Okay. Here we go.
I pulled my DMG off the shelf and typed in this section. From the man who invented role-playing games.
When people ask why they can’t get better rewards without having a corresponding increase in challenge required to get those rewards, this is why:
Thoughtless placement of powerful magic items has been the ruination of many a campaign. Not only does this cheapen what should be rare and precious, it gives player characters undeserved advancement and empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey. This is in part the fault of this writer, who deeply regrets not taking the time and space to stress repeatedly the importance of moderation. Had the whole been with an admonition to use care and logic in placement or random discovery of magic items, had the intent, meaning, and spirit of the game been more fully explained, much of the give-away aspect of such campaigns would have willingly been squelched. The sad fact is, however, that this was not done, so many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better DM’s jape at and ridicule - rightly so - because of the foolishness of players with astronomically high levels of strength and no real playing skill. These god-like characters boast and strut about with scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such “Monty Haul” games a crashing bore for most participants, they are a headache for their DMs as well, for the rules of the game do not provide anything for such play - no reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing!
-Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, by Gary Gygax, Revised Edition (1979), page 92
This is not a new thing.
This is not a WoW thing.
This is not a Blizzard thing.
The reason that you do not give players rewards that are out-of-kilter with the challenge to get them is because games like that do not work .
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