Why the heck are rewards that relevant? They are nothing special. To be honest having fun (a fair fight) is a much better goal to have. Having weeks on end of no wvw fun because enemies can’t put up a fight or simply don’t show up is anything but enjoyable.
WVW has never rewarded anything worthwhile. Now, finally, there will be unique WvW skins that you can buy with tickets.
However, the better your server ranks the more tickets you get, and the more skins you can get.
And there are even Mistforged weapons. Which sounds like they might just be a better version, ascended perhaps? And if your server ranks below 5th place, you will simply not get enough tickets to even buy a mistforged weapon. 1st place gets enough tickets to buy almost two.
So there is a considerably large difference between first place and last place. First place server gets 2.5x the tickets last place gets.