Allagan Gear getting buffed to ilvl95.

[Hanabira]

GW2 is definitely not the only game to add a system where you could get similar gear through artificially gated content. GW2 and FFXIV may be the only two AAA games that made it a bit easier to do that. I won't mention the taboo MMO here, but another example is Aion. When 3.0 hit, you had a few options: Run Tiamat Stronghold for gear, do a quest line for gear (a questline that was far more time consuming and expensive), or collect kahrun coins to exchange for gear on an NPC. This is just one example, but definitely not the only game to place some non-end tier raiding progression that was comparable.

was the questline level appropriate? or could you have someone with a glowy shield hold everything while you put mobs to sleep and win?

Level sync is the reason that would make sense. You level sync to under level 50, and therefore you shouldn't be seeing weapons drop that you cannot equip. But in WP you are getting tomes to equip gear that requires level 50 (both i70 and i90 are equipable by a level 50 character). It isn't a good reason but its the only one that makes sense imo.

we are talking a pure item level argument here. but you bring up another great point.. should we really be earning ilvl.70 and i.lvl90 gear at the same time with the same content? lol

edit: darn.. we still have daily post limits?? really? lol... maybe if i run more WP i can get more of that too.

[Aethaeryn]

was the questline level appropriate? or could you have someone with a glowy shield hold everything while you put mobs to sleep and win?

Quest line was simply time consuming and gold consuming. Didn't require special gear or dungeons except for the weapon, which was significantly harder. The kahrun coin gear was completely solo stuff -- Handful of quests where you killed some target mobs (easy ones) every week and obtain coins to save for gear. You could get some outside of the weekly cap by doing some dungeons that gave coins as a reward too, so in this sense it was even easier than FFXIV's system. They added some gear that was better like a year later, but thus is how the whole progression system works with MMOs anyway.

My point is that FFXIV is definitely not the only game to try and cater to more than one play style. Hardcore raiders are a minority on MMOs. If you want to keep casuals playing, you have to implement ways for them to progress without feeling pressured to complete content they aren't mechanically inclined enough to do or don't have time to do.