Except it doesn't matter, at this stage in the game the player base needs new shinies, tons of new goals that are worth getting, to have incentive to stay here. Specially when there's things like Diablo III and MW3 coming out in the near future.
I don't see how any of your points change the fact that 80% of this new gear is nearly downgrades rather than upgrades, and are at the most slight upgrades. Other than the cloth body, and the Heavy body for non-PLD jobs in PDT/MDT sets, there's nothing significant enough to get the general population of this game to want to go get them. Looking at the list I can literally count on my fingers the amount of things that are at the most a slight upgrade. Several of them are weapons, which are always downgrades if not Relic/Mythic/Emp/WoE but not everyone has that for every job they have well geared.
