Tier5 vs Tier6 weapon costs (hours played)

During Arena Season 2, getting your S2 2H weapon (equivalent to Tier5) cost 3750 points. If you were on a casual team, playing 10 games a week and holding a 1400 rating, that would net you 300 points a week, so it take you about 12 weeks. And only 1 hour per week to play those 10 games, so a total of 12 hours.

Blizzard thought that was too easy, so they added the 1850 personal rating requirement for S3 / Tier6 weapons. No more overpowered weapons for us scrubs! But with the Sunwell Armory badge vendor now open in early patch 2.4, you can buy a Tier6 2H for 150 badges. A pickup scrub team farming Kara will do it in about 7 hours. 22 badges, which means 3 badges per hour. So now it takes 50 hours of farming Kara to get those 150 badges. Or, if you organize a high-powered Tier4 team with perfect class balance, you could clear Kara in 4 hours. That's 5 badges/hour, or 30 hours for your Tier6 2-hander.

In either case, it's a lot harder now to get your top-of-the-line weapon. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard makes badges purchasable with gold, just before the release of WoTLK. It will revive casuals' interest in farming gold for their Tier6 weapon, since no one will be raiding at that point (similar to the month before TBC came out). Then casuals can run around with their Tier6 weapon, only to replace it with a level 75 blue quest reward in a few months.