I will try to qualify this and hopefully via discussion we can flesh out the real meaning of it.

Games are too inclusive... too easy. And I will clarify, I am speaking of MMOs (MMORPGs). Wow came out and created a rather easy game... and that is hugely successful, so it is so very hard to break that model.

The original MMOs were hard, complicated and demanded a serious time sink to be even slightly good. Many of them had single server drops... imagine that... only 1 uber armor is dropped on an entire server. 1 player had it.

We went from hard to predictable and challenging to predictable and go this way.

Does everyone have to have the same gear?
Stop... think about that! The solution has been to give ya a box of crayons so you could be "unique". Then next thing ya know the majority of the orphan millionaires are in all black.

We then went to spreadsheet gaming. You need this for this stat, and this for that stat and so on.... basically you are driving an excel avatar.

No, I do not have an answer. But I know that easy is short sighted (in my opinion). Basically it is saying you can be uber in 120 hours (yeah 120 hours is the quoted hours needed to hit level cap). Why put out a measuring stick? 120 hours.... well damn Im a looser! It took me 140 hours..... seriously... why?

There is no right answer here.
I just think the days of easy and fair are over... it is time for effort, skill and time. (yes, time in a game should matter.... if you want to grind 12 hours a day, you shouldnt just get to the end faster... you should move past)

To just head off the argument... no I am not a grinder nor do I waste hours on end playing.