They overhauled the earlier zones to make the content easier for soloing. Once you reach the latter parts of North Downs (Dol Dinen in particular) things start to get a bit tougher. All the low level content is now very easy, but really it had to be made a bit easier as it was starting to get hard to get fs for some of the quests.
Try soloing some of the fs quests in ND, then it becomes a challenge. Also, if you have rolled a Rune-keeper then they do make it all look very easy, extremely fun class to play.
The Old Forrest has seriously been gimped, iirc it used to shift about a bit making it very hard to navigate and you daren't go into it solo, now it takes about an hour to clear it of all the quests, solo.
I like the game alot so I am biased and would stay stick with it, but I know it is not for everyone.