OP makes it so crystal clear it's impossible not to see it.
Thank you for putting into words all of my thoughts about this game.

I can understand SE efforts to widening their appeal to more people, but this will hardly working and it's undermining both the fidelity of the hardcore playerbase and the appeal of SE in general.
Everything in its right place. It's that simple.

I would never dream of going to WoW\Rift forum asking for hardcore content.