And with all due respect, by what criteria do you gauge the Shroud's difficulty of now versus then? Did you play it "back then"? I've played the Shroud since it first came out. It is certainly not harder now.
A Raid group that has the same equipment and abilities we had then would have the same chance of failure as we did. Especially if the majority did not know what had to be done.
The fact is when he talks about level 12 and such doing it was because we had done it so many times that we knew exactly what to do and at that point everyone knew what equipment to have. It's not like we waltzed in when the Shroud came out with our level 12s and conquered it. Although some probably could.
You have to remember that Turbine was very slow to put out new content at that time. Veterans had time to farm for alot of equipment before new content finally came out. Other then rolling new alts that's all there was to do.
And it was a much smaller and thus tight-nit community. When someone went into the Shroud on their level 12 they went in with their friends and guildmates.
I just don't know how you can gauge the Shroud's difficulty of now versus then unless you played then. You may believe whatever you wish of course. But the players have more tools at their disposal then they did back then, namely Mass Heal and WoB to name a few
Besides Blacksteel didn't give any wrong or misinformed information. He simply stated the fact that level 12's did the Shroud. He made no comment on it's difficulty, now or then.
However, since you have no data to back up your statements, and actually since we've gone up in power and have more abilities and spells available (let's not forget the PREs too which increased every melee's dps), you are actually in danger of spreading wrong or misinformed information.