White Raven earring given out at The Rising event 2018

[Niwashi]

However you can't just stomp your way through the original Nael Deus Darnus. It's unavailable. Meaning the difficulty was as it was, and never got easier.

— never until now ... unless calling this year's Rising event "The Calamity Returns to Ul'dah" means something other than the obvious.

It sounds as though we're helping that reporter write the story of the calamity by reviewing (reliving) what happened at the time. In which case, we're getting a version that tells the same story, but without the difficulty. Is that all that different from doing level 50 content as an unsynced level 70? Both seem to have the same issue of rewards that were once hard to obtain becoming easier as the content becomes easy. If your real problem is that you don't like the idea of hard content becoming easy content, then you've got a lot more to be bothered by than this event or its rewards.