Return of Reckoning

Well back in the day before Mythic messed the game up. PvE gear gave alternative stat builds. That was when classes could function as more than one archetype and before stat bloat forced certain roles.

When they brought in second sovereign sets and mutliple weapon/jewels bought via pvp comms that pretty much killed off pve.

I guess because nobody played Pve at that moment anymore. It was so far that everybody were just pvping all the time. I joined the game 2011 (sadly) and the only pve I knew was lotd tombs

Mythic saw that PvP was stronger and so they implanted more PvP stuff to make things easier.
And we all know that WAR is more PvP than PvE.