give up and go away so problem solved there. Unfortunately that would mean fewer subscriptions which is why we'll never see much hard content beyond coil or its equivalents. It's really that simple at the end of the day. As much as I would love to see challenging content return to all aspects of gameplay (and I mean challenge, not grind, some people seem to always think they're the same thing) we'll never see it happen since WoW showed that appealing to the lowest common denominator is the best way to make money from an MMO.