Fabled Gear/Master spells weren't designed to be the norm. The fact that some people had full sets of fabled, and every useful spell at Master level could be attribueted to one thing... they had time to obtain these things.
Given enough time, anyone can accumulate "the best" that is out there, but once you have these things, what is left to do? Use it to help your friends round out thier sets of stuff... sure but then what?
Whether it was a level increase that trivialized older items, or new items that were better than anything before, this kind of thing not only was bound to happen, it needs to happen for ongoing content.
Absolutely it's frustrating for people who feel they've worked hard for 6 months obtaining "the best" gear, only to see that gear trivialized by something newer and better, but I'm not sure why it's a surprise. Things like this happen every day. Remember when LP's were replaced by cassettes? Or how about your cassette collection trivialized by CD?
For a persistant world to feel realistic and immersive, we have to have a sense of growth and innovation in the game. Level hikes and new discoveries are one way to do this. So while sure, you can feel frustrated that everything you have worked to collect isn't "top notch" or "the best" anymore, as many have pointed out, that T5 fabled stuff and those masters will equip you better than others who use legendary stuff to collect the next "best stuff".
Personally, I don't think Legendary T6 stuff is good enough. If you compare the stats of T4 fabled items to T5 legendary, there is a substantial difference. This isn't the case between T5 fabled and T6 legendary. Frankly given that that is the case, I think the Dev's answered many people's concerns about their hard-earned gear being "trivialized". While it's not the best in the game anymore... it's far from the worst.
Edit: Typo
Message Edited by Babayaaga on 10-04-2005 09:07 AM