I'm glad they didn't tie these to the old BG factions. If you play an alt to 70 you can easily get enough rep for most of these items along the way without any rep grinding. Especially if they reduce them to honored- I just hit 70 on my third toon and he had every heroic key at 70 with absolutely no rep grinding (Kara attunement quests helped). Nevermind the fact that you could buy the "old" arena set in far less time in BGs than it would take to grind them all up to revered.

I guess I just take issue with what basically amounts to giving away free gear, much less a whole set of it, for something unrelated to the reward. You're right in saying that it would be fairly easy to have access to most of this gear upon turning level 70, I'm just not sure why anyone would think that's a good thing.

At least if it were tied to the old BG reps A) there would be a point to those factions again and B) you'd be earning PvP gear through.. PvP. What a novel idea. It would also require at least some concentrated effort on *EARNING* the rewards instead of grinding to 70 and holding out your hand for free loot.

And to whoever said there should be epic rewards for exalted - there are *already* epic rewards for hitting exalted with outland factions.

There's nothing wrong with giving away free gear though. It's not like there's a fair gear check for PvP like there is for PvE. If I get 2-shot in a battleground when I hit 70 because I didn't think ahead and farm honor at 59 and 69 like I've started doing, I can't just go back and re-run easier stuff to get the gear to make the battlegrounds I want to do easier. I'd have to grind out season one gear while trying desperately to hide behind someone that would survive a few more shots than me.

This finally balances things out a little bit, since it's essentially entry-level gear.