I believe the idea is to give less-progressed guilds a way to get more epics, allowing them to get a leg up on 4.0 raiding without nerfing the encounters or adding an ICC buff.

ZA/ZG are on par with the raids themselves, as opposed to the new 5mans in Wrath, which were there to help people catch up.

Oh, I see what you were asking now, yes I believe the bit about the gear being 378 is a mistake.

/cry in shame

353 was reported. Just under the current tier. Which means, depending on class/itemization, some pieces from ZA/ZG could be better than the 359 epics, but only just barely.

Do we know yet if it's ALL items that level, or a "the last guy has Epic" situation?

@vocenoctum

If the epic really is level 353, then doesn't make sense for it to be last guy only. They already stated that ZA and ZG would require average ilevel of 346 to enter. Why would it drop 346 if it requires 346 to enter? and between 346 and 353, there's no space to put an additional "level". They could drop 350 but it's so marginally above 346 that it doesn't really feel like an upgrade either.

On a related note, isn't Totalbiscuit's guild called Trollface dot jpeg?

I'm pretty sure he said 353. And yes, his guild is called trollface.jpg :P