The point I take from your post is something I've noticed ever since I started playing MMOs with EQ back in 1999: There is a fundamental battle between the RP and the G in MMORPG.
The people who want to be immersed and enjoy a roleplaying experience often have disdain for the min/maxing metagaming activities, while those who approach the experience as a pure game enjoy the challenge of pushing their characters to the limit, and don't care too much if that makes little sense from the standpoint of story and canon.
The point is it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to please both groups. Do you try to encourage diversity and let everyone be a unique snowflake? Then you can't make encounters too challenging, or else the majority of your players won't be able to participate - only then the hardcore audience will tell you your game is boring and doesn't provide the excitement your competitors have.
Ultimately, I think as a developer you have to pick a side. You can make concessions and try to provide some of what both groups want, but when it comes to the end-game (which, hopefully will keep your subscribers around for a long time to come) I haven't seen a successful game that has it both ways. I think most games to this point have catered to the majority audience, which seems to be the G-gamers, but we shall see what BioWare does once they have a large population of max level characters.
