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A recurring theme on the boards right now is the complaint that certain areas,bosses,quests,etc. are far too hard,and should be reduced in difficulty<referred to as nerfing in internet vernacular>. KI has acquiesced in certain areas,and done just that. A good example would be the latest changes to Dragonspyre . Some of the areas there used to present a challenge to seasoned players,now they do not. KI's official post was they were doing it "to bring it inline with other areas of the game",but had the numerous thread complaints not been voiced,that probably would never have happened. Another good example is the Celestia preview quests;they have actually been made optional now due to the excessive whining. One lady<who's name escapes me> posted a very well written and thoughtful appeal to KI to not forget the children who play this game. She had valid points. But by conceding to these and other issues, KI may well be on their way to dooming themselves in the long run. Why? It is actually very simple; remove challenges,and players get bored,and move on to other things/games where they find new challenges. It has happened to many once-powerful internet games, Everquest being a prime example.
KI is actually in sort of a unique area though. Most of the other games cater to a specific crowd,but KI is firmly established as a "family game". That probably makes game decisions a nightmare. They cannot change anything without upsetting a portion of their player base. That base consists of three basic areas. You have what i refer to as the Novice players<young players and those not able or wanting a difficult challenge>. Next would be the Casual player<probably the bulk of players who prefer challenge and novice content>. Finally would be the Hardcore Player<Only wants the extreme challenges,nothing less will do> So KI is probably in a quandary as how to resolve issues while keeping the masses happy. A simple suggestion would be to keep common encounters in the median or casual difficulty while making dungeons and bosses an optional setting. When a player enters one of these optional areas,they are given a simple choice as to the content difficulty. A screen would pop-up and offer either novice,casual,or hardcore. Whichever mode is selected would determine the difficulty of said dungeon or boss. A player could determine their own risk vs. reward. The rewards being higher or lower depending on which difficulty they choose. By doing this,KI would effectively appease the masses with very little dissension.<some players you can never appease> There are several popular internet games which use similar systems and are having great success with it. I hope this suggestion helps. :-D

The idea is good, but it would be a major undertaking to program. It would probably require a complete rewrite to many areas of the game.