Can the existing 93-95 gear available on loyalty merchants get upgraded to level 98-100 stats or have new sets added?
I have almost 300 tokens and other than the bags of pp, it's worthless. Please add current xpac items on the merchants!
It wasn't meant to insta-gear you for a new xpac by saving loyalty coins. (Same reason you can't use last xpac's etyma for current stuff.) They'll add level 98-ish gear to the loyalty merchant, but it won't be for several months yet.
It'll probably just be copy/pastes of the Quested gear too, and labeled "Far Seas Loyalist" armor. This is not a bad thing by any means. XD
You're right, mastercrafted gear for 1-2k a pop is the way to go if that was the intention on Day 1 or Day 30. Just keep saving those loyalty tokens, eventually something of reasonable value will be put on them. Perhaps.