Oh I agree with you! No question they needed to make the game more accessible to more people, and that its industry wide. Social media Zynga games and mindless mobile games are where the money is at nowadays. The MMO world HAD to adjust or else risk extinction.
Today's typical young MMO gamer has never seen a game instructional manual on paper. They don't read pdf files. They play a game for 2 weeks to 2 months and move on. And thats being kind
However, this is where Turbine in my opinion has shined for the most part, and made a few glaring errors. DDO still has such good combat, such a strong LFM feature, a huge variety of options for character creation and leveling, DIFFICULTY SETTINGS FOR EACH DUNGEON, built in VoIP, and is still designed from the ground up for groups. DDO has matured, by nature of the MMO world around it, the game people play who want more options then mindless mobile/zynga/facebook entertainment. Something they can sink their teeth into.
I think Turbine should haul together those that have been around the longest and ask them why the hell they keep playing. Then, ask new blood what they are looking for in this game. I can tell you that these two ends of the spectrum are not as far off as some might think. Very few in our guild have moved on because of anything Turbine has done, and the ones that did leave was because of their RL situations. Even then, often when their RL is in order, they come back.
Why? The answer is usually the core reasons DDO has been successful for so many years, among them the reasons I mentioned above.