Quote Originally Posted by Zhexos View Post
Greetings,

We understand that removing the PvP rank requirement on gear may dishearten those who worked on attaining those ranks to wear that gear specifically; however, considering that we're looking to get as many players excited about the upcoming release of The Feast, we decided to remove the rank requirement at this time. Hopefully this adjustment will further encourage new users to tackle PvP-related content ahead of Patch 3.21 in preparation of The Feast and also help to foster the PvP community.
I'm pretty sure most of us understood that this was intended to lure as many new players into PvP as possible, and I think we can all agree that it's a good enough reason for any change. That said, the concern that a lot of us have over this change is that there won't be a strong enough incentive to continue playing PvP. Getting people in the door is fine and dandy, but if you don't offer them a reason to stay then they won't. At the moment, hardcore PvP'ers have huge incentives to stick around because of league rankings, diamond league rewards, and a promising future for competitive tournaments, community organized events, etc. Casual players, on the other hand, have no real reason to keep queuing besides tome bonuses.

This change is not necessarily bad and is being implemented for a very good reason, but, by itself, it is not enough for a sustainable PvP community, especially because the change is purely cosmetic. The Morale stat is useless, and PvE gear easily competes with PvP gear. So, this change is really just window dressing. If Morale actually applied to PvP, then this change would have made more sense.