Yeah, that's what I would wish for, something in between perhaps. It ought to be
1) the regular game first
2) regular cows to lvl up fast and maybe get some blue organs, grand charms, and some decent runes and scrolls
3) uber
4) inferno cows
5) plaguelands
6) to be determined
7) Inferno pits and swamp pit (the other two places in my opinion aren't worth it)
8) dreamlands
9) crucible and anything else
The first 5 are doable especially with a party of at least 1 veteran (say people who've been here for a month). Beyond that, it gets difficult fast.
It's either that or the drops have to be improved in one of the steps. I still suggest keys be made easier to get especially if you're going to have scrolls requiring you to sacrifice an annihilus charm. It only makes sense to do that. If you want, you can make the "diablo clone" harder instead of making getting keys and standards tedious.
Certain rune drops below say vex or ber should be vamped up as well. It would help a lot if I could get more ohm or ist runes for more damage and magic find. I don't mind if the other higher runes are harder to get. That's ok, by why do the other runes have to be difficult to get? I don't want to downgrade a ber or higher rune just to get 1 ohm rune. That's absurd. Also in a related note, guess what? I can't use most scrolls without high runes (or divine gems). Go figure.
As for working with other people, what exactly do you think I've been doing? If anything, it's the opposite. They're working for me, and I still can't do much with any of my characters beyond my necromancers. Trust me, I've been trying to get people aboard. I want to trade with other people, but as James put it these people almost always want say at least 5 high runes or more that I don't have because the drop rate is bad even at over 200 mf, so there goes trading for most anything I still need (though thankfully by now that list isn't so large). I want to do crucible runs and dreamlands too, but it seems a lot of other players don't want to (likely because they already have what they need and are sure that whatever does drop will go to newer players making it completely un-beneficial for them). You see the conundrum here? Newer players can't advance any time past probably a number of weeks without the help of veterans, and they're very unlikely to get access to high runes. Older players have to support them, and they're unlikely to give them anything really good (cow queen set, chtulu stuff, shrunken head, eyeball charm, torches, annihilus charms, and more) unless the noobies give them high runes which they don't have. This is an impasse plain and simple. You can say I should play the game harder all you like, but if I can't get high runes or scrolls with which to trade, or play with veteran players, then I simply CANNOT advance.