Quote Originally Posted by Kiote View Post
The way MMOs maintain a population is by making "End Game" content into regular content once there is a new end of the game. The "Average" player is always expected to be one End Game behind.
Mmm, that is pretty subjective to your own experiences, though. Take WoW for example, the old way they did things was to do what you are explaining there, however they reached the height of their subscriber base around the time they changed things up and evened out the end game so everyone could be on it. Having to work on old content first was not fair to new players who really had no entry into the lowest tier of content because nearly nobody was doing it.

As for hardcore feeling alienated, there are always ways to appease them, we already see attempts at this in game now, with the timed chest in Darkhold and the hidden boss(es) in Toto'rak.

And I just want to point out, your point still falls flat, the content was simply outleveled, there was no reason at all to do it since it consumed too much time and offered so little reward when you could get new gear so easily in Abyssea. This is rather obvious, and leaving me to wonder if you actually played XI when Abyssea was released.