Is that the general quality of the playerbase has gone WAAAY down and unrealistic expectations like this rant here are what's ultimately killing CF. It used to be fun to log in for 10 minutes and get kills or get killed. Now everyone expects you to stay on for 30 minutes or 2 hours and to leave your shit in your corpse. Hello?!? That's why you killed them. For the shinies! I think if the playerbase as a whole didn't suck so bad, they would realize how little effect gear actually has on things. It's only when you're dealing with super powerhouses with -50 saves in everything and 80 dam rolls that gear might be an issue. But then, you can always grab a buddy and gank the shit out of them. I miss the days of waiting at the pit for overly conservative people to recall so you could snipe them when they weren't expecting it. I think that'd do a lot if these REALLY cheap tactics started coming back into the mainstream.
I remember I used to get "griefed" by this scion shifter when I was Quesnel, so I just sat at the pit and waited. He recalled, I slept him, I killed him, and I took his shinies! And later we laughed and fought bitterly till we both deleted. It was fun. And by the term Griefed, I mean six on one gank squads. This "grief' bs people whine about these days doesn't exist. In my opinion, if you're still on 40 minutes after I last killed you, the multikill rule is out. You'd better not be seen by me. If I've killed you without breaking a sweat twice before, and I haven't killed you today and I see you. Guess what! I'm going to do it again. RUN LIKE HELL!
But... then again, I am old school. Reclothing was considered an essential skill.
Maybe some of the vets and old school folks like myself should come up with some easy to get reclothe strategies for pre-20, 20-30, 30-40, and 40+ for each alignment and make a FAQ about it. That'd probably take a lot of the sting out. Who's game?