Bioware'd my valor go?

For those of you that haven't read, valor will no longer be a requirement to purchase PvP gear in SWTOR. Instead, the tier 1 set will be bought with credits and tiers 2 and 3 will be bought with warzone commendations. They have added a new set of PvP gear called "war hero", but have also gotten rid of both centurion and champion gear, thus their claim that they have added anything at all is somewhat misleading.

I am disappointed by the changes to PvP gear in 1.2. First of all, since there is no valor requirement for gear, what's the point of valor at all? I would hate to be someone who has been grinding out warzones and Tuesday night Ilum brawls to get to 65 in order to wear battlemaster, only to be told that next patch anyone who has enough commendations can buy the gear I have worked very hard to acquire. I can imagine open world PvP will also be non-existent on most servers. Yes, I know they are taking out Ilum to work on it. But, if valor is all but meaningless, what sort of incentive could they possibly come up with to draw people to the new and improved Ilum once they do get around to fixing it? Since hearing about the changes last Thursday, I have played a total of 5 warzones. Only 5. What's the point? The week leading up to the patch all I have to do is play enough to get my 1000 commendations and call it a day. 

There is one idea that could let Bioware take away valor requirements, yet still leave incentive to PvP: Introduce a full line of orange gear with empty slots that are tied to valor rank and purchased with credits or commendations. Imagine that every 3-5 valor ranks there would be a new piece of gear to buy. Yes, of course it would be purely cosmetic, but that's the point. You can show off your shiny new gear that says "I am higher rank than you" but without all the stat disparity. Sure, coming up with new armor models isn't exactly easy and Bioware isn't exactly good at it, however there were countless times during my trek to level 50 that I have thought, "man, I want that armor that NPC is wearing." I guess the watershed moment will come when they announce the changes to Ilum, but until then, count me out of the warzone marathons and Tuesday night fights on Ilum.