The question itself of why PvP should be rewarded freaks me out a bit. Why not? I'm all up for PvP for fun and i really want to enjoy the process.But also i want PvP being self-sufficient and sustainable. It's not possible without looting or rewards. Perhaps the PvE lot have to look at the problem through the eyes of others?
Imagine for a minute that in order to dig supremes you have to kill someone in PvP first. Not only in Umbra, but in other regions too - Under Spring, Wastelands, whatever. And it's not an option. Actually there is no options. It's the must. If you don't kill, you don't dig. You could ask your friends to kill someone for you to fill up your quota. They aren't reliable though. Sometimes they busy, or offline, or they have no time, or bad luck, or maybe they want to do PvP for themselves.
Now, what about crafting? Imagine that in order to craft a q250 item of choice grade you have to kill say 5 players in PvP first. And if you want to craft item of supreme grade, you have to kill 50 of them. Again, it's not an option, it's the must. You either kill those 50 homins or you won't be able to craft the item. Kinda freaky, isn't it? Such situation would be one hell of a pain for PvE lovers. Instead of digging and crafting peacefully they would have to dedicate a lot of their time and efforts to the activities they don't like and don't enjoy. I'm pretty sure they would never accept this and the forums were full of rage threads and farewells.
But when the very same pattern is applied to PvP - as it is right now - all of a sudden there is nothing wrong about it to PvE folk. All is working as intended, because, you know, it's a PvE game and no new toys for PvP are needed. With attitude like this developers could remove PvP entirely from the game. It's better do nothing, then do something wrong or leave it undone. But they need PvP as selling point, to add another line to the list of features on Ryzom page and attract more players, so why don't complete it? At the aspect of balance between rewards for PvP and PvE even WoW is more sandbox than Ryzom, which is rather ironic.