They may also want all the new players coming in from their TTK purchase to feel like they have great stuff to play with now and a chance to get it easily before larger loot tables make that harder. Highly doubt they even thought at all about early adopters, going in line with what can be taken away from other recent developments, e.g. pricing disparities

You sound like a day one guardian, so let me ask you this: remember when you wanted to do the raid, but maybe had no one to do it with or you could do it, but didn't know what to do? If this raid is what they say it is, hey, I don't care if all twenty million people who play this game have Ghallys, it will be the willingness of us day oners to show them how to do a raid. Bungie can give away the most coveted gun in Destiny, and I don't mind that, but now, they shouldn't nerf it, because everyone has it now, and it still won't help you in the end because we don't have match making for raids. If they really want Destiny to grow, it's really in the hands of the day oners, and Sherpas to get the noobs up to par, because you should know by now that if you don't know how raid, you can't beat a raid.

Matchmaking for raids. Ugh. Have you used lfg? If you made use of that site you come to notice that there is a sizable group of typically younger players that are horrible to help out, don't take direction or don't bother to communicate. Ever had someone consistently pick up a relic and never shoot the templar or drop it on VoG hard after not admitting they'd never run it before? Try them also having no mic. It's happened. Add to that the deceptively large amount of extremely under-leveled folks looking for a carry and your matchmaking idea becomes more poorly thought out than anyone is going to successfully admit. LFG is BY FAR the only viable solution for raids. You have an idealistic or inaccurately sampled idea of the demographic you're going to encounter. They add that feature and you'll be put on entire teams like this. Think about it. Manually building a group to run with is a hassle you don't want to have to go through. The precedent of going outside the game (including official websites) is certainly present. You've noticed. What you aren't considering is the cost you've never had to avoid with being able to either remove someone obnoxious or, on the other side of it, add people that either know what they're doing or have a good heart. Anyone having a problem finding a team to run is likely feeling a bit timid at the thought of sending out a ton of party invites to people who, like them, aren't being picked up. If you're missing some unmentioned requirement and never sent an invite the service seems like a joke. Take the leap and finally send them yourself. Or alter your posts because matchmaking will break half the runs on raids.

Whoa. Think I just scanned your post and went on a tangent. Sorry =\