3. Andy's next title should be "The neversleeping consciousness of the game"
He has a point there though, atleast regarding the "item aspects" of the rewards. You can receive a nice item, which is better even than some of its higher tier counterparts (levels X2 or X4 perhaps). It turned out you cannot stash it in the guild, because item-rewards bind to the hero. However, it is relatively the same with the 1-try recipes I saw announced in the BG forum- although they cannot be compared to the X* level items from your new tier, they really rule in your ex-tier.