Likewise, PvP'ers who hold up virtual 'exclisive' trinkets to feel 'special' as if anyone cares about them

Pro tip: your achievements will become irrelevant in time. They are already irrelevant as nobody cares about S1 or S2 gear. What exaclty do you gain from exclusive goods nobody cares about?

And when they will all die with servers shutdown... what will you do? You'll remember it as 'Hey, once I spent 1000 hours to get that PvP item which only 10 people had on my server in that dead MMO while others were having fun in PvE by sharing everything and working together'? That doesn't sound like a good memory.