I waited a while to give the token system a chance before writing this post, but I have to say, WAR's PvP gear is just far too hard to obtain.. 

Personally, I have the full annihilator set and 3 pieces of the conqueror set.  That initially sounds pretty decent, but as you'll see that is hardly the case.  Let's look at it first ignoring tokens:

Starting with the Annihilator Set.  I got lucky, by starting out on Ostermark I had less people to roll against for gold bags at keeps.  And, truthfully I got most of my annihilator set 4-maning empty keeps; yay RvE.  Nowadays on Phoenix Throne though, I imagine Annihilator set is pretty rough to get.  Last night keeps were being sieged by 188 destruction at a time!  That is a mighty low chance of you being lucky enough to receive a bag.  4-man keep sieges really aren't possible on Phoenix Throne due to the population, you'll always be interrupted, which is a good thing, but it sure makes the gear harder to obtain..

Let's move up to the Conqueror Set.  This is the set I've wanted for a while, and as I've mentioned I have 3 pieces of it.  Not too shabby, no?  Well, not really.  I bought the gloves from a vendor back when that was possible.  And I bought the belt on the auction house.  The only piece I've seen from RvR is the boots, which drops off players.  The rest of the set only drops in fortresses, and you are basically competing with even worse numbers attempting to win a lucky roll.  I've been at maybe 50 fortress sieges.  Never, ever won.  In fact, I would be shocked to learn if anyone, on any server, in either North America or Europe has their full conqueror set.

Let's move on.  Invader Set.  This is the set up from conqueror and only available at the city siege stage.  This set is completely out of my grasp now.  Why?  Because I refuse to ever subject myself to the pain that is city sieging in warhammer again =p  If city sieges were improved however, this set is almost reasonable to obtain.  You're in an instance with only 48 other people, and 3? gold bags drop, and you can likely complete the quest 5 or more times before the 2 hour timer is up.  Unfortunately, Mythic decided to make stage 2 have four hero mobs that hit for like 20,000 damage, making this completely impossible with any kind of resistance.  Some players got "lucky", if you want to call it that, and managed to deck themselves out in full invader back when the instances were bugged and you could get in one with 0 enemy players.  That doesn't happen anymore, so these sets are basically unattainable.

Finally, there is the Sovereign Set.  This is also only available from city sieges, and only once you win the first instance (which seemingly is no longer possible).  So this set might as well not even be in the game at the moment.

That's all the PvP sets I know of.  As you can see, they are all very difficult, some perhaps impossible, to obtain.  So, Mythic added tokens as a way to make these sets more obtainable.  Except, the costs from these tokens are just far too high.  I've been saving up for the conqueror shirt and am not even half-way there after several weeks, many fortress sieges and a lot of kills.  And that's for one piece!


What Mythic Should Have Done
Players don't mind working for their gear, but there needs to be some measure of hope that they will eventually obtain it.  Mythic's addition of influence to the RvR lakes was great, and while a little slow to work through, gave you a clear goal that if you invest enough time in each lake you get certain rewards.

The renown system should have worked the exact same way.  All the PvP sets already have a renown rank requirement to use, as you gain that renown rank you should be able to go and just buy the item from a vendor exactly how influence works.  To me this makes a lot of sense, I would then be able to use my Conqueror set now, and as I progress further, know eventually I can get invader and then sovereign..  currently my gear is at a standstill and it feels like I'll never progress at all.

Keeps, Fortresses and Cities should have never been about personal gain.  It should have been about your realm and provide benefits to your realm.  Just look what happened with the last update, making it so guild leaders who claimed keeps get a gold bag to hand out, I've never seen so much bickering in /2 over who gets to claim the keep.  If all of the personal gains were removed from keeps, fortresses and cities, and instead placed where they make sense (renown, which is really your personal progress), then the game would be so much better off.  And if they do that and everyone just PvPs and stops sieging keeps, fortresses and cities - guess what?  Then keeps, fortresses and city sieges aren't fun enough.  Improve them!