Why should the final boss of an expansion drop gear?

One of the things that continues to amaze me is the vast variety of places that I can find inspiration for my posts. For example, I was browsing TV Tropes a few days ago and came across an article entitled "Bragging Rights Reward", which describes any practical reward in a video game that takes immense effort to acquire, such that by the time you acquire it, you have already proved you don't need it. It's a fairly frequently used trope, and it got me thinking: are there any such rewards in WoW? One example immediately popped into my mind: any loot that drops from heroic Lich King (or Kil'jaeden in Burning Crusade, or Kel'thuzad in vanilla WoW). After all, those bosses were/are the last boss in their respective expansion, so once you defeat them, you don't need better gear. This, to me, begs the question: why should these bosses drop gear?

The Lich King in an interested exception to this case, because with the Ruby Sanctum being released in patch 3.3.5, the gear that he drops on heroic mode will give players a better chance at defeating the foes in the Ruby Sanctum, and considering that everything in the Ruby Sanctum will be side-grades, rather than upgrades to the things dropped in Icecrown Citadel, they won't be bragging rights rewards either. After all, players could go for Halion first and heroic Lich King after that, or they could have already defeated heroic Lich King and will now be trying to best the Ruby Sanctum. Either way, the rewards from one fight will make the other easier, making neither a clear case of bragging rights rewards. That is, unless Halion isn't a comparable fight to heroic Lich King, and is a good deal easier. in which case the Lich King's heroic drops will still be bragging rights rewards. After all, if he is, by far, the hardest fight in the expansion so far, so by the time you defeat him, you have proven you don't need better gear.

For now, I'm going to write under the assumption that heroic Lich King will remain the hardest fight in the game, even after 3.3.5 is released, for this will not only make writing about the subject more interesting, but will also allow me to consider whether there was any point in Kil'jaeden and Kel'thuzad dropping gear. Now, I'm sure one of the first justifications for them dropping gear that one would point out is that their gear helps people level more quickly through the new content released with each expansion, but if your gear is good enough that you can beat the final boss of an expansion, it's probably good enough that you won't notice the difference between having gear that drops off of that final boss and not having gear that drops off of that final boss; you'll probably be mowing through enemies too quickly to notice the time you save. One could also argue that the gear they drop would give one an advantage when one starts the new expansion's raid content, but considering the rate at which gear has steadily gotten better, the difference between top-end gear and second-best gear becomes even less significant when you enter a new expansion's raids.

So where does that leave us in terms of uses for gear that drops off of the final boss of an expansion? I once said in one of my other posts that gear really serves two purposes: helping you advance through an expansion's content, and serving as a representation of your achievements. The real question is, if gear isn't serving one of those purposes, is it fair that it exist only to serve the other, less practical one? Making the models for that gear takes time away from the design team, time they could be spending on other things, like the gear for the new content. More importantly, though, it reinforces the idea that the main goal of playing WoW is to get better gear, and though that is often an important step in accomplishing other goals, it isn't the reason most of us play. Most of us play for the experience, whether that experience is downing a raid boss, winning a battleground, or just getting exalted with a faction; gear just happens to be a nice consolation that also makes future experiences go more smoothly.

But, you may ask, are there any alternatives? Plenty, actually: mounts, titles, vanity pets (granted, people would probably only be excited about receiving one of the first two of those three), all of which serve the purpose of representing a person's achievements without existing solely as a bragging right reward (by the definition above). And truth be told, I think that rewarding regular old gear for defeating the final boss of an expansion is a bit... underwhelming. Gear was just a necessity to get to that point, and to reward more gear almost seems like mockery to me. Think about it: by beating heroic Lich King, a raid has beaten Wrath of the Lich King. They have overcome the greatest challenge off the expansion, and the reward is just more gear? Just more of the same? Now, granted, beating the Lich King on heroic mode does also grant special titles, depending on which mode you beat him on, as well as a mount for one member of the raid, but rather than giving some other members of the raid gear as a reward, why not give everyone the mount? It seems to me a more fitting reward for what is, in essence, beating Wrath of the Lich King, at least more fitting than just more gear. Maybe that's just me, though.