Originally Posted by Douglas

I'm not sure that has to be true. You can lock people out of some gear, as long as those people never run out of things to work towards.

Only solid ideas I have along these lines are currency or consumables. Gold is already flowing like water due to daily quests, so make it non-gold currency or consumables. Let's leave consumables off the table for the moment and brainstorm...

Imagine if just participating in an arena match through to the end earned you a badge of justice, up to 10 per week, regardless of rating and without costing any points. Then imagine if you could spend arena points on coilfang armaments, etherium stasis chamber keys, spirit shards, apexis crystals (not shards), obsidian warbeads, horde/alliance commendation signets (remember those?), and marks of illidari. Keep the earn rate low enough so this won't cause people to do this stuff instead of PvE... what would happen to arena participation rates?