Meh. Not a fan of the tiered loot idea or the WoW system of making gear obsolete in 6 months. There are other effective incentives to keep players playing: quests to access to new areas, epic storyline, great community are just a few.

As much as people hate the FFXI comparison, there's no getting around it because a good portion of FFXIV's players are from FFXI. Chains of Promathia was hands down the most memorable expension for everyone I know...what was the reward at the end of all of those pain in the ass fights? A ring and access to sea. It was a really great ring...but it was a ring. Yeah, there was the potential for more gear associated with access to sea, but no one knew any of that until after the fact. The storyline was epic and it drew people in. There was no skipping a CoP CS! You yelled at your friends for TALKING during them, it would have even been inconcievable to SKIP it.

What I'm saying here is that I'm going to be very disappointed if we're going in the direction it appears we're going. I'm excited for 2.0 and most of the changes...but changes like this and the prospect of constantly raiding to upgrade the gear I just got puts me off bigtime and I'm sure I'm not the only one.