Why are elite hunts so valuable? What are the devs thoughts?

[Dyvid]

I think it's more that they want more people geared for when they introduce the next wave of content. Apparently they had an issue with not enough people being geared for certain levels of content, so now they're giving the community a "push" to be able to reach that level in anticipation of the next "wave."

Well if this was the case why not have sand/oil drop from elite dungeons and EX trials? Instead it's one specific, non raid, piece of end game content instead of all of it.