[quote=Kill Bones]
Iunno, at the end of the beta they pretty much quadrupled the difficulty to test the ng+ difficulties and that was bearable, albeit pretty difficultAnd the default beta wasn't really that much harder than the original aside from exploits being patched out like roll infinity frames and longer backstabs.
[/quote]

But I've heard things from people who were invited to play the full game in San Francisco for an hour. 

[hider=SPOILERS]
In an hour of playtime, they did not get enough souls to level even once. They were given an Estus flask with only one charge and no way to recharge it, at least up front. There was no Master Key. None of them got to a boss, despite being experienced Demon's Souls and Dark Souls players.[/hider]