I have not been veraciously playing WAR like I played WoW. I log in, I play, I log out. No big deal. And those sessions have slowly payed off. Aside from playing better and mastering my class more, you earn influence for the open RvR sections of the game. So, once I hit class rank 18 and realm rank 18, I had tons of blue and purple gear to pick up from the warcamp rally masters.
You could look at this as a grind, no different than grinding purple gear in WoW. Except, I did this guildless without any real dependency on twenty four other people. All pugs. Just playing the game. I like that.