On top of all that, they've upped the low-end difficulty to the point that everything feels like a chore instead of fun, and I just find myself not wanting to play more than the current story for the week, when I used to put 40-80 hours per week in. And I only did enough PvP to get the rewards, so that was almost entirely PvE play.

I fully admit that I played too much, but I enjoyed all that, until they decided to up the base difficulty. I've yet to meet anyone that enjoys the new difficulty levels, because now the base is too hard to casuals and the top end didn't get any harder, which is what the hardcores wanted. I've even heard the hardcores complain about the slog through lower-level content that is still no challenge for them, just more time-consuming.

I don't think they could have managed to screw up that change any more than they did.