Actually, most ao3 rares are not very rare anymore (bc of the nerf) and prices have dropped drastically. So much so that many people have stopped farming keeper, since his items are worth so little now.

I'm not saying the bosses don't require some effort and skill, but to say they're too hard bc a group of 40+ can't beat it is not a good argument. And the lvl 50 players who gave up quickly -- there's plenty of bad lvl 50 players out there, but most of those don't even bother to learn how to do it right. If you try to teach them while playing, they just ignore and keep doing it the wrong way.

I used to play my Mage the most before ao3 came out -- even unlocked the dungeons on my Mage and made it to lvl 50 first on that char. But then I saw how squishy my Mage was, and decided to start working on my bear, bc of the extra survivability. I was a complete and total noob on my bear! I would play crush the keeper and ppl would tell me to pull te beckon to corners. I'd try and get nowhere, bc I had only 1 point in beckon! I had no idea how useful it was back then.
The point is, I learned from playing with others, and respects my bear to a better build, and looked into which skills were most important. And with practice, I got pretty good. The friends I met in ao3 who also still somehat nokbish, ended up growing with me. We continued learning together and became skilled farmers. We used to try teaching others who didn't seem to have a clue, but sometimes people just don't want to learn. They prefer to just run in and do what they want, even if it gets them nowhere.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that ao3 should not be so easy to beat that anyone can run in there and pass through all levels with absolutely no skill. If you're having trouble, ask others to help teach you how to do it (Gurgox is only hard if you don't know how he works or have team members who take orbs at the wrong time, steal them from mages, etc).

So if it's hard, you either need practice or better teammates. Or both.

I still stand my my conviction that a tema of 40+ should not be able to defeat ao3. Unless they've really worked at it, learned from it, etc. But they shouldn't be able to just walk in there and beat it.