Hurri

Many valid replies, and yes it does pretty much boil down to money and market value. I don't have a problem with that.
What bothers me the most I think is the fact they have had two price increases and two complete combat revamps since I have played taken a lot of content from the game and nerfed to hell most of the classes and mobs.
I also know your never going to please everyone.

Its great that they supposedly have a larger crowd now.
Would it be such a sin to do something different and make it so the game caters to even more people by making available some of the old code on a different server where those that actually enjoyed the challenge the game had could play?

Alania

The problem I see is that Sony develops this game with the people who play less than 10 hours a week in mind, and anyone that plays more than that is left with their thumb up their ass for lack of content. I believe in a top-down approach. Develop for players who have 20-25 hours a week to play, that way anyone who plays less than that will never run out of content, and those that play more than that already know they play alot and will find other ways to occupy their time (crafting, farming, etc). But, no, its easier and less dev time to just develop 10 hours of gameplay.

Kovacs

A top down approach could work, but the major problem is that those at the top and those at the botom want completely different things.
For those at the bottom to experience the full content of the game and see the top stuff then they would have to play more, which by default they cant or they wouldnt be at the bottom.

So what you end up with is really good top end content but crap down the bottom. And thats where the problems start, the top end of the game isnt as big as the bottom end, so if you sdtart losing the casual gamers you lose your main income, where as you can afford to dumb down the top end of the game and lose a few of your top end players while still retaining the meat of the player base (the casuals).

SoE is a business and it doesnt make business sense to appease the vocal minority at the expense of the silent majority. The reason being that the vocal majority will tend to stick it out because they are badly hooked on the game whereas the siltent majority will vote with thier feet and leave to play something else.

It woudl be great if they had the player base and funding to make everyone happy, but sadly they dont, so they will keep going down the route of most profit. Persoanlly I dont think the next expansion is going to be as bad as some people are trying to make out, but then im a casual not hardcore.