Quote Originally Posted by zosia View Post
They already said that the 210 aetherial gear will come from HNMs that are going to be harder in difficulty than the S ranks of hunts. Also, island exploration will not be a server wide zerg fest, it will be 24 man with monsters harder than s-ranks. I think it's safe to to make the assumptions I have made based off of the info SE has provided.
That's a pretty vague statement that doesn't really describe how much harder or more difficult they're actually going to be. From experience with how they've described the difficult of content before it's released in the past, I don't think it's wise to assume the difficulty at all before one gets to actually try the content themselves.

Plus, Notorious Monsters had low drop rates for gear. So much so that you had to beat them dozens or more times to get the items that you wanted. Are there weekly lock outs? Are there not? We don't know how difficult it is to get the 210 items from Exploration yet, it should be comparable to other means of obtaining that ilevel of gear. And as of right now, that means the incredibly difficult Alex Savage. I don't think a slightly harder 24 man raid would really compare to Alex Savage at the moment, and I don't know enough about Exploration to compare it yet.