I hate it when you aquire really nice looking gear but because it has PVP stats is useless or at least less effective in a PVE environment, having to swap gear is also a pain.

DAoC was one of the most successful PvP MMO's ever to release. The reason it was so successful seemed to be lost on the developers because they broke it a few expansions in. It was very successful because there was no barrier of entry to the sandbox PvP end-game. The best stuff in the game was player crafted/easily accessible. As a result, you hit level 50, you got a custom set of crafted gear created, and you were ready to rock.

They added gear grinding with Trials of Atlantis, the 2nd expansion; in an attempt to capture EQ/PvE players. Not only was it very unsuccessful at doing that, they lost players they never recovered. Including people like me who ran fan sites.