One thing to be cautious of in making declarations about mechanics - hypothetical or otherwise - is to make sure you identify whether the mechanic is actually the source of the problem, or merely the scapegoat. It is true that anything which has a sliding scale of effectiveness is going to mean that those with the highest-tier things in that scale will be better, mechanically, than those without. The degree of this slide will do a lot to determine how "must-have" the highest-tier stuff will be, just as the degree of effectiveness of a given build can determine how essential choosing an optimal one is.
At the same time, however, that is no reason to refuse to have a sliding scale; the whole point behind certain aspects of gameplay is to "get better stuff" so you can have bigger numbers or get cooler tricks. It's the reward system that people expect in MMOs. No matter how much we might want to include attention to other sub-games people play with our product, it would be foolish to ignore this aspect of gameplay, so central to the connotation of "MMO." I'm not advocating making a grind-fest, here, but I am saying that swinging so far away from it that you reject the core formula entirely is foolish.
As long as any "this is subjectively better than that" is present in a game, you WILL have players who settle into a kind of elitism over it. Whether their subjective "best" is accurate objectively or not, they will demand other players who play with them conform to their standards. This can be "only somebody with all purples," or it can be "only ice controllers; any other controller sucks," or any number of other supposed "this is the bare minimum because without it you're just in my way."
We can't prevent people from playing the game this way. We can do our best to provide tools for finding friends and groups with those who do NOT behave this way. But we're certainly not kicking these people out of the game; they're players and customers, too, and while their rudeness is not condoned, attempting to police it gets dangerously close to policing preferences. "Block them and move on," would be my advice.
What we CAN do is attempt to find innovative ways to make pure power-building less feasible and less necessary. The latter is actually hard, because too little reward for "all purple" builds means people who worked for them don't feel it was worth the effort, while making it geared for whatever "normal" builds are expected to be can lead to "all purple" players complaining about how easy the game is. CoX offered the ability to slide the difficulty up and down to accommodate different optimization and skill levels, and that is one potential solution. It still leads to there being those who will take the attitude that if you can't handle a maxxed-out difficulty slider (which, they are certain, is impossible without all purples), you're a detriment.
The former - innovations on how to handle these things - can also only take us so far. The "awesomeness" resource I hypothesized earlier would mean it takes a long time for you to be able to slot "all purples," because having that much "awesomeness" is much harder to get than merely capping out your level. We could prevent it all the way by capping awesomeness, though I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that increasing "awesomeness" goes on even after you hit level cap. It might be something for exp to go into, making it so that exp is still worth getting even after you cap out your level.
In any event, make sure to keep in mind that mechanics may not be to blame for problems you had interacting with other players; it could just be that you and they have distinctly different play styles or preferences. Be polite to them and have a bit of a thick skin if they're not going to reciprocate. We will have "ignore" features to let you handle particularly abusive jerks, and while I won't make any promises (there must be a reason that every MMO ever has people complaining about GMs not doing enough when somebody is reported), genuinely rule-breaking rudeness can also be reported for possible punitive action.
I do think social pressure and holding ourselves to a high standard of cordiality combined with judicious use of the tools we have control over as players will be more productive, but that doesn't mean MWM will tolerate genuine malfeasance. (And, lest we get lost on that subject, I'll close by reitterating: I don't think being elitist rises to this level of bad behavior. Just recognize that there will always be those who will have standards that are ridiculously exacting, and don't deal with them if it causes you problems.)
Do discuss ways mechanics might help mitigate, rather than encourage, player interaction problems, but don't make the mistake of assuming the mechanics are the sole cause of it nor that stripping them down would resolve them. It takes more delicacy than that, or it would be a solved problem by now!
