DoRayEgon wrote on Feb 7
th, 2017 at 3:05pm:
I've noticed a lot of players only grouping in guild runs and not PUG. I've posted a few LFMs for lower level (1-3) reaper, but only get 1 or 2 other players.
Sucks for someone like me in a small guild, but what are you gonna do? Oh that's right, there's this new character transfer thing....
A month or two ago when Reaper hit Lama, our guild had a lively discussion about it. I predicted that it would be exciting for most at first but in the end would only serve to further divide the haves from the have nots in DDO.
Power gamers will be fine. They'll just Reaper with their powergamer friends/guilds or solo missions on low to mid skull Reaper.
Casuals on the other hand won't be welcomed into the high-skull Reaper runs because they'd just be a handicap. They generally won't have the gear, past lives and min/max'd builds to solo EE/LE/low skull Reaper. They might normally be fine just running non-Reaper like they have in the past, but now the pool of powergamers that have helped/carried them through EE/LE will be MIA because they're busy running Reaper. This will lead to increased wait times for LFMs to fill and as a result, increased boredom and frustration with the game.
There have already been posts along these lines, both here and on the official forums. On Ghallanda at least, non-powergamers noticeably outnumber the hardcore players. Ignoring the larger customer demographic and increasing their unhappiness with the game is generally not a good long-term plan for the health of your product, especially when marketing initiatives and new, long-term customers are virtually non-existent.