Frankly I was more upset when there wasn't any first stage at all. When it looked like maybe a handful of people would be running around with level 99 weapons across all servers. Now THAT looked like a colossal waste of development time. Compared to that, this is a breath of fresh air.

...

We'll see what the stage 1 trials entail, but it appears to be a step in the right direction. Incidentally, are the people who are upset r/m/e holders? I would think that most people would be happy to know that the weapons' final stats can be obtained through a reasonable (maybe) amount of effort.

The argument that they are wasting effort on content that may as well not exist is a valid concern that I can get behind.