It's all a part of the treadmill. Some hardcore types are a bit upset at the idea that a casual player can now play 12 hours a day for a week straight and walk out with a set of tier 8 epics. There were even people in the general forum "doing the math" to show how a casual player can get epic'ed out in just a few days... if he runs 18 hours worth of content every day for several days. But that isn't what the casual player is doing. For many of them, getting those epic pieces will take a while, and once they get them, they won't be applying to An_Uber_Guild_01, because that guild isn't recruiting people who only play 5 hours a week on a constantly-changing schedule. Plus, they'll be farming tier 9 or 10 by that time.

There may be a few people who grind out epics under this system and that might make it feel cheap to the people who did it the hard way. But it's really just a bone to the players who otherwise may be running out of gear to upgrade by that time (whether or not they need the upgrades). They did it in tBC and it must have worked to their liking. I would expect them to do this from now on. Toss the casuals some high-level epic upgrades to keep them grinding out the content.