A similar realization had a major impact on how Blizzard approached end-game raiding in WoW. In the first 2 expansions, only the most dedicated players were se

A similar realization had a major impact on how Blizzard approached end-game raiding in WoW. In the first 2 expansions, only the most dedicated players were seeing the final boss and culmination of the storylines. It took 40 players working together to get there, and those 40 players had to execute complex fights in order to reach the end. Though a very rewarding experience for those who could do it, Blizzard did the math and realized they were excluding the VAST majority of their playerbase from the coolest content. They were spending tons of money creating this content and no one was experiencing it! In the 3rd expansion and ever since then, end game content has been tuned to be a lot more forgiving and to require less people. There are still complex and rewarding fights, but ramping up the difficulty is "opt-in" generally speaking. This is likely one of the reasons the game remained so successful for so long. Prior to this mentality shift, it was very common for end game MMO content to only be seen by a small minority of the players.