Quote Originally Posted by Kurogaea View Post
I really don't think you know how PvPers actually think as a whole. We're impatiently waiting for the feast because we have nothing to work towards and PvP is rendered a minigame now, almost on par with the Gold Saucer at this point. We don't judge our competitiveness through fighting, but experience, and the best way we had to show that was our ranks.
I understand that, but I believe using ranks to judge experience is no longer the main focus of PvP, it was up until patch 3.2. SE is taking PvP to a more serious level now with rating and leaderboards, and they want as much participation in this as possible, thus they removed the rank restriction on gear (as mentioned by Zhexos here). For players who have been devoted this long in PvP, they'll now have a chance to use this experience they've gotten for 2 years and finally be able to use it in a competitive setting.

In my opinion, increasing ranks every patch or two and having new gear to grind for is not really a good direction to take PvP, as participation still remains fairly low overall. I think SE knows this and wants to take PvP in a different direction now, a direction that will allow both new and veteran players participate, with hopes of increasing the PvP playerbase.