To me it came down to betraying the customer base that had supported them for the customer base that they hadn't tapped into (casuals).
I think they saw that for every 1 customer they had who liked the difficulty of EQ there were many times more who would play if that difficulty was removed.
Would have been a smart move had Blizzard not seen that earlier and made a superior casual game.
Thats why we got instances, portals, etc etc, of course as someone mentioned above, if you get casuals you also get rampant cheating, ebaying, plat buying because of the "I work / study / rape hamsters 24/7, why should I work for stuff in game" mentality that comes with the casual crowd.
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