That's not too much different then the leveling gear you can buy on the cash shop that pretty much blows everything else out of the water stat wise. The only real difference is these are quest rewards. I look at that as a gentle nudge to let you know it's there. It could just be another quest with only XP reward. I can sorta see how it would rub some the wrong way though. I am sure some guilds will require it, but there will be others that are more casual that do not. Same way there were guilds that required Torvan/Lycini Essences and other absurd things but my guild only started requiring that when progressing in T2. T1 we didn't care. There is usually enough margin for error in T1 that even without perfect stats as long as you perfectly execute strats you can get through. I dunno though, I have not played for more than a couple hours since NT release.
For some reason this makes me think back to SL launch and how fast I leveled there and jumped into raiding within a couple weeks of launch. Crazy how much I have changed just since SL release.
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When in the launcher library, on the right side, right click Rift and choose repair. This worked for me. Was ready to play in about 5 minutes.