I believe the topic stemmed from years and years ago where commentary
began of watching rogues running around in full glowing, clanking
platemail, mages in battle armor, etc., and how ridiculous it all
seemed. Over the years, there's been a slow push to provide reasons
and incentives for characters to actually dress the part as well.

Various armor use skills appropriate to class, a push in object
design to have stats appropriate for the items, priests and blessed
weapons, etc. The transmute change was more of a "suitable time for
the change" than much else. What point is there to the restriction
that druids cannot wear metal, if it has absolutely zero practical
impact on the game? You *might* blow up an item, have to regather
it, and after edge introduction, a lot of times that chance was 0%.

Admittedly, druids now truly have the most restrictive armor choices,
but aside from perhaps the absolute top-tier gear, there's still
plenty of options. My biggest frustration is that anything good (and
often *needed*) for a druid is also useful for many other classes.
Trying to develop gear that'd be druid-interesting that would remain
available without simply artificially flagging it druid-only is
where I find the challenge.