Again, BP, you're exaggerating both sides and painting a picture far more polarized than it actually was. You infer that all hardcores had 36% haste pre-RoK, then say fbss (21%) was hardcore only and ignore rbb (31%)... Regardless, many casuals spent what time they had in LGuk for a shot at these "hardcore-only" items, and many got them. They were NOT raid items, they were obtainable by one group. While not WoW-like (two entirely different itemization systems there), the drop rate didn't make them unattainable at all. During SoV I farmed FBSSs regularly & sold 'em for 6-12k apiece, depending. Later on I started farming both those and yaks at the same time, as a GM troll smith I could make the yaks worthwhile.
On the later content - I'm talking about obtainable gear during PoP being only very marginally better than that available during Kunark & Velious (and only being available for a precious few slots), while raid gear tripled in strength during that time period. I know hp aren't everything, but they'll serve as an example: The highest hp on a droppable item in Velious: 100. Nodrop in Velious, 100. (despite this, there's no arguing raid gear was better in SoV) Droppable in PoP: 120. Nodrop in PoP: 300. Every piece of t4+ raid gear was essentially the same; a ton of every stat and 150-200 hp/mana. It had no character whatsoever, it was simply overpowered. Meanwhile, many of the best obtainable items for most slots on my shaman, since I refused to play carrot & stick in PoP, were from Velious. Until I started making Farwater,
most were from Velious. That's ridiculous man, raid gear gets a 200% boost and the best stuff anyone not doing 60man raids can get is 2 expansions and 2 years old?
I also think you're glossing over the age gap, but there's really no way to ascertain this. The truth likely lies between the negative view I take on it and your positive spin. Regardless, read the
official forums sometime, if you haven't, for a good look at it.
ps. BoT nameds were soloable by enchanters for a while. While it did get nerfed, you certainly didn't need defensive for them, a pally friend of mine was able to tank them, and in our typical 5man group at that.
pps. You haven't addressed the loss of class roles due to such huge gear disparities. On this note, another thing I'll bring up is the gear gap is that it allowed uberguilders to 1-2group raid content, thus c**kblocking younger guilds and pickup raids - an opportunity they rarely missed. When factioning Yeli to turn my second WDH into the boots during PoP, I watched 9 people from my servers top guild take out Tormax.