As a some-time player of DDO(which admittedly has perfunctory pvp facilities), I can state from experience that having a job is more than enough to keep one from being in the same class as the "lifers". Doubly so if school is involved and magnified further if one isn't prepared to shed all other games and/or hobbies to keep pace.
I ran with a lot of long-time players, the majority of whom spent double the amount of time I played per day if not more. Leveraging their advice and material aid along with my own real money, I got to a point where I could keep up with them.....until the next update, when my entire group had everything in a week and I was still scrabbling for new stuff a month later. All this ignoring the fact that DDO implements a system of stacking "past-lives" that puts most of my running mates numerically superior to me even if we were in identical gear/builds.
My point is that MMO's often intrinsically reward individuals for putting in ridiculous hours doing repetitive tasks. In order to EVER be on a literal level playing field with my cohorts I'd have to dissolve all of my responsibilities and live on my PC for months, or cheat in the worst possible ways. And the majority of people I know in that game think this is a just and upright system.
Any player of any modern shooter has likely seen long periods of time when leaderboards are dominated by accounts with absurd and impossible stats. 2 hits, no shots fired and negative 99999 misses or some such thing. As soon as the top exists in a game, theres a line of people to cheat for it.
The reason for the above is this:
If Bethesda makes this tangible reward for the player that "wins" every week, there will be two types of people competing for it.
1. The mega-lifers. These players have not just no jobs and likely no significant obligations, they probably have disposable incomes from non-work means. These players in most MMOs I've seen have every worthwhile weapon or item, and eventually start metagaming, such that they farm nigh-impossible-to-get items and sell them or complete raids solo for kicks.
2. Cheaters, Modders, Hackers and Bots. Players want the title, the benefit and the prestige. Either through laziness or lack of options they turn to unsavory means to get it.
This is Ignoring completely that the actual alliance conflicts will be utterly and persistently dominated by uber-guilds made up of the above types of players.
The Emperor title and skill tree will basically, on the normal scale, never go to a player of less-than-obsessive stripe, and more likely go to the most pathetic people that exist on the server.
Given the amount of people predicting this situation, they are essentially giving the nod to this arrangement.
That said, given that those players generally don't screw with the rest of us that often, perhaps it won't matter anyway.
