"Maybe when Cataclysm comes out it will be a little more realistic for casual players to get better gear."

What defines better? If you don't have the time to raid, by circumstance or choice, do you think you should have access to the best gear out there? 232 gear allows for entry into all but the highest level raid content. If the difference between 232 and 245 caused you to quit you're playing for the wrong reasons.

casuals don't need top level gear- and even T10 is given away with the amount of Frost badges you can get a week- just have to be focused and not give into instant gratification

"Maybe when Cataclysm comes out it will be a little more realistic for casual players to get better gear."

This amuses me greatly as I have always considered myself a "casual" player; I never saw the endgame content or anything better than blue gear in Classic, and only the lowest tier of raiding gear in BC. It was terribly silly from a business standpoint, I thought, to put so much time and effort into the endgame when the majority of players never saw or experienced it until it was well outdated.

Wrath has made it -incredibly- easy for anyone to get decent to great gear via crafting, running heroic 5mans, and opening up raiding content to 10 man teams as well as 25. I'm shocked at how high my gear ranking is for my class and spec on my server, and that's only because I happened to have a block of time open up, and a friend had me PUG a spot in his guild's 25man that became semi-regular (unless my variable work schedule messes with it).

"Casuals" who don't have uber gear are the folks who don't want to run instances and raids (I actually know some folks who are scared of joining groups due to bad past experiences, which makes me sad), or people who only have the time and distractions for solo play here and there, which won't get all the gear slots filled with 264 items.

If someone has time and inclination at all to run a few instances now and then, and maybe join friends/guildies in a raid when possible, and maybe mat gather for the crafters in the guild, one can still be "Casual" and progress with gear, albeit slowly. The dev team isn't just going to hand someone the BiS items for playing X number of hours if they put no further effort into it. Life doesn't work that way, and neither does a competitive gaming system.

I am rather glad that Cata is going to equalize the gearscore on 10man and 25man loot so I can choose "run with the big group of pals this week, or well, I'm feeling a little less social, maybe I'll just hit the 10man for a bit of quiet and more casual fun." As opposed to feeling like I need to get the Marks/Trophies/whatever from 25man to improve my already top end gear to be a better healer for my 10man (or just make it match, argh!), and feeling burnt out from seeing ICC so many times a week.