It got hard for me to focus as well knowing war was coming out and the expansion was only a few months away. I could really bust my ass to finish up crappy season 2 gear and maybe a pair of season 4 gloves, only to replace that gear at level 74 or so.

I think the main thing that makes me not want to expend too much effort is the fact that this late in the game there is virtually no way to gain any advantage over the average casual player - whether with skill, play time, or both. In arenas you compete against people with 4 seasons of welfare epics built up. PVP grinding can only get you season 2, which everyone and their granny has already. Multibox teams can grind out badges and heroic epics pretty fast, but that gear is like 14 months old already and everyone else has it too. Even if you were to get up to 2000-2200 5v5, it would take until about the first week of November to finish your season 4 set, then the expansion would come out that week.

When the xp comes out and everything starts fresh, no super easy welfare epics (which I think is a system to reduce barrier to entry for casuals - which is most subscribers), new arenas, etc. it will all be fun and easy to justify the effort to gear up. I remember leveling my warrior to 70 like 2 or 3 months after BC came out thinking I was going to be so far behind. Within a month at 70 we were tearing up season 1 and stuff like Halaa pvp gear, although easily obtainable, was not nearly as ubiquitous as the pvp epics are nowadays. That first few moths after release is just an amazing experience if you are a power player. Even as much as 9 months later it's still worth it to reroll. But 18-24 months into a release... well, things get watered down.