I agree with this assessment. The better part of a decade later and many of XI's storyline reward items are very good. This was especially true prior to the level cap being raised when all of them were basically must-haves. Supa and Brutal still hold water, as does the WoTG reward earring for many jobs. I don't think I've lost in DM or pre-nerf CoP missions but we went 1/10 on Raven. Even still, I would have preferred that they average the difficulty of normal and hard modes, made it one fight, and given the earrings as the reward. The only thing I can think of is that they didn't want to make it look like they were handing out amazing, 2.0 unattainable gear to 1.0 players.